Psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic approach is an entering wedge for discerning the problems underlying a patient’s disturbance and initiating a healing process through awakening the unconscious into the conscious state.
Psychoanalytic Approach and the Nature of Man
The blending point between nature of people and psychoanalytic approach is the principle of innate traits: that the behavior of a person is determined and controlled by those inborn characteristics that assume full reign of his mind. Two hypotheses are advanced to champion the prospects of psychoanalytical approach which includes dynamic consciousness and psychic determinism (Henderson and Thompson, 2010). The former proposes that certain factors are outside an individual’s awareness of desires and impulses while the former postulates that every event follows a cause and effect relation with nothing left to chance. The psychoanalytic theory seeks to help the individual by focusing on the unconscious zone of the human mind. Freud’s proposition depicts man as being possessed and controlled by two evils, aggression and sex, which must constantly be brought under subjection through the intervention of external social factors (Henderson and Thompson, 2010).
Following Freud’s postulate, counseling can be seen to take predetermined steps which involve winning the patient’s confidence, leading the patient to speak their mind, and then helping the patient to confront their problems in the unconscious segment of the human mind. Counseling methods include play therapy used in children, the indirect interpretation with the help of metaphors and stories, cantharis, analysis of resistance and incomplete sentences and Bibliocounseling (Henderson and Thompson, 2010).
Projective Technique
Projective techniques are used to pass the barrier due to resistance in the process of psychoanalysis. This technique makes it possible for the physician to delve deep into the unconscious sector of the client’s mind. As an assessment tool, it is applied to determine the causative agent of a problem while as therapy tool it is beneficial in eliminating the cause of the client’s problem. In Jeff’s case, the therapist uses the drawing game as a projective technique to probe or conduct an assessment of Jeff’s unconscious mind. He does s scribble and asks Jeff to make something out of it which transits into Jeff’s beach experience. The technique has proved effective as it has generated a series of conversations letting the therapist into Jeff’s mind.
Additional Questions to Ask Jeff
Question 1: Why did your parents take you to the beach?
This question seeks to identify whether the beach choice was his or the parents’. This will help to unearth Jeff’s opinion of their parents as domineering or flexible.
Question 2: Which events do you remember the most?
This will help to ascertain if the beach experience and impacted on Jeff. The extent of the influence is evaluated as well.
Question 3: Would you wish to visit the beach again?
This will establish beyond reasonable doubts Jeff’s opinion of the beach adventure. If he would want to go back and not any other place, the beach experience was pleasant and not scary.
References
Henderson, D. A., & Thompson, C. L. (2010). Counseling children. Cengage Learning.