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Compare and contrast the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Jung, and Adler.
Different schools of psychology had different approaches to the administration of psychotherapy. Despite the difference in approaches, the principle goal behind them is to foster the wellbeing of the individual. Some of the techniques that therapists can deploy include establishing experiential relationship, deploying dialogue and two way communication and attempts to change the behavior of a person, and strategies aimed at improving the mental health of the patient. The effectiveness of the psychotherapy techniques normally depends on the nature of the psychological problem at hand. The most common theories applied in psychotherapy include the Jungian, psychoanalytic, and Adler’s theories. This paper attempts to compare and contrast the Jungian, Psychoanalytic and Adler’s theories.
The Psychoanalytic theory developed from the works of Sigmund Freud, after which expanded and subsequently criticized into different schools of psychology by Sigmund Freud’s students mainly Alfred Adler and Carl Jung. Freud was the pioneer of psychoanalytic theory, whereby the treatment method based on encouraging the client to converse about memories, relevant associations, and fantasies that were interpreted basing on the Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. The psychoanalytic theory was a psychotherapy technique whose effectiveness depended on free association, interpretations of dream and an analysis of resistance in order to determine cases of repression and unconscious impulses, nervousness and inner conflicts. The theory of personality proposed by Sigmund Freud lays more emphasis on repression and unconscious forces; in addition, the psychoanalytic theory embraces concepts associated with infantile sexuality, and the psyche comprises of ego and superego. The main argument under the psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud bases on the proposition that, human behavior is subjective to irrational drives, and that the larger part of this drives are not conscious. Therefore, any initiative that aims at bringing the irrational drives into awareness faces a significant resistance in various forms depending on the type of technique of psychotherapy applied. Another important contribution of the psychoanalytic theory is that personality is perceived as an inherited constitution; as a result, events that take place during the childhood of a person play an integral role in determining personal development. Psychoanalytic theory also suggests that inner conflicts are always due to differences in the conscious perception of reality and material that has been repressed or unconscious perception, such differences result to mental disturbances characterized by instances of anxiety, neurosis and intense depression. The significant difference between the Psychoanalytic theory and the Adler and Jungian theories was in terms of dreams interpretation. Adler and Jungian theories proposed that dreams could be used for depicting other themes other than themes associated with aggression and sexuality. Jungian theory proposed that dreams are helpful in depicting archetypical material, originality, and the intrinsic drive towards the realization of individualization. A similarity is that both Freud and Jung were of the belief that dreams portrayed some meanings, while Adler was of the perception that dreams depicted how an individual was living. According to the Psychoanalytic theory, dreams serve to disclose repressed material from both the personal and collective unconscious, which are prime source of archetypes in an individual. With respect to the Jungian theory, the interpretation of dreams entailed amplification, which involves requesting the dreamer to keenly focus on the different symbols that he saw in the dream, after which the dreamer must offer many associations about a