The Theory of Psychoanalysis: Influential Psychoanalysts/Books Along the Way ( Part I )

Did I know anything about psychoanalysis as a child? I seriously doubt it. No one in my family would have had any knowledge about psychoanalysis. Someone may have known about psychiatrists but not psychoanalysts. Of course I was born in the the 1950's when psychoanalysis was popular in large metropolitan cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Atlanta; but I did not know about that then, even though I lived 15 miles outside of Atlanta. Also, psychoanalysis was quite popular on television and in the movies. There were plenty of references to Freudian slips, or being too defensive, or she has a big ego, etc. But again, I had no clue. Did I hear about pyschoanalysis in Highschool? Not that I can recall. We did not have psychology courses in highschool in the late 1960's--at least not in my public highschool. I did not know anyone who had ever been to a psychiatrist and certainly not a psychoanalyst. How about college(1972-75?) I did learn about psychoanalysis in college. I took Introduction to Psychology and first learned about Sigmund Freud and his creation of psychoanalysis, a major school of psychology. Though I do not have much recall about that course, I know from reading other introductory psychology texts that I studied Freud's psychosexual stages of development--oral, anal, first genital, latency, second gential (adolescence) and adulthood. I further learned about the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. But that was about it. This knowledge did not stick with me because it was too foreign to my mind at that time. I even took a sociology course where we studied psychoanalysis. I held onto the text for many years entitled, Ego Psychology and Communication. But again, this information did not stick with me. The material was just too foreign. My girlfiend at the time, now my wife, did give me a copy of Erik Fromm's classic text, The Art of Loving. Be was the first psychoanalyst I recall reading. Then came seminary(1976-79.) Since in college I had considered becoming a marriage and family therapist, and had grown up in the Christian Church, I was very interested in Pastoral Counseling. So I took a few courses in that area. One course I recall used the text by Wayne Oates PhD.,a professor of pastoral counseling, entitled, The Psychology of Religion. That text reintroduced me to Freud, along with several other analysts. Oates had written his PhD dissertation on Sigmund Freud. But Carl Rogers PhD, was all the craze in seminary pastoral counseling courses, so Freud once again faded away. About this time my brother was beginning to study the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, MD. Jung had been a close friend and colleague of Freud but they broke over the issue of spirituality (among other things.) Jung was spiritual and Freud was not. My brother introduced me to Jung's writings. Also at this time I was taking a course in spirituality, and through that course I was also introduced to Jung. But Carl Jung was not on my radar either and that introduction faded away as well. In my first Church( 1979-83), I decided to return to seminary to do a Doctor of Ministry Degree ( D. Min.). My area of research for that project was the interface of spirituality and psychology. Since Jung was the only spiritually minded psychoanalyst I was familiar with, I began to research Jung's psychology and spirituality. This lead me to a few books of his including: Modern Man in Search of a Soul and his Collected Letters. I also browsed his Collected Works. His works that interested me most at that time were: Symbols of Transformation, The Archtypes and the Collective Unconscious, Psychology of Religion, and The Symbolic Life. I did not know at that time that Freud had broken his ties with Jung, and Jung went on to develop his own Jungian Analysis, which is quite different from the Freudian mainstream. While writing this D.Min. project I also ran across the psychoanalyst Rollo May PhD. He first interested me as an Existentialist Therapist. I did not know back then that he was once a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Williamson Alan White (Psychoanalytic) Institute in NY. His book that made the greatest impression on me was Man's Search for Himself. I also did not know back then that the above Institute that Rollo May taught at was an Interpersonalist/Culturalist School of pyschoanalysis. ( More about that later.) It was also during this time that I met my first psychoanalyst who practiced in the town where my first Church was located. I began therapy with him in 1983. He introduced me to the writings of the psychoanalyst Karen Horney, MD. Karen Horney was also a creator of the Interpersonalist/Culturalist Theory of psychoanalysis. This theory of psychoanalysis began in the 1940's and 1950's in the United States and is sometimes called the NeoFreudian Theory. They took Freud's theory in which they were trained, and expanded it to include much more of the cultural influence on our minds and behavoirs. This included the interpersonal relationships with our parents-- thus the names of Interpersonalist/Culturalist/NeoFreudian Theory. I spent several years studying this early USA theory of psychoanalysis. The major contributors to this theory were the analysts: Karen Horney, Clara Thompson, Harry Stack Sullivan, Rollo May, Erich Fromm and Frieda Fromm-Reichman. I mainly read Karen Horney-- including her books: Neurosis and Human Growth and The Neurotic Personality of Our Time. In the last chapter of her Neurosis and Human Growth she compared her present Interpersonalist Theory to Freud's Theory that she had been trained in. This time I was ready to hear what Freud had to say!! This time Freud did not fade away.! Interestingly, at this same time in my life, a new Pastoral Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy book came out that explored the Theory of Psychoanalysis and how it related to pastoral counseling. It was entitled, Contemporary Growth Therapies, and was written by the professor of pastoral psychotherapy Howard Clinebell. He covered Sigmund Freud and the early analysts around him--Jung, Rank, Adler, as well as Anna Freud and Erik Erikson. He went on to write about the Interpersonalists/Culturalists I listed above. So now I was discovering the key early psychoanalysts from Freud and his early circle (Freud died in 1939), through Anna Freud (1936), and Erik Erikson (Anna Freud's student), through the 1950's, 60's and 70's analysts in the USA. (In Part II I will share how I discovered Freud in earnest. Please feel free to ask a question or make a comment.)