Interpreting & Treating OCD, Phobias, Sex Addiction
The psychodynamic view of phobias, OCD and sex addiction stems from fundamental concepts: (1) psychological conflict and (2) unconscious mental processes or object has symbolic significance; it can be regarded as a stand-in for something else that one is frightened of, something that is completely beyond one's awareness. It represents an unresolved psychological conflict, a holdover from childhood.
For example, a child who reaches school age at
the same time that her brother is born might be very
angry at her mother for sending her to school. She
might feel that her mother is getting rid of her so that
she can be alone with the new baby all day. On the way
to school each day the little girl passes a house where a
vicious German shepherd is chained up. The dog becomes
associated with her fantasy about her mother's
real reason for sending her to school. The girl manages
to get through her childhood all right, but in her twenties
she develops a phobia about dogs after her mother
has a strong disapproval of her future husband.
Obsessive thoughts and compulsive rituals may direct
attention away from significant, distressing, unconscious
thoughts.
Psychoanalysts believe that these thoughts often involve
aggression and rage that may have first been aroused
in the battle for autonomy between the growing child
and the mother. When the mother is especially demanding
and has unreasonably high expectations about when
the child should meet certain developmental challenges
(such as toilet training), the child may be forced to bottle up his or her
anger. This unacceptable anger expresses itself deviously
later in life.
Freud emphasized the roles of several defense schemes
in the development of obsessive-compulsive
disorders. These include isolation, undoing, and reaction
formation. Through isolation, emotions are symptoms of a
thought that then becomes obsessive or compulsive.
However, the emotion is not completely barred from
consciousness and constantly threatens to break through
the controls that have been imposed upon it. This illustrated
by an individual who thinks obsessively, "father will die"
whenever he turns off a light. This ought compels him to
turn around, touch the switch, an say, "I take back that I
thought." he compulsive act could be said to "undo"
the fear of the initial obsessive thought, which might
be rooted in an underlying aggressive impulse toward the father.
Another illustrated by a mother who compulsively
checks her children's rooms dozens of times while they are asleep;
she is overly solicitous about her children because of
underling resentment toward them.
Psychotherapy, a main clinic tool of the psycho-dynamically
oriented clinician, is intended to help people expose and deal
with the psychodynamic roots of their maladaptive behaviors.
Psychotherapists believe that such behaviors occur when a person
becomes preoccupied with relieving anxiety or eliminating anxiety.
They feel that by gaining insight into the
subconscious roots of anxiety, the person can direct his or
her activity toward altering or abandoning unwanted behavior.
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