Duration of the online course: 1 hours and 2 minutes
4.2
(5)
Understanding psychotherapy means understanding how people change. This free online course invites you into the central questions that have shaped modern psychology: Why do we repeat patterns that hurt us? What motivates our choices beyond what we can easily explain? And how do relationships, childhood experiences, and inner conflict shape the way we love, work, cope, and grow?
Through an accessible tour of major thinkers, you will explore psychotherapy as more than a set of techniques. You will see it as a structured way of listening, making meaning, and reducing suffering by bringing hidden assumptions and emotional dynamics into awareness. The learning experience balances big ideas with practical reflection, helping you connect foundational concepts to everyday life—your own and the lives of others.
The course introduces key psychoanalytic perspectives, including Freud’s view of the mind and the tension between immediate impulses and the demands of reality, as well as the transformative role of sublimation—how difficult or chaotic energies can be redirected into creative and socially constructive pathways. You will also encounter Anna Freud’s work on defence mechanisms and their protective purpose, and you will learn how these inner strategies can be both helpful and limiting depending on when and how they are used.
As the course moves forward, it broadens into approaches that emphasize development and relationships. You will reflect on early emotional life, attachment, and the environment that supports a stable sense of self. Ideas associated with Klein, Bowlby, and Winnicott deepen your understanding of maturity, bonding, and what makes a healthy individual—and, by extension, a healthier society. You will also consider Lacan’s account of how identity forms and why self-image can bring a persistent sense of mismatch between inner experience and outward presentation.
To ground theory in recognizable human concerns, the course revisits famous concepts with a modern lens, treating them as interpretive frameworks rather than rigid claims. It also highlights an influential alternative tool for studying the unconscious: Jung’s word association method, which approaches inner material differently from purely interpretive analysis. By the end, you will have a richer vocabulary for describing mental life, greater empathy for complexity, and a clearer map of psychotherapy’s most influential ideas—useful for students, professionals, and anyone investing in self-understanding.
Video class: Psychotherapy
03m
Exercise: What is the primary qualification for going to therapy, according to the text?
Video class: PSYCHOTHERAPY - Sigmund Freud
07m
Exercise: What concept introduced by Sigmund Freud focuses on the need to balance immediate gratification with pragmatic needs?
Video class: Freud on: Sublimation
05m
Exercise: What concept, introduced by Sigmund Freud, explains the process of channeling primitive, destructive energies into positive, constructive activities?
Video class: PSYCHOTHERAPY - Anna Freud
06m
Exercise: What is the primary role of defence mechanisms according to Anna Freud's work?
Video class: PSYCHOTHERAPY - Melanie Klein
06m
Exercise: What key concept in Kleinian psychoanalysis is described as an enormous psychological achievement and marks the first path to genuine maturity?
Video class: PSYCHOTHERAPY - John Bowlby
06m
Video class: PSYCHOTHERAPY - Donald Winnicott
06m
Exercise: What does Donald Winnicott suggest is the ultimate foundation for a healthy society according to the text?
Video class: PSYCHOTHERAPY - Jacques Lacan
08m
Exercise: According to Jacques Lacan, what significant event in childhood contributes to the formation of the self and can lead to feelings of alienation due to the discrepancy between one's inner experience and outward appearance?
Video class: Freud's Oedipus Complex Can IMPROVE Your Sex Life
06m
Exercise: According to the discussion about the Oedipus complex, why is it important to interpret Freud's idea less literally and more as a guiding narrative?
Video class: Carl Jung’s Word Association Test
06m
Exercise: In the study of the unconscious mind outlined in the text, which technique did Carl Jung develop that differs from Freud’s interpretive methods?
1 hours and 2 minutes of online video course
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Course comments: Psychotherapy
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I'd like to get in gear with other people and develop the best way to get in gear without feeling under pressure on myelaborating my thoughts properly