What did Freud himself claim psychoanalysis is? Does anyone think his claims about psychoanalysis were not simply essentially correct but, perhaps as pseudo-science, irrefutable?
I am confused what psychoanalysis is, and I want to start with its origin.
The God of Moses
Moses asks, What is your name? The voice answers, I Am What Is!
Sigmund Freud describes himself as a godless Jew. But he must have studied patterns of drama in both Jewish and Christian scripture. Because he rejected the religion of this fathers he used terms from Greek mythology to draw his dramatic conclusions. But the superego structure for the psyche is woven into and most evident (to me) in the Jewish and Christian narratives and in the biography of Saint Paul.
Structural Model of The Psyche
According to Freud the ego is the conscious part of the biological organism which makes efforts to govern action in the sensory context. If the ego learns to speak English it says, "I Am". Ego is Latin for "I".
Freud argues that the newborn ego is conscious yet lacks knowledge of what exists apart from or distinct from the ego. Freud is an atheist. So, he refers to what exists as the It. The ego recognizes two attributes of the It. These are the biological id and external reality. The id is a source of biological inner drives. The id and reality are two sources of cause that are not in control of the ego. In English the id and reality map to What Is.
Freud argues that the newborn human ego is helpless. The ego needs to exist in relationship to superior external ego in the form of parents, adults, and even social institutions. External reality provides models of ego expression for the maturing ego to idealize, imitate, or deviate. When the ego incorporates attributes of the parents, adults, and social institutions into itself this forms the superego domain of the ego.
The structural model of the psyche consists of the ego, the id, and the superego. The superego consists of the observer, ego ideal, and conscience.
Topographical Model of The Psyche
Freud argues that the biological id is forever unconscious to the ego. The ego only becomes conscious of id-generated biological impulses. These are impulses to act in some way in the context of reality and biological drives. The ego must inhibit the impulse or would be compelled to act on the impulse. Impulses to act arrive from an unconscious biological source called the id.
Reality is also unconscious to the ego until perceptions of an external source of cause arise and become conscious to the ego. The ego is a conscious explorer of unconscious reality. Freud's ego is like the blind man in the parable who touches only one part of the elephant (local reality) to generate and possess conscious knowledge.
Freud argues that the ego itself and the ego-superego memory complex, the memory of interactions between the ego and external sources of human authority, must be substantially unconscious. The ego is thus a mix of conscious efforts to govern action and unconscious memories of such efforts. The unconscious memories include interactions with superior authorities or what Freud calls the superego domain of the psyche.
The Ethical Evaluation of Ego Pathology
Biological systems have attributes that humans recognize as vital structures and functions. Medical pathology is the general term for injury or harm that impairs a vital biological structure, organ, or its function. Thomas Szasz, in The Myth of Mental Illness, argues that medical pathology consists in the recognition of physical signs, physical symptoms, and empirical tests for the presence or absence of a pattern of medical injury or disease. He argues that in the analysis of mental pathology or ego pathology there are only patterns of behavior and interpretations of what these patterns mean. Szasz argues that the interpretation of behavior patterns has more in common with passing judgment in religion or law than it does with making a proper medical diagnosis.
Szasz argues that a suffering person might be experiencing a medical problem, a social justice problem, or a problem in living. The medical doctor attempts to diagnose and remedy medical problems. The social workers and justice system try to diagnose and remedy justice problems. And the psychoanalyst or talk therapist try to help people with their other problems in living.
Freud could not identify ego pathology except to argue for the ethical characteristics of a healthy ego (to develop his ethical philosophy based on his models of ego biology) and to observe the suffering of persons who seem to possess an ineffective ego that is unable to act in a manner that ends their suffering.
Freud thought if the cause of suffering was not conscious to the ego of the suffering person, and often a suffering person cannot identify and eliminate the exact cause, then it must be an unconscious conflict in the ego-superego memories of the suffering person. The person could become conscious of these repressed or latent conflicts by talking to the psychoanalyst. After resolving these conflicts the ego would be more effective, the person would suffer less and cause less suffering to others, and this is the essence of the talking cure. The talking cure, if it exists, is the analysis and resolution of conflict in the context of drama. The patterns of conflict in drama have been described as the self against the self, the self against others, and the self against nature. Literature also depicts the self against God or gods.
