PSYCHOANALYSIS

* HUMAN BEING endowed with a psychological history of their own that begins in childhood experiences in the family patterns of adolescent and adult behavior are the direct results thereof

* The goal of psychoanalysis: to help resolve our psychological problems, often referred to as DISORDERS or DYSFUNCTIONS

* the UNCONSCIOUS has a large control over us as we mostly do not know about our problems/disorders/dysfunctions

thus:

human beings are motivated, even driven, by DESIRES/FEARS/NEEDS/CONFLICTS which they are not aware of

* the UNCONSCIOUS a storehouse of painful experiences/emotions/wounds/fears/guilty desires/unresolved conflicts

it comes into being when we are very young by means of REPRESSION, i.e. the expunging from consciousness, of those unhappy events
FAMILY is responsible for the “birth” of the UNCONSCIOUS it defines the way we perceive our place in it and how we react to this self-definition

* the OEDIPAL COMPLEX competition with the parent of the same sex for the attention and affection of the other parent * the SIBLING RIVALRY competition with siblings for the attention and affection of parents * the PENIS ENVY * the FEAR OF CASTRATION

Defences processes that keep the contents of our unconscious in the unconscious:

* SELECTIVE PERCEPTION (seeing and hearing only what we feel we can handle) * SELECTIVE MEMORY (modifying memories or forgetting painful events entirely) * DENIAL (believing that the problem doesn’t exist or that something unpleasant has never happened) * AVOIDANCE (staying away from people/situations that are liable to raise our anxiety by stirring up some unconscious/repressed experience or emotion) * DISPLACEMENT (taking it out on somebody/something less threatening than who/what caused our fear/hurt/frustration/anger) * PROJECTION