When you imagine the word “psychoanalyst”, you likely think of a White guy with (Freud) or without (Jung) a beard. You might also think of Freud’s famous couch or perhaps about a therapist asking about your relationship with your mother or father.
Stereotypes of psychoanalysis aside, Freudian psychoanalysis or psychodynamic approach is related to theories of child sexual development and also ego. The related therapy is about uncovering the desired and feelings that may have been repressed. If a previously unconscious problem is made conscious by discussing it, the client can then review it and work through it with the therapist. The strengths of the Freudian approach are that it was the first approach to use the “talking cure“, that it can be applied to many mental health illnesses (including OCD, anxiety, and depression, for example), and also that it suggests that childhood influences later life. However, limitations are that this approach is very subjective (due to the use of case studies, mostly done on women in middle class Vienna in the 19th century) and very deterministic, as it suggests that only childhood experiences and unconscious processes lead to behaviours, ignoring the free will of people to change and make choices.
Jungian psychoanalysis is different from Freudian in that it focuses more on the experiences of an individual. A key idea of Jung is collective consciousness, a set of shared beliefs and values between a group of people. In Jungian therapy, the self-awareness of a client is promoted so that he can become his individual true self. Strengths of this approach are that Jung was the first researcher to establish extraversion/introversion concepts (which then inspired such widely used questionnaires like MBTI) because of his suggestion of a collective unconscious and the view that motivation is driven by not just sexual drives (as Freud thought) but also by creativity and intellectual pursuits, and also finally because he suggested that psychological development is based on individuation and growth (as opposed to Freud’s controversial psychosexual stages). The limitations of Jung’s approach is that there is no evidence for the archetypes in biology and also that it the writing of Jung is generally less accessible to a lay reader (although perhaps this is because the work of Jung was disseminated less so than that of Freud).
Both Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis have had a huge effect on pop culture. For example, Freud’s work influenced Surrealism art in terms of the dream interpretation and also free improvised methods (akin to free association), as can be seen in the works of Miro and Dali, amongst others. Jung’s ideas influence music, such as that of Bowie, who wrote about the Shadow concept in his aptly named song Shadow Man.
Later therapists took some key ideas from Freud and Jung, adapting and updating them. For instance, Eric Berne in the 1950s used the idea of ego states (Freudian) to develop transactional analysis (TA), which suggests that human personality is made up of the parent, adult, and child ego states and their interaction. These states are the collections of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that we use to interact. Therapists using TA help patients to recognise the ego states they go through and improve their communication.
Additionally, in 1940–1950s, Gestalt therapy was developed, which uses the psychoanalysis ideas concerning ego analysis and ideas about aggression (when an infant develops teeth). Gestalt therapy also moves further than Freud and Jung in terms of including awareness and the development of patterns about all parts of the function of a person (thoughts, feelings, information) (the gestalts), which if disturbed can lead to anxiety. The aim of Gestalt therapy is to help the client with “closing unfinished Gestalts”, such as unexpressed emotions towards a partner. Gestalt therapists do not interpret feelings and dreams (unlike traditional psychoanalysts) but instead they focus on being in the present and self-regulating coping skills that clients test out to improve their relationships.
By the 1970s, however, psychoanalysis fell out of favour, becoming viewed as unscientific in the rise of using more evidence-based methods such as behavioural, biological, and cognitive approaches. For instance, Karl Popper suggests that Freud’s ideas are not falsifiable (as if patients did not agree with Freud’s analysis, then Freud said they were in denial).
The current situation is that while researchers acknowledge the effects of Freud and Jung on popular culture as well as on inspiring the creation of many different types of therapy, they also cannot ignore the unscientific basis of psychoanalysis.
Elizabeth Kaplunov, PhD is a chartered psychologist who evaluates projects about health technology for disabled and vulnerable people.
