[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Psychodynamic
As Freud revealed, and as contemporary psychoanalysis now sees with ever-greater clarity, neurosis is the result of a fantasized battle that takes place in each person, outside of consciousness. It occurs in a realm of mind that is something like a virtual reality in which illusory versions of ourselves seek to win over, escape and overpower an illusory version of the primary caretakers of childhood. Unfortunately, as part of neurosis, we mistake the unconscious fantasies that rage in this virtual realm for something real and we project those fantasies onto the world, unconsciously setting up our lives so they resemble the drama inside us. More specifically, we set up our lives so they will be full of limitations, thus keeping ourselves contained within a narrow realm.
What Freud and psychoanalysis never fully appreciated is that we do this, to a significant degree, because the state of being healthy and whole is itself experienced as a mortal danger. People flee from wholeness and health into neurosis and they monitor themselves, once again largely outside of awareness, to make sure they won't stray too far beyond the bounds of neurosis into the dangerous world of psychological health (Freud, 1977).
This may well be the most essential insight of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory. It may also be the essential dilemma of human existence, since how far we can allow ourselves to go into wholeness and health will determine the kind of life we live and the kind of people we become.
Freud’s theory is split into two parts, the theory of the mind and the instincts. The theory of the mind consists of the conscious and the unconscious. The instincts are the life instinct and the death instinct.
In the unconscious is the ID where the instincts reside and it is concerned with self-gratification..................
