Apart from displacement, among the other important themes that Nietzsche introduces into modern thought that have become indispensable to psychotherapy is the emphasis on the need to give shape to one's own life, rather than relying on values inherited from religion and traditional morality to give this to us. This ethical ideal of self-formation is…
What is Psychoanalytic Therapy? – Part 6: The Theory of Displacement
Freud's development of psychoanalysis did not happen in a vacuum. He drew for inspiration on a wide range of predecessors in 19th century medicine, psychology and philosophy, as well as the great dramatists, poets and novelists of the past. As he himself was the first to acknowledge, the idea of the unconscious mind, the idea…
What is Psychoanalytic Therapy? – Part 5: Psychodynamics
The second distinguishing characteristic of psychoanalytic therapy, after its rooting of the symptoms of emotional distress in the history of our personal lives, is that it considers the human mind as a place of conflicts between different wishes and drives, and it treats the symptoms of emotional suffering as expressions of these underlying conflicts. Life…