Psychoanalytic Theory, Essay Example

Depression is referred to as a state of low mood and a feeling of aversion to activity. Depression may show up as dysfunction, but in some cases, it is an adaptive defense mechanism for an individual. The Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders refers depression as being an experience in a person involving feelings of sadness, hopelessness and helplessness. In traditional colloquy, being “depressed” is synonymous to a feeling of sadness. This paper looks into theories that explain depression and evaluates their applicability in deriving the true meaning of depression.

Psychoanalytic theory is part of the Psychological theories in explaining depression. The theory provides explanations for why individuals behave, think, and feel the way they do in individual terms. In this theory, personality factors, early experiences and history as well as interpersonal relationships are the major elements significance to explaining the causes of depression (Mark). The approaches in these theories focus on the interrelationship between the mind, emotional and motivational forces that interact shaping personality. Freud is a great scholar who proposed this theory. His argument is that the mind has both the conscious and the unconscious part. The two come into conflict regularly and the result is a phenomena referred to as depression (Mark).

The theory suggests that in such conflicts the solution is based on understanding early developmental conflicts including gaining affection, trust, and successful interpersonal relationships, in an attempt to overcome depression. From the Psychoanalysts arguments, depression results from anger that converts to self-hatred that eats up the inside of an individual. A good example is a child who is raised in a family by irresistible parents. Out of fear and guilt, this child represses anger to parents and consequently turns it inwards. Later, it becomes literally an anger directed to his conscious mind therefore resulting to depression (Mark).

Narrative Therapy is psychotherapy that uses narratives. The idea came to be in the early 1970s and 1980s. An Australian, Michael White, developed this idea during this period. The approach was very popular in North America and led to the publication of books in 1991 including, Narrative as a Means to Therapeutic Ends (White 10).

The narrative therapy focus is less on individual pathology. Its main concentration lies on the socio-cultural factors that lead to depression in an individual. The therapy is ideal in helping people “re-author” their own lives basing on how they would prefer their world to be in reality (White 15). A therapist practicing narrative therapy looks into factors for instance gender inequality, corporate stress, poverty, racism, demoralizing messages, community isolation, culture of perfectionism, and lack of connection. He uses these to assist him in tackling the source of depression and ultimately find a cure for the individual’s depression (White 15-16).

Narrative therapy argues that individual identities are shaped through providing accounts of individual lives found in narratives. A narrative therapist interest, lies in helping individuals to describe their modes of living, rich stories and trajectories as well as possibilities. Focusing on problems’ effects rather than inside problems of an individual is the concept behind Narrative Therapy. The objectification or externalization of a specific problem causing depression makes it easier to conduct an investigation and make evaluations on what influences the particular problem has on an individual that causes depression (White 22).

From the Psychoanalytic theories, the causes of the depression are mainly personality factors, early experiences and history as well as interpersonal relationships meaning that they influence an individual and internally causes a depressed mind. Using narrative approaches helps in solving the depression through conceptualizing and objectifying these personality factors that are too difficult to explain literally. Through Narrative approaches, the depressed child can recover fast and develop affection, trust, and successful interpersonal relationships thereby reducing and whiling away the depression.

Works Cited

Mark, D. Psychology of Depression- Psychodynamic Theories. 01 Aug. 2007. 19^th Sep. 2007    <http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=13003&cn=5>

White, M. Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: WW Norton, 1990.