ABSTRACT

In the Freud-based, psychodynamic view of mental processes, feelings and emotions are basically intra-psychic phenomena. Freud's three-part division of the psyche into id, ego and superego is one way of describing both the historical development and the structure of the mental processes that from infancy to adulthood do the work of preserving our psychological balance. The objective of psychotherapy is often to make possible or facilitate a change in behaviour and/or an expansion of the range of our conscious knowledge concerning ourselves and our interactions with others. Psychotherapy is a way of treating diseases of the mind from within the dynamic processes of that mind. This is especially the case in relation to that province of mind known as the unconscious or the dynamic unconscious. As many psychoanalysts have begun to stress more and more, for whatever reasons, we humans seem bound to others by love.