Psychoanalysis is a method of studying the human psyche, the basis and source of all kinds of modern psychotherapy,the most in-depth method of working with a human being. It is an opportunity to see, explore and transform the individual psyche of the subject, as well as the method of cognition and research of mass processes taking place in society.
Today it is impossible to imagine the human science without psychoanalytic discoveries. In the modern world it is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge, therefore psychoanalytic research is applied in various fields of human activity.
The long-known truth “in order to know the other, you should know yourself” has defined psychoanalysis as a practice of self-knowledge.
Sigmund Freud’s discovery is that our basic psychic life goes beyond consciousness. It comes out of the depths of the unconscious by way of various manifestations: dreams, symptoms, anxiety, fear, depression, insomnia, dissatisfaction, repetitive life situations.
Psychoanalytic self-knowledge is the discovery of what is hidden in the depths, in the unknown unconscious.
Contemporary trends in human science and in the field of medicine tend to objectify a human being, treating him/her as a set of behavioral reactions, neurons, secretion of chemicals, and a brain-machine.
Psychoanalysis takes a different line. It is a search for the truth of the subject, but not an attempt to objectify this truth by imposing it on the subject. The uniqueness of psychoanalysis consists in upholding such a position.
Since its inception, psychoanalysis has been organized by key issues around which human life revolves. In the process of growing up, in the course of formation and development, during different age-related periods, and also when changing life circumstances, we have to answer these basic questions:
• Who am I?
• What should I do with my life?
• Why me?
• Where do I come from?
• Who is a man?
• What does it mean to be a woman?
• What is death?
These questions have no one universal answer. On the one hand, everyone’s life is the search for answers to these questions. On the other hand, these questions with inaccurate answers cause the subject to suffer.
Everyone’s subjectivity is formed by experiences, impressions, events accumulated since childhood, and emotional memory of them. Everyone’s subjectivity is unique and inimitable.
Psychoanalysis is the basis and foundation of modern psychology, one of its parts, the source of all modern kinds of psychotherapy. It is impossible to imagine modern psychiatry without the discoveries of psychoanalysis, despite the fact that psychiatry is a field of medicine. In many circumstances, these branches consider a human being as an object of impact.
Psychoanalysis considers a human being as a subject. Psychoanalysis raises questions about the subject’s being and poses them precisely in the subjective perspective.
Psychoanalysis is the practice of questioning.
Psychoanalysis was born at the crossroads of cultures in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, inhabited by different peoples, professing different religions: Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Judaism, Lutheranism and Islam. Along with the official German and Hungarian languages, the inhabitants of this country also spoke many other languages.
The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in Western countries was marked by a kind of revolution in religious, philosophical and scientific ideas about man. Sigmund Freud made this "fluid element of the soul" the subject of therapeutic practice and research, which gave rise to a new developing system of knowledge - psychoanalysis. His merit, first of all, is that he gave the Unconscious a scientific status, thereby making, according to the recognition of his contemporaries, a "Copernican revolution in science", inflicting another "narcissistic blow" on humanity. The founder of psychoanalysis put forward the idea that "our own self is not the master of its own house." In other words, human actions and all life are determined to a greater extent by the unconscious, the irrational, rather than the conscious and rational. Freud considered the Unconscious a universal phenomenon of the human psyche, built as a complex multi-level system. He gave the Unconscious the status of an independent scientific subject against the background of the medical, physiological, and psychological approaches that dominated at the turn of the century, highlighting the anthropological dimensions of the idea of the Unconscious and linking the semantic aspects of the Unconscious with what is typical, repetitive, and accessible to causal explanations. Thus, today you and I have the opportunity to “read” the unconscious with the help of psychoanalysis, or, in other words, to translate unconscious contents into the language of consciousness, using the psychoanalytic method.
In the historical perspective, the ideas about child and childhood are transformed over time in accordance with ideals and social attitudes. The turning point in the development of ideas about child was Freud’s discovery. He has laid the foundations for the concept of the subject of the unconscious, established the link between the unconscious, sexuality and a child. Freud designated childhood as a fundamental period in the subject’s history. In addition, Freud just started talking about child as a sexual subject, and also raised the issue of sexuality not in the sense of sexual relations, but of sexuality in the context of the subject’s body interacting with the desire and enjoyment of the Other.
As we embark on the study of any discipline, we are trying to clarify the subject matter that this science explores and the object of study. As applied to child psychoanalysis, we are faced with the questions: what kind of discipline is this? Is this a separate line? How does child psychoanalysis relate to psychoanalysis generally? If we are talking about clinical psychoanalytic practice, who are we dealing with? Who are we examining?
The focus of psychoanalysis is always the subject of the unconscious. We refer to the child in the context of clinical status. Childhood has always been perceived in terms of the fact that the child is not responsible for his words, acts and actions, because the child is small, he is dependent, he is a weak creature. In the psychoanalytic office we approach the young analysand as a subject: then we assume that the child has his knowledge about himself, he is responsible for his words and actions, and he can work in order to contribute to his own development and progress in relationships.
Analytical experience shows that a child can work in analysis, produce and revise analytical material. And this concept is different from approaches to the child in a society where subjectivity is rejected. Social perceptions of the child contradict analytic discourse. Psychoanalysis demystified ideas about child sexuality and aggressiveness, and this is something that is difficult to accept for both parents and society. That’s why the work of a child psychoanalyst is so complicated. Psychoanalytic treatment and structure’s psychopathologies research presented the world with new knowledge that is unknown and is used neither in psychiatry, nor in pediatrics, nor other child-related fields.