Question

You are afraid of musical theatre but do not know why. Name and describe three approaches that a traditional psychanalyst may use to access the unconscious roots of this fear and speculate as to what they may find

Answer 1

The three ways that a traditional psychoanalyst would use to identify the unconscious roots of fear include:

1. Through reaching the repressed through free association : this would allow a person to identify the thoughts that he had already suppressed. This would be through the person lying on the couch in a free associate state and as they would be saying anything coming to their minds, there would be emergence of repetitive motifs and smaller details would come up that could establish the present relationship with fear.

2. Analysis of the dreams: here, repressed ideas come to surface. The analyst does this by listening to what the patient would say about his dream and try and gather meanings from them, thus trying to identify the deeper meanings.

3. Freudian slips: this method is where there would be paraphrases, named as Freudian slips. The analyst would catch on thesenslip of tongues, that would pave the path for the unconscious or hidden meaning leading to the fear.

4. Ink blots: the ink blot is an ambiguous technique, not having a particular meaning, but looking at it different people imagine different things, that their unconscious asks them to, and thus connections are made.