Basic Concepts of Using Psychoanalytic Approach

People will never know about their personal problems since people’s mind tend to repress their most distressing experiences. However, all human being has psychological problems caused by some harmful emotional experiences they experience while growing up. Family as the most important source of people’s early emotional experiences plays a crucial roles in shaping their repressed minds, despite how perfect the families are. The sign of emotional problem that occurs as the result of a repressed experience is the repetition of self-destructive behaviour. b. The repressed feelings are “buried in our unconscious through the use of defences” Bressler, 1999:86. There are some common defences that come up from the repressed experiences: i. Denial Denial is when people deny by believing that an emotionally painful situation does not exist or never occurred. ii. Avoidance Avoidance is when people stay away from anything that could lead them to the painful memory. c. Core issue that comes up from the powerful buried experiences. If the experience buried in the unconscious is powerful enough, it becomes a core issue core issu e is a fundamental part of people’s personalities that determines many of their feelings and a good deal of behaviour. Bressler also mentions that there are four core issues that generally occur in human’s life: PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI i. Low self-esteem the unwarranted belief that we are less worthy than other human beings and, therefore, do not deserve attention, love, or any other form of life’s rewards. ii. Insecurity unable to sustain a feeling of personal identity. iii. Fear of abandonment the unwarranted nagging belief that our friends and loved ones are going to desert us physical abandonment or do not really care about us emotional abandonment. iv. Fear of intimacy unwarranted but unshakeable and overpowering feeling that emotional closeness will seriously damage or destroy us and that we must, therefore, protect ourselves by remaining at an emotional distance from others. d. Core issues will result on certain “self-destructive behaviours and may show up in the recurrence of disturbing dreams” Bressler, 1999:86 The manifestation of core issue is a certain destructive behaviour such as “choosing unhealthy friends or romantic partners, displaying inappropriate social behaviour for example, habitually dominating conversations or throwing temper tantrums in response to disagreements, engaging in unwarranted violent behaviour, engaging in substance abuse, and the like. The recurrence of a disturbing dream might also be a clue to the existence of an unconscious problem, as might a tendency to behave in defensive manner w hen certain topics come up in a conversation” Bressler, 1999:83.

3. Theory of Defense Mechanism

When facing the conflict, an individual might encounter unpleasant feelings, such as fear, disappointment, relentless and high tension; these feelings can drag him or her into intense frustration. Psychoanalytically, the unpleasant PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI feelings which are the result of conflict are called anxiety. Since being anxious is uncomfortable and disturbing, people tend to find a way to get rid of it. The way to cope the anxiety as the respond of the conflict is called defense mechanism Braun and Linder, 1979: 410. As the basic nature of human being, they defend themselves when the conflict seems offensive to them. In addition, defense mechanism has a significant role in en shapingone’s personality. For that reason, defense mechanism is considered to be one of the fundamental element of psychoanalytic theory. Moreover, John Janeway Conger proposes that unconscious thoughts, feelings or impulses that one cannot admit contribute in revealing one’s defense mechanism Conger, 1977: 79. In fact, there are numerous types of defense mechanism. However, not all of them are explained here. There are five types of defense mechanism provided in this part. According to Psychology in Action , there are some types of Freudian defense mechanisms Huffman and Vernoy, 2000: 480. All of them are combined and developed by modern experts. The compilation of the type of defense mechanism is elaborated below: a. Repression Repression happens when an individual tries to protects himself from painful or dangerous thoughts, such as anxiety provoking, disturbing, unacceptable thoughts or feelings by avoiding them entering consciousness Huffman and Vernoy, 2000: 480. It is the most common and basic defense mechanism that people often operate Huffman and Vernoy, 2000: 478. Often, it is employed unconsciously since it may result in the reduction of pain and