Metapsychology

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Metapsychology (Greek: meta 'beyond, transcending', and ψυχολογία 'psychology')[1] is a speculative psychology which seeks to understand the structure of the mind in terms which may not be empirically verifiable.[2]

Metapsychology is also used to refer to a theoretically explicit psychology,[3] as well as to one that seeks to unify mind and body in a person-centered context.[4]

Freud

Psychoanalytic metapsychology is concerned with the fundamental assumptions of the Freudian theory.[1] Freud originally used the term in his correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess, to refer to his addition of unconscious processes to the conscious ones of traditional psychology: “I would ask you seriously whether I may use the term metapsychology for my psychology which takes one beyond consciousness.[5]

Subsequently he came to use it to cover a comprehensive description of any mental process[6] - one comprising dynamic forces, quantitative relations and structural elements in the human mind.[7]

In the 1910s, he began writing a series of 12 essays, to be collected as Preliminaries to a Metapsychology. While five were published independently, the remaining seven remained unpublished, Freud replying to Lou Andreas-Salome in 1919 as follows: “Where is my Metapsychology? In the first place it remains unwritten”.[8]

Some of Freud's followers, like George S. Klein, came to privilege his clinical thinking over his metapsychology.[9]

Gerbode

The modern metapsychology movement was founded by psychiatrist Frank A. Gerbode, and stresses therapy as a way of developing the spirit for personal growth, rather than as an answer to mental disorders.[10]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Metapsychology Online Medical Dictionary
  2. ↑ Definition of metapsychology at Merriam-Webster
  3. ↑ Donald Meltzer, Studies in Extended Metapsychology (2009)
  4. ↑ Applied Metapsychology
  5. ↑ Quoted in Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1964) p. 305
  6. ↑ Jones, p. 434-5
  7. ↑ Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for our Time (1989) p. 362
  8. ↑ Sigmund Freud, On Metapsychology (PFL 11) p. 102
  9. ↑ Gay, p. 768
  10. ↑ What is metapsychology

Further Reading

M. M. Gill/P. S. Holzman eds, Psychology versus Metapsychology (1976)

F. A. Gerbode, Beyond Psychology: An Introduction to Metapsychology (1995)