Overall evaluation of new psychoanalytic theory

New psychoanalysis is the continuation and reform of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis has had a great influence since it was founded, but there are different opinions. The intelligentsia, in particular, basically resisted Freud before the Second World War. Great changes have taken place in this situation after the war. It should be said that the irrationality and destructiveness of war also proved Freud's profound understanding of human nature from one side. Of course, the more important reason comes from the changes after Freud, which changed people's simplified view of psychoanalysis.

There are three main schools of psychological development theory in the new psychoanalysis school, namely, self-psychology school, object relationship school and social culture school.

Egoists: Spitz, Mara, Eriksson

Object: melanie klein, fairbairn, etc.

Social figures: sweetheart, Sullivan

Self-psychology school

Shpits is an important representative of psychoanalytic self-psychology. René a Shpits (1887- 1974) is a famous Austrian psychoanalyst. Spitz's theory focuses on infants before the age of two, especially infants under the age of one, and strengthens the study of pre-linguistic infants in self-psychology.

Shpits pointed out that these changes of babies will be reflected from external behaviors, forming so-called psychological indicators. In the first year of life, the three most obvious signs are three months of smiling reflex, eight months of anxiety and shaking the head, all of which show the psychological development of the baby. Spitz endowed these three signs with extremely important status, and his theory discussed self-integration, the development of object relationship and the accumulation of emotional reflection from these three signs. In a word, spitz established a horizontal axis characterized by time and instructions, and listed the development stages from the relationship between psychological organizers and objects.

The baby's smile reflex at 3 months marks the establishment of the first psychological organizer and the formation of the former object; Eight months of anxiety marks the establishment of the second psychological organizer and the real formation of the object relationship; /kloc-shaking his head at the age of 0/5 months marks the establishment of the third psychological organizer and the continuous development of the object relationship. However, it is too general and superficial for Shpits to construct the development process of the first year of a baby's life only from three signs: smile reflection, eight months' anxiety and shaking his head. Spitz's theory focuses on babies from birth to one or two years old. This is not only spitz's theoretical characteristic, but also his shortcoming. The relative concentration of research objects makes spitz's theory more profound but not so extensive. After all, psychological development is a long-term process. Although the first year of life is important, it is not the whole story. Therefore, on the whole, spitz's theory is flawed.

Theory of psychological development in the first three years of life

Mara began her career as a pediatrician. She believes that there is a closed phylogenetic bond between mother and baby from the beginning, which is a unique emotional expression bond that is not limited to language. The way between the mother's subconscious and the baby's organ reception is the way of mother-child communication. From the beginning of treating mentally ill children until she finally established the theory of separation-individualization, Mara has been paying attention to how normal children get a sense of separation and entity under the care of their mothers.

Mara's early papers are closely related to her later mature psychological development theory and pathology. She believes: "Children gradually realize the disappearance of a kind of power, not only losing their basic satisfaction, but also losing their universal fantasy. It is useless to communicate with strong emotional language. At the emotional outburst stage of 2 to 3 years old, children try to maintain their familiar old fantasies and are dominated by a strong sense of happiness in getting along with their parents. Once this attempt fails, it will be in the anxiety of losing the object of love and castration. If the direct emotional attack fails, children will try to find other entrances to the Garden of Eden ... "This is synchronous with children learning to walk, gaining impression knowledge of the outside world through feeling, and exploring reality. Children share their findings with their parents and try to form a consensus with them. The life outside the palace, which is taken care of by the mother, replaces the life after the palace. Living in harmony with mother makes the dominant proprioceptor consciousness transfer to the growing consciousness of the outside world. Libido plays an important role in the mother's body fantasy in the process of the baby's transformation from fetal narcissism to primitive body narcissism.

Integrating self-development theory

Edith Jacobson (1897- 1978) is a representative of the theory of integrated self-development. He believes that psychological development is from undifferentiated and immature form to differentiated and obviously differentiated form. With the development, Oedipus and self split, the instinctive drive is divided into libido and attack, and the self-object representation of early fusion is divided into self-representation and object representation.

Jacobson clearly divided individual psychological development into five stages: early infancy, pre-Oedipus period, Oedipus period, incubation period and adolescence, based on the theories of Freud, Shpits, Mara and Eriksson.

Personality life cycle development theory

E.H. Erickson (1907- 1979) is an American psychoanalyst and one of the most famous psychoanalytic theorists in modern America. Different from Freud, Eriksson's theory of personality development not only considers the influence of biology, but also considers cultural and social factors. He believes that in the development of personality, the gradually formed self-process plays a leading and integrated role in the interaction between individuals and their surroundings. In the process of growing up, everyone will generally experience the development sequence of biological, physiological and social events and develop in stages according to a certain degree of maturity. In his book Childhood and Society, he put forward "eight stages of human beings" and the development tasks of each stage, and established his own development theory.

Different from Freud, Eriksson believes that the development of personality includes three inseparable processes: organic maturity, self-growth and social relations, which are subject to all internal and external conflicts. Its development sequence is divided into eight stages according to the gradually fixed order (that is, the maturity of organisms), and each stage has a development crisis. The resolution of the crisis marks the transformation from the previous stage to the later stage. Getting through the crisis smoothly is a successful solution, and vice versa.

Successful solution helps to strengthen self-strength and adapt to the environment; An unsuccessful solution will weaken self-strength and hinder adaptation to the environment. In psychoanalytic personality development theory, Eriksson's theory has made more substantial progress. First of all, Eriksson's theory of gradual personality development no longer overemphasizes Freud's instinct and universality theory, but emphasizes the interaction between self and social environment and the role of family and society in children's education. This is undoubtedly a great progress in psychoanalysis. Secondly, Eriksson added three new adult stages on the basis of Freud's theory, defined development as a lifelong task, expanded the connotation of Freud's each stage and gave a new explanation. Thirdly, Eriksson showed some dialectical thoughts when explaining the relationship between the stages. In a word, Erickson's theory is more comprehensive and richer than the previous development theory, which raises the development view of psychoanalysis to a new height.

Object relation school

Transition object relation theory

Melanie klein (1882.3.30-1960.9.22) is an Austrian psychoanalyst and a pioneer of children's psychoanalysis. She is regarded as one of the most important contributions to the development of psychoanalytic theory after Freud.

Klein's work has become a bridge between Freud's theory and object relationship theory. She retains Freud's emphasis on instinct, but thinks that instinct and object are intrinsically related, and the drive is expressive and internally oriented to the object, which changes Freud's view that the drive has no object.

At the beginning of life, instinctive drive appears in the background of an object relationship and is regulated by the object.

Babies look for breasts and food not only for the release of energy, but also for the needs of relationships. This emphasis on instinctive drive and object relationship is significantly different from Freud's view that drive is aimless. Klein and Freud have different views on the structure of personality. She believes that the ego exists when the baby is born, and the superego has been established as early as the beginning of life. She emphasized the importance of the baby's initial inner fantasy world, which is full of persecution, hostility and anxiety associated with some objects, and it comes from the instinct of the baby's own death.

Babies control their strong needs, fears and anxieties by constantly using the mechanism of projection, injection and division, so as to make themselves feel safe and establish an object relationship. She looked at children's psychological development from a new perspective, and described two basic mental states that babies experienced when they suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and depression in their early years. Klein's object relation theory is innovative, but at the same time, it retains some elements of Freud's theory, so it is a transitional object relation theory, which is instructive to other object relation theorists.

Pure object relation theory

W. British psychologist fairbairn (1889- 1964) is the main representative of psychoanalysis. Fairbairn put forward a pure object relation model, which holds that people are driven by seeking objects, completely negating Freud's hypothesis that people are driven by instinct.

He believes that people have a basic tendency to establish relationships with others. The child who sucks his thumb does not want to get pleasure from his mouth, but uses his thumb as a substitute to replace the lack or unsatisfied object relationship. Object is not only an internal graphic or psychological representation, but also a function of psychological activities.

He believes that the ego has its own energy and is the internal driving force for establishing relationships, which excludes the role of the id, fundamentally changes the meaning of the ego, and reshapes the ego theory through the multiple substructure theory of the ego.

Transition object theory

Donald Wincourt (1896- 197 1) is a famous British child psychoanalyst and pediatrician. He consulted nearly 60,000 pairs of mothers and babies, and put forward many far-reaching theories on children's development based on a lot of clinical experience. One of the most outstanding contributions is the concept of "transition object".

Winnicott believes that the transitional object is the first "non-self" possession of children. In the sense of subjective omnipotence, babies think that they have created the object of desire, such as breasts, and believe that they can completely control it. In the experience organized according to objective reality, babies find that they must find out the object of desire, and are sensitive to the separation and difference from the object, and feel lack of control over it. The transitional object is experienced as being neither controlled by subjective creation nor found and separated, but in between.

Based on the study of infant behavior, Winnicott believes that objects are substitutes for mothers' breasts (the first and most important objects that children come into contact with in the environment). It is neither an internal object nor a subjective object, and it is not just an external object. It exists in an intermediate field, which has both the external reality of the object (mother's breast) and the subjectivity of children themselves. This middle zone is both subjective and objective, and neither side is excluded. Although foreign objects represent all the ingredients raised by mothers, they also represent the ability that babies need to create themselves. This is why the transition object is the baby's first possession: it really belongs to him because he created it. When discussing the stages of children's psychological development, Winnicott put forward three stages of development, which are continuous, inseparable and mostly intertwined: the stage of children's absolute dependence on objects (mainly mothers or caregivers like mothers); Children's relative dependence on objects; And move towards the independent stage.

In the stage of absolute dependence, children can't live without their mothers, while in the stage of relative dependence, children need both their mothers and transitional objects. These transitional objects played the role of replacing mothers at a certain moment. In the relative dependence stage of children's development, the transition object is necessary and is their emotional need. For example, children's love for teddy bears, rubbing cuffs while rubbing quilts, etc. Are the needs of children's psychological development, and are necessary and positive for children's growth.

Comprehensive object relation theory

Kenberg (O.F. 1928—) is a famous American psychoanalyst who is still alive, and one of the most important representatives of the object relationship school of contemporary psychoanalysis. He was the president of the International Psychoanalysis Association in the 1990s. He made great contribution and influence to the development of psychoanalysis in theory and treatment practice. He devoted his life to achieving two goals. First of all, in a truly comprehensive way, he combined the traditional driving theory and Freud's psychological structure model with Klein's (M) and fairbairn's (W.R.D) object relationship theory and psychoanalytic self-psychological development view, especially Jacobson's (E) view on early pathological forms of identity. The second is to explain the pathological mechanism of marginal personality organization by using the theory of integrated object relationship.

Most scholars believe that Koenberg has achieved considerable success in the second goal; However, scholars have different views on his first goal. Some people think that, "although the language skills in Kernberg's works are very strong, which makes him one of the groups that are difficult to understand among contemporary psychoanalysts, the connotation of his theoretical framework is always consistent." Once mastered, it will provide us with the necessary concept map for understanding human experience in various fields.

Only when he integrated three obviously different views of human experience development put forward by Freud, Jacobson, Mahler and Klein to varying degrees can he correctly understand the contribution of Kernberg. Kernberg opposes the tendency to completely separate the theory of internal drive from the theory of object relationship, and thinks that the theory of object relationship without internal drive cannot explain the serious personality disorder. He persistently tried to combine Freud's driving theory with the object relationship theory and put forward a complete object relationship model. He uses Freud's terminology, but thinks that the object precedes the internal drive and the ego is the center of the personality structure.

There is no differentiation of personality structure in life at first, and perception and memory are the primary resources. By means of perception and memory, babies internalize the relationship between objects and become the precursors of themselves. Until the Oedipus period, the repressed defense mechanism separated the ID from the self, and the ID began to exist, and the superego also appeared as an independent psychological structure.

That is to say, Kernberg believes that the ego is constructed and organized from the internalization of interpersonal relationships, and the ego precedes the id, which is contrary to Freud's view that the ego is differentiated from the id and the id precedes the ego. The change of Kernberg's view mainly emphasizes self-function and the object relationship established through self-function.

Social cultural school

Cultural neurosis theory

Honey is a pioneer of sociocultural school of psychoanalysis, and her research focuses on the pathology of neurosis. Honey believes that the root of neurosis should be found in social culture, and the difficulty in interpersonal communication caused by social and cultural contradictions is the decisive factor of neurosis, that is, the root of psychological problems lies in social environment, not biological instinct.

Basic anxiety is caused by insecurity, and neurotic needs are produced to alleviate anxiety. Neurotic needs determine neurotic personality: submissive, aggressive or withdrawn, trapping oneself in the conflict between real self, ideal self and real self.

In order to solve the inner conflict, three strategies have been developed: self-modesty, exaggeration and abandonment. Due to the compulsive use of one of them, they fall into new anxiety and conflict, leading to a vicious circle. Honey believes that neurosis is caused by interpersonal disorder, and the germination of neurotic behavior stems from early parent-child relationship. Childhood has two basic needs, namely, safety and satisfaction. Meeting these two needs of children depends entirely on parents. However, parents have two needs for their children: (1) to give their children real love and warmth to meet their safety needs; (2) Indifference, disgust and even hatred for children frustrate children's safety needs. In the former case, the child develops normally; In the latter case, it will cause neurosis.

So honey thinks that parents' attitude towards their children is an important factor to determine whether their children's personality is healthy or not. Honey believes that neurosis stems from the relationship between children and parents. If children really get the love of their parents and the warmth of their families, they will feel safe and their personality will develop normally. If he doesn't enjoy the care and love of his parents since he was a child, he will feel insecure and hostile to his parents, and this attitude will eventually spread to everything and people around him, and then turn into basic anxiety. A child with basic anxiety disorder can easily show neurosis in adulthood.

Self-development theory of interpersonal relationship

Harry stark sullivan (1892~ 1949) is a famous American psychiatrist and one of the main representatives of the socio-cultural school of psychoanalysis. His psychological theory is called interpersonal theory (or interpersonal theory).

He made two major contributions: ① he believed that schizophrenia was mainly caused by the disorder of interpersonal relationship in patients' childhood, which led to the division of experience organization; ② Put forward the concept of self-system, claiming that people are born with the need to pursue satisfaction and security, and gradually form a stable personality pattern in interpersonal relationships.

Sullivan pays special attention to the influence of interpersonal communication on personality, regards interpersonal relationship as the core concept of all his theories, and seeks the root of mental illness from interpersonal relationship. He is the founder of psychoanalytic interpersonal theory. He used the concept of interpersonal relationship to explain personality development and psychological abnormality, which made the focus of traditional psychoanalysis shift from individual to individual, from focusing on conflicts within individuals to focusing on communication between individuals, and the interaction between individuals and the environment (interpersonal situation), which impacted the development view of personality and self in traditional psychoanalysis, highlighted the central position of interpersonal relationship, and placed individual self and psychological development in the development of interpersonal relationship.

Therefore, he believes that individual psychology and behavior can only be explained and understood through interpersonal relationships.

Sullivan believes that the motive force of personality development is the interpersonal relationship between individuals and others, and personality is expressed through the interaction between people; Personality does not exist without the influence of other people in society. He put forward the concept of important others to show that people who affect personality development are not only people in real life, but also people in memory, imagination, literature or idealization.

Sullivan believes that the formation and development of personality originates from the individual's physical and psychological tension, which is caused by physical needs (the need for food, air, water and sex) and social insecurity (mainly interpersonal anxiety). In order to meet their own physiological needs and gain a sense of security, babies must establish the initial interpersonal relationship with their mothers. He especially emphasized the relationship between mother and baby, and believed that the satisfaction of baby's physiological needs and the acquisition of sense of security depended on mother's behavior and attitude, and baby was very sensitive to mother's behavior and attitude.

If the mother is rude when meeting the baby's needs, or shows nervousness, anger and unhappiness, then the baby will feel these emotions and feel anxious and insecure. Anxiety affects the satisfaction of their physiological needs and the normal relationship between mother and baby, but babies can't avoid it or get rid of it. This kind of anxiety will spread further in the future growth of children, affecting the normal interpersonal relationship and personality development of individuals. In Sullivan's view, the satisfaction of physiological needs is the basis of personality development, and the demand for a more complicated sense of security is an important driving force for personality development.

1. Theoretical characteristics

1. 1 emphasizes self-autonomy and its integration and adjustment function.

Classical psychoanalysis attaches importance to the role of innate self, while new psychoanalysis emphasizes the value of acquired self.

1.2 emphasizes the great influence of cultural and social factors on personality.

Classical psychoanalysis insists on instinct theory and universality theory, which is the concentrated expression of its biochemical tendency of anti-social factors. Adler, the pioneer of new psychoanalysis, has clearly affirmed that "the logic of social life" determines the development of human psychology, and advocates finding the root of human behavior motivation from the social environment.

1.3 emphasizes the cultivation of self-esteem and optimism about the future.

Classical psychoanalysis advocates the theory of evil nature, holds that people's subconscious is full of ulterior evil sexual desires, adheres to the pessimistic attitude of innate biological determinism, and holds that people are destined to be victims of their own sexual desires and instincts, which is the root of life tragedy.

Neo-psychoanalysis holds that human development is flexible, and believes that people have the ability to overcome impulses and setbacks and constantly develop in a positive direction.

1.4 emphasizes the observation and study of children's early experiences.

Classical psychoanalysis attaches great importance to patients' free association and memory of childhood, while new psychoanalysis focuses on directly studying children's development process through observation and experimental examination.

2. Important contributions

2. 1 pushes the pioneering research of subconscious theory to a new milestone.

2.2 Expanded new theoretical fields and strengthened the connection of related disciplines.

2.3 Enriched the connotation of modern medical model and developed the theory and method of central psychiatry.

3. Main defects

3. 1 is not divorced from the theoretical subject of psychoanalysis.

3.2 Utopia conception of the future society

3.3 Theoretical throwing is mysterious.

Tonight's question discussion:

Is personality natural or acquired?