Social | Psychoanalytic | Work

In this lecture, I talk about Pleasure & Instinct v. Enjoyment & Drive, the shift from the topographical model of the unconscious, pre-conscious, conscious to the structural model of id, ego, and superego. I also do a short bit on the economic model of the mind.

Review
1. The unconscious is a part of you with a mind of its own.
2. Traumatic stuff can’t be erased, but it can be defensively put into the unconscious, this is called **repression**.
3. When **repression** happened the traumatic thing is still present, but as sort of a ghost haunting us.
4. One of the things that can be traumatic is desire.
5. Our ghost traumas often lead us to do things that don’t make sense.
6. **Drive objects**, which I spoke about in lecture number 3, are one thing that does not make sense.
7. **Transference**, which I spoke about in lecture number 4, is another thing that does not make sense.

Today

In today’s lecture, I am going to be talking about two things.

1. The difference between the terms pleasure and enjoyment (or satisfaction), and how these terms relate to instincts and drives. As I do this I’ll build more on top of what I said about the drive(s) in a prior podcast lecture.
2. Secondly, I’ll describe a shift in Freud’s thinking from the topographical model of the mind which is made up of the conscious, pre-conscious, unconscious, to the structural model of the mind which is made up of the id, the ego, and the superego.

Let’s get started.

Pleasure / Instincts v. Enjoyment / Drive
To start with I want to try to make something clear, but to do this I’ll need to tell you some psychoanalytic history involving a mistake in translation from German to English.

- When Freud wrote he used both **instinct** (Instinct) and **drive** (Trieb).
- Instincts are things our body does naturally, without being taught.
- Instincts help our body stay alive.
- When we do what instinct tells us to we get pleasure.
- EX: Nap, stretch, laugh,
- Both human beings and animals have instincts.
- Instincts are about getting our needs met. 

Now here is the odd thing… If you can try to imagine a lie where you have only what you need, but nothing more than that.

That does not sound like a great life, eh? This is where drives come in.

- Drives are kind of like instincts gone off the rails.
- A drive demands that we get **more** than we need, it demands that we get something the brings enjoyment.
- Drives are excessive, they are aimed at things (or experiences) in excess of what we need, they are the surplus, the extra stuff we don’t need but we like having.
- And, because they are excessive, the things that our drives are going after are the things that are “off-limits.”

The original translator decided to make instinct and drive into the word instinct. Why this choice was made, I have no idea… but it was. And as a result, the English-speaking world has consistently been moving away from Freud’s ideas of the drive.

This brings me to the next stuff we will be covering in the class.

Topographical v. Structural
In this section of the podcast lecture, I want to talk about the two main models of the mind that Freud articulated.

Early work (Freud’s demo tape)
1887 - 1896 (Fleiss, studies in hysteria) The Seduction Model

Topographical:
1897 - 1920 (studies in hysteria, the psychopathology of everyday life, the dream book, beyond the pleasure principle)
- The iceberg metaphor
- The room, hallway, rest of the house metaphor
- Example: ask people to remember their first day of kindergarten. Talk about how this is taking something from the preconscious and bring it into the conscious.
- Example: something that is unconscious is that something you can tell me about. I can ask you about it, but you won’t be able to tell me. Example asking in person why they have come to therapy. They can tell you a reason, but usually, the real reason is repressed and therefore unconscious.

Structural:
1921 - 1939 (_Group Psychology & the analysis of the Ego_ & _The Ego & the Id_)
- This is the id, ego, superego.
- Though Freud never used those terms. (Again this was the original translator’s choice).
- the id is a part of us outside of our social identity, it is a wild thing…. Outside of all the ways we normally see ourselves and others. It has no concern for social constructs. It is more concerned with if you are a friend or foe if you’re going to help or hinder it in its desire to get whatever it is driven to want.
- The ego is the “I” as in “I think psychoanalysis is cool.” It is our identity, the part of us that is concerned with being consistent, whole, complete.
- The superego is **not your conscious**, not the little angel on your shoulder! It is your internalized authority figure, the part of you that judges things to be right or wrong, ethical or unethical, good or bad, etc.
- What makes this different than the angle on your shoulder?
- The superego is a jerk, it is a demanding, judgmental, jerk. No one wants to hang out with your superego!

The Economic Model
One thing that fits into the structural model well is this other idea called the economic model of the mind. This model works kinda like this.
- Our mind is a system, and in that system, there is a finite (not a limitless) amount of energy.
- No sometimes we are doing things that pull (withdraw) energy from that system, and sometimes we are doing things that deposit energy into the system.
- One of the things that are taking energy is “not freaking out,” or “holding myself (my ego) together).”
- Most of the time that is easy, but it is not easy. 
- When the ego lacks energy the things the ego is trying to contain come out. 
- the id
- drives
- emotions
- This leads to moments where “I don’t know what came over me’” (The id is what came over you!). 

Review: 

1. Psychoanalysis is more interested in things (behaviors, patterns, desires, etc.) that don't work and less interested in things that do. Things like the unconscious, the return of the repressed, and drive objects.  
2. The Unconscious is a part of you that has a mind of its own. 
3. That mind is comprised of repressed desires, memories, affects (emotions), and other traumatic things. 
4. When something is repressed, we are not aware of it, we don't know it is there, but it keeps on popping up in our lives (this is what Freud called the "return of the repressed"), kind of like a ghost that haunts us. 
5. A name for a person with an unconscious is a subject. 
6. Psychoanalysis can be described as the examination of / study of the relationship between a subject and their (drive) object. 
7. We go after a drive object, but no matter how much of it we get, we want more. Drive objects are also excessive and transgressive. 
8. Our desire for our drive object is one of those desires that is usually repressed. 

Transference | What it is not: 

Ok, with all that review out of the way, we will look at another thing that pops up in the lives of subjects. It is a word I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts you've heard before: Transference. 

However, even though you've heard this word before, I'm going to assume that you might not have heard it described in the psychoanalytic sense of the term. 

In the past, when I've taught about transference, I've asked students,

• How would you define transference?
• In your own words, tell me what transference is. 
• Can anyone give me an example of transference? 

And every time I did this, people students said something like: Transference is when someone reminds you of someone else.   

While this may be how the word gets used by lots of people nowadays, that use of the term is (in my opinion) incorrect! It's wrong! And what I want to do now is tell you what the term transference means when someone who is a psychoanalyst (or someone who is well versed in psychoanalytic theory) uses the term. 

Transference | What it is:

• Transference is an unconscious process. This means when someone is transferring, they don't know they're doing it! 
• When we transfer, we are (unconsciously!) bringing something fairly specific from one relationship to another. 
• The thing that is being (unconsciously!) transferred is a power dynamic. Specifically, we are turning someone into a parent. 

a) Into someone who knows what we want them to know. 

b) Into someone who can give us what we need/want if we only convince them.  

c) Into someone who we need to approve of us, what we are doing, and why we are doing it. 

d) Or into someone who we need to hide what we are doing from because we fear their disapproval. 

The opening paragraphs of the chapter for this week speaks to how much we (and by "we" I mean social workers and others who work in mental health) like things that make sense, we enjoy being able to explain stuff. For this reason, we are, by and large, drawn to theories and systems that help us in our attempts to "make sense" out of stuff. 

Even the term "make sense" is revealing: We make sense, which is to say that we produce sense, we create sense. 

Sense being synonymous with an explanation or understanding of what we encounter or experience. 

Another way to say this is that people generally get a kick out of solving mysteries and making having ah-ha moments where all of a sudden we can put things together in ways that make things that did not make sense start to make sense. It feels good when something goes from being something outside of our understanding to something that fits into our understanding. 

What I just read from Inside Out & Outside In makes clear is how, today, right now, so much of the work social workers, and other people involved in mental health, do is aimed at using the scientific method (i.e., empirical research, statistics, psychological experiments, etc.) to help us produce this thing we call Data. Data that we then use to produce plans, measurable outcomes, to make what are often called “data-driven decisions.”

And when it works the scientific methods is awesome. Making data-driven decisions is a great idea. Except when it's not --when we encounter things that don't make sense, the flukes, the things that don't follow the rules and trends the data suggests they will. 

Psychoanalysis tends to focus on the things we can’t explain because they don’t make sense. The outliers refute what the data should happen. The things people do that don’t make sense, the thing that people feel that don’t make sense, the things that people believe that don’t make sense.

These things that don’t make sense, are often unhealthy, illogical, and perhaps even crazy; they are are the things that freak us out a lot.

I think that there are lots of mental health theories and practices that will look away from these enigmatic irrational nonsensical things and look towards the things that people do that do make sense, that are healthy, that we can be proud of. (The whole strength-based   perspective, which is so prevalent in social work, is an example of this tendency to privilege healthy things and to shy away from the more problematic things in our lives and the lives of our patients.)

What I’m going to ask you to do is to bear with me while I tell you some things about something that does not make sense, yet is present in all of our lives: the drive.

The Drive: 

Some people have described psychoanalysis as a way of examining or studying the relationship between the subject (a person with an unconscious) and their object.

When I first heard this, I thought to myself, what is "their object"? That seems like kind of a vague term. Now, several years later, I've got a pretty good handle on what this might mean, and I'm going to explain it to you. 

The term object is very flexible. It can mean actual things (like a car, a computer, a piece of jewelry, etc.), but the ways psychoanalysts use the word it can also mean things that are more complex (time, money, power, control, etc.). An object can be an experience that someone wants (sex, adventure, winning, etc.). 

There are some objects we want, and we can get them. Earlier today I wanted a donut and I went and got three donuts. 

But there are some objects that we can't get, or we can't get enough of them. These objects are called "drive objects". When it comes to drive objects, we are sort of like zombies. We just keep going after that object. No matter how much of that object we may get, we will just want more. 

Also, generally speaking, things that are drive objects are things that we don't NEED, but we ENJOY, and they are things that represent a transgression. By "transgression" I mean that having them is something that some people would call "bad" or "inappropriate." 

I'll use money as an example: I've known some people who wanted to make lots of money, and they did. They made all sorts of money. They bought a house, a nice car, other expensive things. Then they invested their money, and their investments turned their money into more money. And the thing is, no matter how much money they made, they wanted more and more money. For some of them the more money, they had the more stingy they got.  

Another thing I've seen function as a drive object for lots of people (lots of social workers!) is validation. People want to be validated, told they are on the right track, told they are doing the right thing. However, even when they get the validation they are not satisfied! Give it just a little bit of time and they want more validation. 

This brings me to the next point I want to make about drive objects. When we go after them, regardless of whether we get them or don't, our pursuit of these objects is usually a problematic aspect of our lives. 

One of the things that psychoanalysis might try to help someone with is altering their relationship to a drive object. Notice I said, "alter their relationship to a drive object," I did not say, "get rid of their relationship to a drive object." This is because, and you might not agree with this, according to psychoanalytic theory, we will always have some kind of drive object in our lives. 

To close this podcast lecture I'm going to make a request: Can you all please try to think of someone (it can be yourself if you're comfortable doing that) who has a drive object? Come to class being able to describe the person and their drive object.

Content: 

• Review -- The unconscious is a part of you with a mind & desires of its own.
• Sometimes what the unconscious desires/plans is not what you consciously desire/plan. 
• The unconscious is like a ghost haunting our day-to-day lives. 
• The unconscious ghost (desire) is trying to tell us something, if we hear what it has to say it will stop haunting us. 
• Repression is a reaction to trauma. 
• Repression always starts as a solution to a problem, then later on it becomes a problem when it returns. 
• Repression keeps happening until we contend with what is being repressed. 

Different kinds of theories & the unconscious

Hi,

Welcome to The Introductory Podcast Lectures on Psychodynamic Praxis, produced in association with the Aurora University school of social work. I’m you’re host Neil Gorman.

Let’s get started:

In this podcast lecture, I want to do two things.

First, I want to describe different kinds of theories and tell you what sort of theory I think psychodynamic theory falls into.

And second, I want to dive into the most fundamental concept of psychodynamic theory —the unconscious.

Let’s get started with a metaphor: Theories as Buildings. 

Let’s say that a theory it’s like a building. Some theories are pretty simple buildings, with only a few concepts (rooms). I’d say the behaviorism of B.F. Skinner is an example of what I would call a simple theory, ambiguous loss of Pauline Boss another example. (If you don’t already know about those theories, you could Google them or look them up on Wikipedia, and you’d get a good idea of what I’m calling simplistic theories.)

Simplistic theories & suburban houses.

Exploring a simple theory is easy. It’s kind of like when your friend buys a new house and then has a housewarming party.

You come over, they say, “Let me give you the tour.” Then you and the new homeowner walks you through the house, you see all the rooms, they point out cool features of the house and talk about what they plan to change. The whole thing takes like 10, maybe 15 min. Then you’re done. You’ve seen the house and can wander around it without getting lost.

At this point, I want to make something clear — Simple theories can be useful and helpful. They are not “bad theories”; they are just simple, they don’t require us to invest a lot of time and energy to really understand them.

There are lots of people who really like these simple theories because they are simple. I’ve found people who do enjoy simple theories will often describe the theory as something that is “practical” or “pragmatic.”

(As a quick side note: These kinds of simple and practical theories are the most prevalent and popular here in the United States.)

Complex theories & castles: 

The next point I want to make is probably obvious: In addition to simple theories, there are also complex theories.

Continuing with the theory as buildings metaphor:

Complex theories are like strange old castles with many concepts coming together to create these elaborate kinds of baffling construction. (If you want a good example of this sort of theory, think of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter books.)

Exploring one of these complex theories takes time and energy. You enter in through the front door, start moving through the rooms and hallways, and fairly soon, you find yourself kind of lost, unsure of where you are or how you got there. But, even though you’re lost, you’re discovering this bizarre, unexpected stuff.

While some people (people who prefer to know where they are going and how they will get there) prefer simple theories, I find them a little boring. I prefer complex theories, but I can get lost in them. I get a thrill from coming across sorts of strange things that lurk in the grand castles of complex theories.

(Remember how earlier I referenced Hogwarts from Harry Potter? For those of you who like that, here’s another nerdy pop-culture reference for you: Some theories are like typical suburban homes, others --the more complex ones– are more like Doctor Who’s TARDIS.)

Now, in case this isn’t obvious, I’ll just come out and say it. I think that psychodynamic theory is, in my opinion, a complex theory. I entered more than a decade ago, and I’m still exploring it.

As I said earlier, the point of this podcast lecture is to describe one of the fundamental concepts of psychodynamic theory --the unconscious. 

Sticking with my metaphor, I think of the unconscious as the grand hall that the rest of psychodynamic theory is built around. Another way you could think of it is to imagine the unconscious as the primary load-bearing wall at the center of the structure. If this load-bearing wall came down, the rest of the structure would implode as well. If you don't buy into the idea of the unconscious, I'd argue that you won't buy into psychodynamic theory, period. I'd also say that if you don't have a good enough understanding of the unconscious, you won't understand the other important concepts in psychodynamic theory. 

⌬

The Unconscious 

So let’s start examining the unconscious.

It has been described in lots of different ways. But I find the most useful way to describe the unconscious is

The part of you that has a mind of its own. To elaborate on this, I would say the unconscious is a part of you that desires (or wants) things, but you don’t consciously know what these desires are. Sometimes your unconscious desires line up with your conscious desires, but they certainly don’t always.

To further illustrate what the unconscious is, and let’s consider the following example.

According to psychodynamic theory, unconscious desires (or repressed desires, which I'll talk about in a future lecture) show up in different things that we say or do, that we don’t expect, and that don’t make sense to us.

When these desires pop up in our speech and actions, they surprise us because —as I just said— what the unconscious says is often at odds with what we are consciously trying to accomplish.

The term “self-sabotage” has become a common way people refer to how the unconscious inserts itself into our day-to-day lives. I think this term is really helpful because the “self” in self-sabotage could also be called our conscious plans, and the “sabotage” (or the saboteur) of those plans is a good stand-in for the unconscious. When the unconscious does sabotage our conscious plans, we are surprised and confused.

If you’ve ever said or done something that you think is embarrassing when you were trying to be impressive, you’ve experienced this. When something like that happens, we think, why did I just say that?!

Another example would be when we tell ourselves something like, “I’m going to lose weight, so no more junk food! I mean it! I’m serious! Junk food is dead to me!” And then it's someone's birthday at work, so there is cake in the break room, and even though we conscious were just like “No more junk food for me!” We end up eating a small piece of cake, then we have another, then when people are like “please take some cake home,” we have some more… so on and so forth.

Ok, so now that we have a description, we can use it as a starting point for what the unconscious is and how it works. Let’s go further and talk about how people try to deal with their unconscious.

Most people are engaged in a sort of battle with their unconscious, a battle where they try to force it to comply with a sort of logic or rationale, with something that ”makes sense.”

Another way to describe the unconscious and the battle that many people I walked in with it would be to say that the unconscious it’s a wild part of us (again, a part of us that doesn’t make sense) that we are consistently trying to tame in domesticate (trying to make it make sense). But it keeps eluding our efforts.