SUMMARY
This study answers the question “what exactly do therapists do that make them able to help mentally ill people?!” It’s simple, they use language. This study looks at language and how indispensable it is in the world of therapy. It examines the human personality, how it is developed, how it is altered and how it is cured. Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytical Literary Theory explains that the human personality is created from our tender ages as children. Who grows up to be is made of experiences, whether good or bad, that we have had in our early lives. These experiences after many years are no longer part of our consciousness/conscious thoughts, but they greatly influence our perspective and attitudes towards life. One thing Freud also strongly believed, and is reflected in his theory, is that our minds are divided into three, the preconscious, conscious and unconscious; which he later developed into Id, Ego and Super Ego. Freud says that in our daily lives, our conscious thoughts influence way less than the unconscious. The unconscious thoughts are already bubbling in the background wanting to be noticed. Then at intervals, unexpectedly jumps at us, making us do things that we did not think were in us. What Freud suggests then, is that the best way to live is to find a way to know what we have in our unconscious, repressed thoughts because most likely than not, these thoughts make up our true selves. To do this, Freud introduced “talk therapy”. Just like the modern idea of what therapy is, Freud creates a safe space for his patients, prodding them to express their innermost thoughts. This study termed this “counter repression”. To him, unlocking those thoughts to run free is the only way we can truly know and understand who we are.
