Psychoanalysis and Psychopharmacology.
This paper shall examine the fields of psychoanalysis and psychopharmacology in respect to the topic of whether or not these two can integrate and cooperate in the treatment of a patient. The paper will show evidence that medication can have detrimental effects on the analysis of the patient by strengthening defense mechanisms and by providing a ephemeral relief of the patient's symptoms. First of all, the paper will briefly introduce and give a little bit of information on both fields.
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Psychoanalysis is the name applied a specific method of investigating unconscious mental processes as well as to a form of psychotherapy. Sigmund Freud developed the technique of psychoanalysis and most of its theories. His theories were based around the unconscious. He proposed that unconscious psychiatric processes were present in the human mind and followed laws different from those that govern conscious experience. .
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In therapy, Freud would analyze his patient using hypnosis. He wouldn't use hypnosis for suggestion; instead he would use it to uncover painful and forgotten memories in his neurotic patients. Freud believed that during the course of a person's development unacceptable sexual and aggressive drives are forced out of consciousness. These repressed urges, constantly striving for release, are sometimes expressed as neurotic symptoms. This is especially the case when the ego is underdeveloped because of being trapped in its earlier conflicts, called fixations or complexes, and when it constantly resorts to regression; the greater the pressure is to succumb to these pressures. If it is unable to function normally, it can maintain its limited control and integrity by forming symptoms; these tensions are expressed in the aforementioned neurotic symptoms. Therefore, symptom formation, character and impulse, perversions, and sublimations, are all attempts by the ego to fix the conflicts in the mind.