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At this point, some clarity in what I understand psychoanalysis to be, might seem worthwhile. However, I am going to avoid that issue. Psychoanalysis is a very wide discipline, based on many different theoretical positions and any attempt to even summarise these positions risks inadvertently leaving out some important area of psychoanalytic theory and practice. What I propose to do instead is to try to suggest five essential components of a psychoanalytic understanding of the human psyche, in a manner that might, I hope, be acceptable to almost all psychoanalytic theoreticians:
That a significant part of the human psyche lies concealed beyond consciousness and functions dynamically, in a manner that is not accessible to consciousness: what psychoanalysts commonly refer to as the unconscious or the internal world of each individual. This is the part of the mind that stems from our earliest existence and where the origins of all our emotions are rooted. There is frequently conflict between this unconscious area of the psyche and other parts of the mind that, through nurture, socialisation and developmental experiences, later evolve into those parts of the psyche where consciousness and, in the absence of severe psychopathology, a coherent sense of self reside; rooted in both subjectivity and reality. It is an area of the mind where we can more freely reflect and reason.
That, very early in our mental development, representations of our primary relationships are internalised within the unconscious mind which, though influenced by the reality of such relationships, do not necessarily reflect their historical actuality. These internalised representations strongly influence all subsequent relationships throughout life. It is the nature of these internalisations which, along with conflicting emotions, determines the dynamics of the unconscious.
That much of the conflict between the dynamic demands of the unconscious mind and higher levels of consciousness is repressed and so prevented from becoming available within conscious awareness.
That the dynamics of this conflict, particularly in relation to the internalised representations of early relationships, is played out within the analytic encounter between patient and analyst. We call this the transference.
That patients invariably resist, whether to a greater or lesser extent, insight into the nature of this unconscious conflict and how it is represented within the transference.