The Importance of Early Attachment Relationships in Current Psychoanalysis

Li, Eun Jung; Yu, Jaehak

Abstract

Both psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy are psychiatric modalities for investigating the human mind, especially the unconscious mind. The therapist helps his patients by understanding them through conversation and interpreting their unconscious mind based on their free associations. Therefore, both psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy have emphasized the interpretation of therapist and the insight of patient. However, the patient-therapist interaction is an important factor of therapy in addition to the therapists' interpretation. We defined the meaning and concept of mental development and reviewed the Freud's epigenesist theory, the Klein's position theory and the development theory on post-adolescence. We summarized the ontological motives of mental development and the correlation between the development theory and the psychoanalysis theory. We indicated that the patient-therapist relationship is especially important to children and lower-level personality disorder patients. Therefore, we focused the similarities between the child-mother and the patient-therapist relationships and the development of interaction. We concluded that mental development is the process that brings about new functions and transformation of the individual and continues through his entire life. We suggested that mutual interactions concurrently lead to mental development of individual and the interaction itself. From this point of view, we discuss why the patient's first experience of containing achieved through the patient-therapist relationship serves as a therapeutic factor of psychoanalysis. Finally, we suggest that therapist's rephrasing and summary of their interaction to the patient during the psychoanalysis is one of the key factors of psychoanalysis.