Formulation as Clinical Action: How Psychoanalytic Theory Becomes Technique

In advanced psychoanalytic training, “formulation” is often treated as a document: a coherent story you can present in supervision, polish over weeks, and revise with hindsight. In applied psychoanalytic practice, formulation is something else entirely. It is a mode of action in the session—a way of selecting what counts as signal, deciding what to hold, and choosing an intervention that fits the patient’s psychic moment. A formulation is not a portrait; it is a compass.

From Explanation to Orientation

A clinically useful formulation does not aim to explain everything. It aims to orient you toward the next right move. It answers four questions:

1. What is the patient doing to survive? (defenses, strategies, self-organization)

2. What is the patient trying to protect? (vulnerability, longing, shame, dread, annihilation anxiety)

3. What is being repeated here—with me? (transference, enactment, attachment pattern)

4. What kind of change is currently possible? (insight, symbolization, integration, rupture/repair)

Notice that none of these are purely descriptive. Each implies a technical stance.

The Multi-Axial Formulation (Not a Checklist—A Set of Lenses)

A contemporary applied formulation usually runs on several axes at once:

• Dynamic/conflict axis: wish–fear–defense–compromise. What desire is dangerous? What prohibitions organize guilt, shame, or dread?

• Structural/deficit axis: capacities for regulation, symbolization, play, and reflective function. Where does the mind fail to form?

• Developmental/attachment axis: proximity–distance strategies, separation distress, epistemic trust, secure-base demands. How does the patient manage dependence?

• Trauma/dissociation axis: state shifts, unmentalized affect, procedural “parts,” collapse, intrusion. What cannot be remembered because it is still happening internally?

• Relational field axis: mutual influence, enactment, recognition, the ethics of the frame. What is being co-created that neither of you “chose”?

The point is not eclecticism; it is diagnostic pluralism with technical discipline.

The most common advanced mistake is not “bad theory,” but wrong dose. A conflict formulation often tempts interpretation; a trauma formulation often requires pacing and containment before meaning can be metabolized. A deficit formulation may call for reliability, empathic attunement, and minimal frustration; a relational formulation may require naming what is happening between you rather than what is happening “inside” the patient. Formulation, here, is a theory of when.

A Micro-Example: One Event, Two Formulations

A patient abruptly cancels after a good session.

• Conflict reading: progress mobilized guilt or forbidden longing → cancellation as resistance, superego retaliation, fear of dependency.

• Trauma/dissociation reading: increased intimacy triggered state shift → cancellation as protective dissociation, autonomic overwhelm, loss of reflective capacity.

Same event; different action. In the first, you might interpret the fear of closeness. In the second, you might first restore safety and mentalization, then slowly link cancellation to overwhelm.

The Clinical Test of a Formulation

A formulation is “true enough” when it changes your listening, reduces acting-out, and creates interventions the patient can use. If your formulation makes you feel clever but leaves the patient more defended, more collapsed, or more compliant, it is not yet applied. In contemporary psychoanalytic practice, formulation earns its keep only when it becomes a tactful form of care.

Back to: Contemporary Theories in Applied Psychoanalysis

Transference and countertransference in psychoanalysis explained

I psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy, transference and countertransference are not “concepts” you apply after the fact; they are the living medium of psychoanalytic work. In contemporary applied practice, they function less like a diagnostic label (“this is a father transference”) and more like a real-time relational process that organizes attention, affect, and action in the room.

Transference is the patient’s here-and-now use of the therapeutic relationship to replay, test, and stabilize an internal relational world. It is not simply distortion; it is also communication and survival strategy. Practically, transference shows up as expectations the patient seems to hold as facts: “You’ll get bored,” “You’re judging me,” “If I need you, you’ll disappear,” “You want me to be impressive,” or the opposite—idealization, merger, insistence that “you’re different.” It also appears in micro-behaviors: apologizing preemptively, controlling the agenda, seducing, attacking, going blank, arriving late, refusing to pay, “forgetting” key material—each can be a relational move shaped by earlier attachment, trauma, or conflict.

Countertransference is what happens in you in response: your feelings, fantasies, body states, impulses, and interpretive “certainties.” Modern technique treats countertransference not as contamination to eliminate, but as data—provided it is processed rather than enacted. In practice, countertransference may feel like sudden sleepiness, irritation, rescue fantasies, dread, tenderness, impatience, sexual charge, or a push to teach, reassure, confront, or withdraw. The crucial clinical question is: what is this feeling doing? Is it pulling you into a familiar role in the patient’s relational script (critic, savior, passive object, seduced admirer, punitive authority)?

This is where enactment becomes central. When transference and countertransference lock together, something gets performed instead of symbolized: the therapist reassures too quickly, becomes cold and “technical,” breaks the frame, retaliates, overextends, or silently disengages; the patient complies, collapses, escalates, or disappears. The applied task is not to avoid enactment (impossible), but to notice it early, slow it down, and make it thinkable: “I’m aware I’m rushing to fix this—something about how trapped you feel is happening between us right now.”

Used well, transference/countertransference guide timing and dose: when interpretation will liberate, when it will crush; when holding is necessary; when repair is the intervention. The goal is disciplined participation—feeling the field without being driven by it.

Back to: Contemporary Theories in Applied Psychoanalysis

Applied psychoanalysis: The clinical situation as data: countertransference, enactment, the frame

Psychoanalysis becomes genuinely applied when we stop treating the session as a transcript and begin treating it as a living instrument. “The clinical situation as data” names a shift in epistemology: the primary material is not only what the patient reports, but what happens in the room—in time, in affect, in the frame, and between two subjectivities. For advanced practitioners, this is not a poetic claim; it is a technical one. The question is: what counts as evidence, and how do we read it without collapsing into either naïve subjectivism (“anything I feel is true”) or rigid objectivism (“only content counts”)?

A contemporary applied stance reads the session on multiple tracks at once. First, manifest content: narrative, associations, themes, repetitions. Second, affect: what emotions are present, absent, displaced, or contagious—especially shame, envy, dread, tenderness, boredom. Third, process: tempo, silence, shifts in mentalization, oscillations between proximity and distance, the micro-regulations of attention. Fourth, relationship: transference configurations, attachment strategies, bids for recognition, tests of reliability. Fifth, frame-events: lateness, cancellations, fees, technology glitches, sudden requests—often treated as “administrative,” yet frequently saturated with meaning.

Countertransference as data

These tracks become clinical data through the lens of countertransference. Modern technique does not treat countertransference as mere contamination; it treats it as an instrument—an affective register of what the patient cannot yet symbolize and therefore induces, evokes, or organizes in the analyst. But instrument use requires calibration. We ask: is this feeling characteristic of me, or newly emergent here? Does it persist across sessions? Does it intensify at specific topics or silences? Does it push me toward action (rescue, retaliation, withdrawal, seduction, pedagogy)? Countertransference becomes data precisely when it is worked through: not acted out, not denied, but transformed into thought.

The concept of enactment sharpens this further. Enactments are not therapeutic failures to be avoided at all costs; they are inevitable co-productions in which dissociated or unsymbolized relational knowledge comes to life. The key clinical move is not “prevent enactment,” but “recognize it early, slow it down, and metabolize it.” When we can name the shift—something happened between us—we create a bridge from implicit procedural pattern to explicit reflective space. Rupture and repair are thus not add-ons; they are central evidence about the patient’s relational world and about what the analytic relationship can become.

This is why the frame is not merely a container; it is also a generator of data. The patient’s relationship to time, boundaries, money, silence, and separations is not external to treatment—it is the treatment, expressed in the most economical language available. A missed session may be grief, protest, triumph, panic, or dissociation; its meaning is rarely singular. The analyst’s task is to hold the multiplicity without rushing to interpret.

To treat the clinical situation as data is to practice a disciplined double attention: staying close enough to feel the field, and far enough to think it. The session is not a report about the psyche. It is the psyche—relationally instantiated—asking, in real time, whether it can be known without being crushed, and met without being swallowed.

Back to: Contemporary Theories in Applied Psychoanalysis

Applied Psychoanalysis: From “drive/conflict” to multiple metapsychologies: conflict, deficit, trauma, relational

Psychoanalysis is often taught as if it were a single language—one grammar (drive), one engine (conflict), one royal road (interpretation). But contemporary applied psychoanalytic practice is defined by a different reality: we work with multiple metapsychologies at once. Not because theory is fashionable, but because patients arrive with different kinds of suffering—different forms of psychic organization—and the clinic forces us to choose, moment by moment, what counts as an intervention, what counts as data, and what we mean by change.

Psychoanalysis' centers of gravity

A useful map begins with four major “centers of gravity” that structure applied work today: conflict, deficit, trauma, and relational field. These are not schools to pledge allegiance to; they are lenses that alter what we see, what we privilege, and what we risk missing.

In a conflict metapsychology, symptoms are compromises: desire collides with prohibition, love with hatred, autonomy with dependence. The therapist listens for latent meaning, defensive operations, and the return of the repressed. Technique favors interpretation—especially of defenses and transference—timed to loosen rigid compromise formations. Change is often conceived as increased insight, affect tolerance, and a reorganization of defensive and superego economies.

In a deficit (or structural) metapsychology, pathology is less a battle than a lack: failures in psychic structure, symbolization, or self-cohesion. The clinic emphasizes functions—regulation, self-soothing, capacity for play—rather than the uncovering of forbidden wishes. Here “neutrality” can become a misattunement if the patient’s core struggle is disintegration rather than guilt. Technique leans toward provision: reliable holding, empathic attunement, and carefully dosed frustration that builds structure rather than breaks it. Change looks like sturdier self-experience and expanded capacity for relatedness and meaning.

In trauma metapsychologies, the problem is not primarily repression but excess—experience that could not be metabolized and returns as intrusion, dissociation, or somaticized affect. The analytic task becomes pacing and containment so that symbolization can occur without retraumatization. Interpretation still matters, but often later; early work may involve stabilizing arousal, tracking state shifts, and constructing dual awareness (living in the room while remembering what overwhelms). Change is measured by integration: a widening of the window of tolerance and a decrease in dissociative necessity.

Finally, relational metapsychology treats the analytic situation itself as the field where meaning is generated. The focus shifts from “what is inside” to “what happens between,” including enactment, mutual influence, and the ethics of recognition. The therapist’s subjectivity is not noise but instrument—handled with discipline. Change is not only insight but new relational experience: rupture and repair, the emergence of thirdness, the patient’s ability to sustain complexity without retreating into defensive certainty.

Applied psychoanalysis becomes contemporary when we stop asking “Which theory is true?” and start asking, clinically: What kind of suffering is this? What does my patient need from the frame right now—interpretation, holding, pacing, recognition? The art is not eclecticism. It is disciplined switching: holding multiple metapsychologies in mind while choosing one intervention that fits the psychic moment.

See also: Psychodynamic Formulation: Dynamic, Structural, Developmental, Relational

Back to: Contemporary Theories in Applied Psychoanalysis

Contemporary Theories in Applied Psychoanalysis

This course is designed for advanced clinicians and candidates in psychoanalytic training who wish to deepen their applied clinical thinking beyond introductory theory. Rather than revisiting the foundations of classical psychoanalysis, we focus on contemporary models that shape actual therapeutic decision-making today. The emphasis throughout is practical: how theory informs listening, formulation, timing, and intervention in the consulting room.

Modern psychoanalytic practice is pluralistic. Clinicians draw from conflict theory, structural and deficit models, object relations, self psychology, relational and intersubjective approaches, attachment theory, trauma and dissociation studies, and mentalization-based thinking. Each perspective highlights different aspects of psychic organization and implies different technical moves. The task is not to choose one school, but to develop disciplined flexibility—knowing when to interpret, when to contain, when to mentalize, when to repair rupture, and when to protect fragile structure.

Across the course, we treat the clinical situation itself as primary data. Transference, countertransference, enactment, and the frame are examined as living processes rather than abstract concepts. Through case discussion and theoretical integration, participants will refine their capacity to formulate dynamically and intervene with precision, responsiveness, and depth.

Topics

From “drive/conflict” to multiple metapsychologies: conflict, deficit, trauma, relational

The clinical situation as data: countertransference, enactment, the frame

Psychodynamic Formulation: Dynamic, Structural, Developmental, Relational

Working at Multiple Levels in Applied Psychoanalytic Practice

Defence-Based Analytical Work: Listening for Protection Before Meaning

Working with Inhibition, Shame, Obsessionality, Perfectionism, and Rigidity

concepts and explanations

Transference and countertransference in psychoanalysis

Thirdness in Psychoanalytic Therapy: From Two Minds to a Shared Space

Types of Defensive Styles in Psychoanalytic Practice

Shame and Guilt in Psychoanalytic Thought

Freud vs. Jung on Meme Culture: Dream-Work for People Who Don’t Sleep

Your thumb scrolls like a nervous rosary bead counter.

It is 1:17 a.m. The room lies flat and black. Your face glows in the phone-light, a little devotional icon of modern fatigue. Then a meme hits - perfectly timed, perfectly cruel - and you laugh once, sharp and involuntary, like somebody flicked a switch behind your ribs.

That laugh is not nothing. It is the psyche taking an exit ramp.

Freud would call the meme a joke with a hidden basement. Jung would call it a mask that remembers the oldest faces. Between them sits the same suspicion: you are not merely consuming content. You are watching the unconscious rehearse in public.

Freud - Meme as Dream-Work in Street Clothes

Freud’s mind is not a calm lake. It is a city at night. Lights on in some windows, lights off in others, strange movements behind curtains. The point is not that you hide things. The point is that hiding things is how the system runs.

Jokes, for Freud, are a legal loophole. They let forbidden material slip through customs. A meme does that faster than a therapist can say, “How does that make you feel?” It takes a shameful feeling - jealousy, resentment, loneliness, dread - and smuggles it into daylight wrapped in a caption and a familiar image.

Look at the mechanics. Condensation: one picture carries ten meanings, like a suitcase overpacked with contraband. Displacement: the emotional charge moves from the real target to a safer substitute. You do not say, “I am terrified I am wasting my life.” You share: “Me on Sunday night when the calendar opens.” The laughter releases pressure. The share recruits allies. The feeling becomes social, which makes it feel survivable.

And the meme’s genius is its alibi. It pretends to be light. It pretends to be nothing. Meanwhile it performs a tiny operation on your nervous system: it turns pain into a shape you can hold without burning your hand. (Freud would call it catharsis; your group chat calls it relatable.)

But the darker insight is this: the meme does not only express the unconscious. It edits it. It trains you to package your own distress as humor. It teaches you which feelings deserve applause and which ones should be hidden behind irony like a bad tattoo.

You laugh, you feel seen, you move on. The symptom keeps its job. The joke keeps its cover.

Jung - Archetypes Wearing Hoodies

Now Jung arrives with a lantern and starts walking deeper into the cave.

Freud’s unconscious is personal history with locks on it. Jung’s unconscious is older. It is communal. It is the warehouse of recurring forms. The Mother. The Hero. The Trickster. The Shadow. Characters that keep returning because they are not characters so much as shapes the human mind keeps pouring itself into.

Memes, under this lens, look like folk mythology with a Wi-Fi signal. The Trickster thrives online because the feed rewards disruption and wit. The Shadow thrives because anonymity loosens restraints and invites projection. The Hero appears as the main character of every thread, righteous and slightly addicted to being righteous.

Even the meme templates feel like mythic vessels. The “starter pack” is a modern taxonomy spell: name the type and it becomes real. The “villain origin story” is an initiation tale with irony armor. The “two buttons” meme is moral conflict drawn as a cartoon altar call.

And because memes circulate, these archetypes become shared dreams you scroll through while awake. You think you are browsing. You are participating in a collective symbolic weather system. Jung would note the excitement in that - and the danger. Symbols do not just represent feelings. They can manufacture them, amplify them, steer them. (The collective unconscious used to whisper; now it posts with notifications on.)

So the meme is not only yours. It belongs to the tribe. It is how the tribe thinks without thinking, remembers without remembering.

The Punch - The Algorithm Picks Your Unconscious for You

So who wins, Freud or Jung?

Both, inconveniently.

Freud explains the meme’s secret pleasure: it lets you say what you cannot say. Jung explains the meme’s strange power: it feels familiar before you understand why. The meme is a compromise formation powered by an archetype, a private pressure released through a communal symbol.

Now add the contemporary twist. The internet does not merely host this psychic theater. It curates it. It selects which jokes survive, which symbols spread, which emotional flavors trend. The algorithm does not care what is true. It cares what grips. And what grips is often what is unresolved.

This is where the meme stops being a mirror and becomes a mold.

You begin to anticipate your life in meme shapes. You feel sadness and immediately reach for a template. You feel anger and already know the caption. You catch yourself translating experience into shareability, shaving off the inconvenient parts so the joke lands clean. The interior world becomes content-ready, which is another way of saying it becomes managed.

The final irony is brutal and almost funny. You share a meme to feel less alone. The platform registers the behavior and offers more of the same emotional frequency. It hands you an endless buffet of jokes that match your wound. The wound stays fed. The engagement stays high.

Freud would ask: what desire are you laundering through humor? Jung would ask: which archetype keeps driving your reactions like a borrowed car? The shared answer is the one you can feel in your thumb: memes do not only express the unconscious. They industrialize it.

So yes, laugh. Share. Let the joke give you air.

Just notice the price of the air.

In the old world, dreams arrived in private and demanded interpretation. In this one, dreams arrive pre-captioned and beg to be reposted. (The unconscious, now with a social media manager.)

And that is the strange new intimacy: your inner life does not only speak. It performs. It trends. It learns its lines.

Sartre, Freud and Existential Psychoanalysis

Jean-Paul Sartre’s critique of Freudian psychoanalysis played a pivotal role in shaping his own approach to understanding human psychology. While he acknowledged Freud’s contributions, particularly in exploring human behavior, Sartre rejected Freud’s emphasis on the unconscious and determinism, which he believed undermined human freedom and responsibility. In response, Sartre developed existential psychoanalysis, an alternative that preserves existentialist notions of freedom while addressing the psychological dimensions of human experience.

Freudian psychoanalysis posits that human behavior is largely driven by unconscious forces, such as repressed desires and instincts. According to Freud, individuals are unaware of the unconscious forces that shape their actions and personalities, often stemming from early life experiences. Sartre found this view problematic because, from an existentialist perspective, humans are fundamentally free. He argued that attributing behavior to unconscious forces denies the essential freedom of individuals, reducing them to passive subjects driven by instincts.

Sartre contended that humans are not passive beings shaped by unconscious impulses but are active agents, responsible for their own choices. For Sartre, the unconscious is not a separate domain that exerts control over individuals but is rather a form of bad faith—a self-deception in which people avoid acknowledging the truth of their freedom by attributing their actions to external, unconscious forces. What Freud called the unconscious, Sartre viewed as a conscious process of self-deception.

Freedom, Authenticity and Creativity

Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis seeks to understand individuals by exploring how they shape their lives through the choices they make in response to their inherent freedom. Unlike Freudian psychoanalysis, which focuses on repressed desires, existentialism examines how people define themselves through their actions. Sartre believed that analyzing people’s "life projects"—the long-term goals and values that give life meaning—reveals the true motivations behind their behavior. Existential psychoanalysis, therefore, emphasizes individual responsibility in creating one's identity and life path.

Sartre also critiqued Freud’s deterministic explanations for human behavior. Freud often attributed psychological issues, such as neuroses, to unconscious conflicts and childhood experiences. Sartre, however, rejected the idea that past experiences or unconscious processes could fully determine an individual's current actions. He argued that individuals are always free to reinterpret their past and redefine themselves through present choices, and taking responsibility for these choices is what makes us authentic. For Sartre, the past is part of one’s facticity—the facts of existence—but it does not dictate one’s future. People are free to transcend their past through ongoing acts of self-creation.

In developing existential psychoanalysis, Sartre sought to address the psychological dimensions of human life without compromising existentialism’s emphasis on freedom. He believed that individuals are constantly engaged in the process of self-creation, and existential psychoanalysis aims to uncover how they use their freedom to shape their identity and life. By focusing on choice and responsibility, existential psychoanalysis offers a more optimistic alternative to Freud’s deterministic model, presenting a vision of human potential grounded in freedom and creativity.

Freud's famous patients: best known case studies

Sigmund Freud is best known for his theoretical work on the human mind and for his development of theories about the unconscious mind and its influence on behavior. But Freud's theory did not come from nowhere but directly from his clinical practice. Freud's writings are therefore full of case studies explaining his way of reaching his conclusions. Some of these case studies are now Freud's most famous patients.

The case of Anna O.

One of the most famous case studies conducted by Freud was that of Anna O., also known as Bertha Pappenheim. Anna was a young woman who was suffering from symptoms including hallucinations, paralysis, and loss of speech. She was treated by Josef Breuer, a colleague of Freud's, who used a technique known as the "talking cure" to help her understand and express her thoughts and emotions. One interesting thing is Anna's sudden unexplained hydrophobia, which was revealed to be caused by her seeing her roommate's dog drinking out of her cup. This treatment proved to be effective and Anna eventually made a full recovery.

Little Hans

Another famous case study conducted by Freud was that of "Little Hans," a five-year-old boy who developed a phobia of horses. Through his analysis of the boy's behavior and dreams, Freud concluded that the phobia was caused by unconscious sexual desires. This case study helped to support Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex, which suggests that young children have sexual desires towards their opposite-sex parent. Little Hans' fear of his father was replaced by fear of horses, and once this was acknowledged the symptoms went away.

Dora

Another one of Freud's famous patients is a woman known as "Dora" who was suffering from hysteria. Through his analysis of Dora's symptoms and behavior, Freud concluded that her condition was caused by repressed desires and conflicts related to her sexuality. This case study helped to support Freud's theory of repression, which suggests that individuals may unconsciously repress unpleasant thoughts and feelings.

The Wolfman

Another famous case study conducted by Freud was that of the "Wolfman," a Russian man named Sergei Pankejeff who was suffering from anxiety and phobias. Through his analysis of the man's dreams and childhood experiences, Freud concluded that the root of his psychological problems was a repressed memory of a traumatic experience involving his parents. This case study helped to support Freud's theories of repression and the Oedipus complex, and provided further evidence for his belief in the role of the unconscious mind in shaping behavior. The Wolfman case remains one of the most well-known and controversial case studies in the history of psychology.

These case studies and the theories developed by Freud had a major influence on the field of psychology and continue to be studied and discussed by psychologists today. His work on the unconscious mind and its influence on behavior helped to pave the way for many of the treatment methods used in modern psychology, such as psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy.

To dive deeper, see Best books to start reading Freud

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*This text was created with the aid of OpenAI’s GPT-3 model and modified by the author.

Winnicott's "Good Enough Mother" Explained

As the influence of psychoanalysis expanded in the early 20th century, parents started to fell anxious. The ideas of thinkers like Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein or Alfred Adler about the crucial meaning early life has on our psychemade everything parents do (or do not) into a fateful. To alleviate some of this stress, child psychologist Donald Winnicott proposed the concept of a "good enough mother" (nowadays also refered to as "good enough parent").

The first and most important thing that a "good enough mother" isn't is perfect. Winnicott explains that there is no parent who does not make mistakes, and there is no parent who succeeds (or should) meet all the needs and desires of his child. What canand should be is a normal mother or father who, despite their shortcomings, manage to provide their children with a stable and healthy personal and family environment. They are not perfect, but they are good enough.

Winnicott's "good enough mother" idea is also intended to reduce the negative intervention of various experts in raising a family. There is no need to tell the mother that she is holding her child too much in her arms or too little. What is important is to give the mother and father the feeling that as long as they are doing their best, then they are also good enough parents.

Good Enough Mother and the Disillusionment

According to Winnicott, the main role of parents is not to preserve the child's illusion that reality will satisfy all his desires, but rather to allow him to sober up from it. The child's growth process involves acknowledging that both the parents and the world will sometimes disappoint him, but this without compromising his enjoyment, his appetite for life and his ability to accept reality. A good enough mother and a good enough father will be there to help the child shape healthy expectations of himself and those around him, none of these will ever be perfect. The parents are not perfect either, and any attempt to instill in the child this impression will lead to disappointment that will radiate into his adult life as well. The child needs to know how to trust his parents and know that they are there for him, but his emotional growth depends on forming a complex position in relation to himself and his life, such joy in them but also true to the challenges they will bring.

Life as Play: Short Introduction to Donald Winnicott's Thought

Donald Winnicott was a British pediatrician and one of the first psychoanalysts in the early 20th century. One of Winnicott's most important contributions to psychoanalysis, and to parents wherever they are, is his work on child-parent relationships in the early stages of life. Winnicott drew attention to the vulnerable and helpless nature of the earliest experiences of all of us, arguing that the way we dealt with those experiences would have a major impact on our lives later on.

At a time when psychoanalysis was emphasizing the various ways in which parents can complicate the minds of their children, Winnicott suggested the soothing notion of a "good enough mother" or parent. The good mother or father are not the ones who meet all the needs of the child and are free from mistakes, but the ones who provide him with a safe enough answer to allow him to deal with even what cannot be provided for him.

Winnicott, along with his wife Claire, developed the idea of ​​"holding" as an image of how the mother and parents in general create in the child a sense of security in reality and an illusion of control over it. They also linked the idea of ​​“holding” to psychological therapy and to how the therapist creates a “held” environment for the patient. Holding according to the Winnicotts is the foundation for the child and patient's sense of trust and confidence not only in the parent and caregiver, but in reality itself. They believed that anti-social behaviors could be the result of a child not enjoying a sense of security and attachment in childhood.

Winnicott also developed the idea of ​​the transitional object. Transitions include items such as blankets or toys. A transitional object can help a child feel safe and protected while adapting to independence. A transitional object not (only) allows the child to switch between situations with something safe and familiar, but allows him to switch between symbiosis with the mother and independence. The object of transition, with which the child identifies, is the transition between identification with the mother and with himself.

Winnicott also suggested the idea of ​​a “true self” versus a “false self” as related to the childish action of a game. He believed that the false self is a polite, orderly, external self that allows a person to integrate into society. The true self, on the other hand, is the one capable of creativity, and play helps a person to develop this true self. He even thought that play is a way of treatment that can benefit many adults as well.

Winnicott's ideas such as "good enough mother", "holdinh", "transitional object" and "real and false self" have profoundly influenced the language and psychological thinking to this day.

Jung's Collective Unconscious - Examples

According to Carl Jung, the collective unconscious is the structure that has the most impact on our personality, it includes all the treasure trove of experiences that have accumulated over generations of human race existence, and have remained as traces of memory in the human Psyche. These traces of memory from the ancient past are inherited, and are ingrained in man as innate tendencies to respond or behave in a certain way, depending on the culture and heritage in which he was born. Jung believed that just as physical traits are inherited, so certain structures in the human brain are inherited, and these structures are a prerequisite for guiding thoughts, images, and ways of coping with life experiences. 

Thus it can be said, for example, that experiences related to seeing the sun as a source of life and growth created in man an archetype of a higher being, and experiences that were related to vast forces of nature such as volcanic activity, earthquakes and water waves created in humanity an archetype of energy. Jung gives the example of (what he sees as) motherhood, according to which women are programmed for typical maternal behavior towards their children such as breastfeeding and breastfeeding, without having learned it. Another example he gives is the equal images in all the religions that exist, in all parts of the world, regarding a universal magical power on which everything revolves 

Jung's archetypes are important for his collective unconscious, being a superhuman essence that does not originate in the world of the senses, which exists separately from the world and can be directly known through thought. Unlike Plato, who argued that one can approach the world of forms only through meditation, thought and transcendence, Jung believed that archetypes appear spontaneously in thought in times of crisis, and constitute a door through which one can truly observe the superhuman. Jung believed, for example, that mythology is based on stories about archetypes and is a repository of wondrous truths hidden deep in the soul of every human being.

Know more:

list of Jungian Archetypes + short explanations

List of Books by Carl Jung (with summaries)

Carl Gustav Jung explained - main ideas and concepts summarized

Carl Gustav Jung  is a doctor psychiatrist Swiss born1875. Jung is the founder of analytical psychology and influential thinker, he is the author of numerous books. His work is linked to the beginnings of the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud , of whom he was one of the first disciples and from whom he subsequently separated due to theoretical and personal differences.

In his works,  Jung mixes metapsychological and practical reflections about the analytical treatment .

Jung devoted his life to clinical practice as well as to the development of psychological theories, but also explored other areas of the humanities  : from the comparative study of religions, philosophy and sociology to the critique of the art and literature .

Carl Gustav Jung was a pioneer of depth psychology  : he underlined the link between the structure of the psyche (that is to say the "soul", in the Jungian vocabulary) and its cultural productions and manifestations. . He introduced into his method notions of the human sciences drawn from fields of knowledge as diverse as anthropology , alchemy , the study of dreams , mythology and religion , which enabled him to grasp the " reality of the soul ”. While Jung was not the first to study dreams , his contributions in this area have been instrumental.

Summaries of and on Carl Jung

Jungian Concepts

Jung's Concept of Archetypes 

Jung's Personality theory 

Jung's Individuation 

Jung's Meaning of dreams

Jungian typology

Jung's Active imagination

Jung's Collective unconscious - examples

Jung's Analytical Psychology

Jung's Synchronicity

Jung's Books and Essays

List of Books by Carl Jung (with summaries)

Psychological Types

Children's Dreams

Psychology and Alchemy

Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Man and His Symbols

The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious

The Red Book: Liber Novus

Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche

 The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious – The Personal and Collective Unconscious   

 The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious – What are Archetypes

 The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious – Subject, Object, Demon and Rationalism

Psychology and Religion: West and East 

Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature

Practice of Psychotherapy

Development of Personality

Answer to Job

Jungian Archetypes

list of Jungian Archetypes + short explanations

The Self

The Shadow

Persona

The Anima and the Animus

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Carl Jung's Personality Structures Theory - summary

The Jungian psyche , as in the Freudian model, is structured by a whole series of constantly interacting systems. However, unlike the founder of psychoanalysis , we are faced with different psychic members and divergent functionality and dynamism which make up one's personality. 

Consciousness and I

Starting the review from consciousness and ending in the deepest layers of the psyche, we first find the Self , the nuclear center of our consciousness, actually constituting one more complex of those that make up the personal unconscious but which has become conscious and governing of our individuality.  Jung's Ego is equivalent to the conscious component of the Freudian Ego.

Personal unconscious 

In succession to the I, the personal unconscious makes an appearance, containing only information derived from the individual's personal experiences. Therefore, it receives all that material repressed by the I, the directionality being able to be reversed in such a way that said content is accessible to consciousness. The personal unconscious would be equal to the sum of the Freudian preconscious and unconscious .

Complex

Complexes reside as part of the personal unconscious . A complex would be defined as that set of emotionally charged concepts or images that acts as an autonomous "split" personality. At its core is an emotionally clothed archetype .

Collective unconscious 

Main article: Collective unconscious

And finally, in the depths of the human psyche we would find the collective unconscious , and with it, the last element of discrepancy with respect to the Freudian conflict. It is clear that while the Freudian model of the unconscious remains delimited by the personal, Jung expands its channels "ad infinitum."

Just as the structural element that made up the personal unconscious was the complex, in the case of the collective unconscious the archetype will be .

In this region, all the information inherited phylogenetically as a result of the universal experiences that occurred in the course of evolution is arranged in the form of symbols and predispositions . The archetypes would therefore be universal predispositions to perceive, act, or think in a certain way.

Archetypes

Main article: Archetypes, see also list of Jungian archetypes

Of the wide range of existing archetypes, such as birth, death , the hero , the puer aeternus , god , the senex , five are those that have reached a higher development than any other:

Persona 

Main article: Persona

It is the mask that prevails in our daily social development, being able to be more or less developed, and therefore, to a greater or lesser extent hide our real personality. It is masculine in men and feminine in women.

Anima and Ánimus 

Main articles: Ánima and Ánimus .

These archetypes constitute the Jungian recognition of human bisexuality .

The Anima is the feminine aspect present in the collective unconscious of men. Ruled by its Eros principle , it is also often called the archetype of life .

The Animus is the masculine aspect present in the collective unconscious of women. Ruled by its Logos principle , it is also often called the archetype of meaning . 

Counterbalancing both to the Person archetype , they developed as a result of the set of experiences established between men and women throughout our evolutionary past.

Shadow 

Main article: Shadow

The shadow arcehtype represents our most primitive impulses, the animal instincts, originating from the prehuman ancestors of man. When these impulses set out on the path to consciousness, the Ego, in much the same way as the series of defense mechanisms of the Freudian Ego, allows either their expression or, if not pertinent, their subsequent repression , thereby in turn it contributes to generating content for the personal unconscious. Thus, an interrelation is established between the collective unconscious, the archetype, the conscious self and the personal unconscious.

The self

Main article: Self

The archetype of the Self (in German Selbst ) constitutes the archetype par excellence, the nuclear or central archetype of the collective unconscious, the most important of all. It is also called the archetype of the hierarchy and represents the totality of the human being and the ultimate goal in the individuation process .

It is represented symbolically from a mandala or magic circle, and in the same way that the I is constituted as the center of consciousness, the Self is the center that contains the totality of "consciousness" and "unconscious". Represents the efforts of the human being to achieve unity, totality, the integration of the personality, striving for both the unity of the individual with respect to the outside world and for the unity of their psychic systems. Prior to said integration process, sufficient differentiation must be established between the systems, an aspect that is not achieved until middle age.

Jungian Concepts

Jung's Concept of Archetypes 

Jung's Personality theory 

Jung's Individuation 

Jung's Meaning of dreams

Jungian typology

Jung's Active imagination

Jung's Analytical Psychology

Jung's Synchronicity

Meaning of Jung's Persona Archetype explained

The word persona comes from Latin (from the verb personare, per-sonare: to speak through ) where it designated the mask worn by theater actors . The function of this mask was both to give the actor the appearance of the character he was playing, but also to allow his voice to carry far enough to be audible to the spectators.

In his analytical psychology , Carl Jung used this word to designate an archtype who is the part of the personality which organizes the relationship of the individual to society, the way in which each one must more or less fit into a socially predefined character in order to hold his own. social role. The ego can easily identify with the persona, leading the individual to think he is who he is in the eyes of others and no longer know who he really is. In this case, Jung's persona is close to Donald W. Winnicott's concept of false self.. We must therefore understand the persona as a "social mask", an image, created by the ego, which can end up usurping the real identity of the individual. Alfred de Musset explored this somewhat in Lorenzaccio .

Back to: list of Jungian Archetypes

Jungian Archetypes

The Self

The Shadow

The Anima and the Animus

Meaning of Jung's Anima and Animus explained

Anima and Animus are terms coined by  analyst Carl Gustav Jung for the archetypal images that underlie the experience from members of the opposite sex. Animus is the image of the man in the eyes of the woman and the masculine side of herself, anima is the image of the woman in the eyes of the man, and the inner feminine aspect in his soul. Although the influence of anima and animus can become conscious, they themselves remain beyond awareness and direct perception. Anima and animus are aspects of the personality that in many ways take a position that is opposite to the position of the conscious self, and they have characteristics that characterize the member of the opposite sex. 

Anima

The Anima is the feminine side of the man, who is both a personal complex and a collective archetypal figure (the cumulative experience of women with men over the generations). It is an unconscious part of the personality that is created in every male child, and is initially identified with the personal mother figure. Later, the anima is projected on other women and includes other female images (sister, daughter, lover and heavenly goddess). Anima has a great influence on a man's personality, it is reflected in his relationships with women, and in female characters as they appear in a dream and fantasy. The anima is also an ancient, archetypal element of the male psyche, associated with the emotional and mystical side of his life. She is the soft and sensitive element in the male psyche, and when the anima is strong and dominant he will be a more sensitive, spiritual person and prone to changing moods. Carl Jung noticed four anima modes, which ideally a man should go through during his mental maturation process:

Eve - identified with the personal mother figure, and represents a close, caring and caring relationship.

Helena of Troy - represents the collective ideal of female sexuality.

Maria - represents the religious feelings and the ability to maintain a stable relationship over time.

Sofia - Wisdom, is the one who guides the man in the depths of his soul, mediating between the conscious and the unconscious. She is also the muse, associated with the creative side and the search for meaning.

According to Jung, the best way for a man to live with his anima is to assimilate it into his personality and discover his feelings with its help.

Animus

The Animus is the inner masculine side of the woman. Like the anima, the animus is both a personal complex and an archetypal character. The animus is identified with the mental side, with the thought (logos) and with the father figure. It is expressed in the woman in opinions, ideas, preconceptions, philosophy and the pursuit of truth. Jung argued that in women whose animosity is dominant logic would be stronger than sexuality. The animus appears in fantasies and dreams, and is projected onto actual male characters that the woman encounters during her lifetime, especially in relationships. The animus also goes through four modes, corresponding to developmental stages:

A male figure associated with physical strength, muscles, an athletic figure who appears in dreams and fantasies.

The ability to plan and direct things in advance. This male representation is behind women's aspiration to be independent and pursue a career of their own.

A figure of a learned professor, identified with words and ideas.

The embodiment of the spiritual meaning of existence. Similar to the anime in the character of Sophia, he appears in dreams as a spiritual guide and mediator between the conscious and the unconscious in the woman's psyche.

According to Jung, the best way for a woman to connect with the animus and live with it is to ask questions, question opinions and ideas, and look for their source.

Back to: list of Jungian Archetypes

Jungian Archetypes

The Self

The Shadow

Persona