At the critical session 'Towards the New Self', a psychology expert called Freud, founder of the school of psychoanalysis, as possessing a pessimistic and deterministic view and added, "Many of his ideas abstract and have no room in the world of science or research."

IBNA: The critical session 'Towards the New Self' was held yesterday evening (Saturday 4 September) at the House of the Literati with participation of psychology experts Hakimeh Ghaderi, Mahdieh Rezay and Sepideh Batebi.

At the outset, Hakimeh Ghaderi referred to Freud's theorizations on psychoanalysis and said, "Social excessive interest in psychoanalysis at the time of Freud caused the emergence of the issue of the Self in psychoanalysis. Self means that individuals seek desired conditions and as they cannot obtain it, they attempt more and more."

Emphasizing upon the fact that self and reach for the ideal condition entails knowledge, he remarked, "Therefore, in this theory knowledge lies next to perception, because sometimes man is not aware of a situation and hence cannot distinguish the desired from the undesirable."

Then Mahdieh Rezayi made a review of Freud's theories and explained, "Freud has resembled man's character to an iceberg where the huge part of it lies underwater. This hidden part stands for human unconscious and the small protruding part makes human consciousness. Also, the area between the two is called the subconscious. For instance, human beings are unconsciously likely to destroy and quarrel.

She regarded Freud as possessing a pessimistic and deterministic view and said, "Freud later renamed his classification as the id, ego and superego and considered one of the main causes of anxiety to be a clash between these sections. One of the main criticisms on Freud is his subjective and abstract concepts because they find no room in the world of science or research."

Then Sepideh Batebi mentioned that psychoanalytic theory never went off and after while was transformed into the subject psychoanalysis or subject relations. She asserted, "At the moment, the theory of psychoanalysis considers the conscious to be larger than the unconscious. The New Psychoanalysis lets the patient know about the treatment procedure and accompany him through this journey."

She then said some of Freud's books are interrelated with social problems of the day and explained, "Freud was the first to make a clear and firm suggestion of the normal and the abnormal in some of his books and these subjects outlived Freud."

Mahdieh Rezayi regarded Jung as a disciple of Freud and said, "One of the main issues of Jung is energy therapy and how energy flows through the characters of individuals. According to Jung, there are different sections within human beings which shape human dynamism and are interpreted as different aspects of femininity/masculinity or introversion/extroversion."

She continued, "Based on the law of physics, energy never wastes away and if it is spent on an activity and then the work is left, the energy will be replaced with a new subject, otherwise it submerges into the individual's unconscious. The individual unconscious such as instincts, desires and experiences, whereas the collective unconscious is a total sum of experiences that are kept in the collective unconscious of humankind, e.g. the concept of God and Satan in the minds of people."

Hakimh Ghaderi continued with explaining the theories of Jung: "Jung believed in four cognitive functions for solving the problem: thinking, feeling, perceiving and intuition. Men can be divided in two groups of introversive and extroversive based on these four functions. Introversive human beings are emotional and intuitive; they suffer from anxiety, stress and obsession, whereas the extroversive individuals have an exterior source of control. Both of these poles should work in harmony and balance with each other. No one is totally introversive or extroversive, but in different situations one pole might become stronger in an individual."

Then Mahdieh Rezayi referred to the theory of Erich Fromm on the context for social forces and said, "Based on this theory, human beings escape from freedom, because if they achieve this they will lose concepts like security and sense of belonging. Therefore, Erich Fromm's theories are based on social contexts especially in war time."

The critical session 'Towards the New Self' was held yesterday evening (Saturday 4 September) at the House of the Literati.

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