Theory of Counseling Application Paper. Application of Psychoanalytic Therapy as a Clinical Solution of Marital Infidelity in Married Couples

Application of Psychoanalytic Therapy as a Clinical Solution of Marital Infidelity in Married Couples
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 Application of Psychoanalytic Therapy as a Clinical Solution of Marital Infidelity in Young Couples
Marital infidelity is a violation of a married couple's stated or assumed contract of emotional and sexual exclusivity. Forms of marital infidelity include being unfaithful or having an affair outside the marriage contract. Despite the declining divorce cases in the United States, it is still a common phenomenon, with infidelity ranking as the single major cause (Wagner, 2020). The complex nature of infidelity implies a variety and sometimes intertwining reasons that cause people to cheat. Psychological explanations can only partially explain why people cheat and, to some extent, can provide preventive or reconciling solutions. Given the impact of cheating on the affected's physical and mental well-being, a strong understanding of the phenomena behind the phenomena is critical for the arrival of potential solutions. Therapy, defined within a theoretical approach, is among the critical ways of arriving at the understanding. The paper will focus on psychoanalytic therapy as among the critical conceptual theories utilized in modern studies and clinical approaches in solving infidelity issues among young couples. 
Conceptual Aspects of Psychoanalytic Therapy
According to Sigmund Freud, human nature's behavior is determined by unconscious motivations, irrational forces, and biological drives (Corey, 2013, p. 64). These forces are shaped or evolve in the first years of life, and therefore. At the same time, they have a biological aspect in terms of inheritance, and they are also shaped by the environment in which individuals grow and develop. Central to the theory is the concept of life instincts. Life instincts are vital survival aspects of people and serve creativity, development, and growth. Often, instincts drive people to strive to avoid pain and, instead, chase pleasure. This is particularly key in relationships among couples because it consists of both pain and pleasure. The desire to seek pleasure while avoiding pain may result in people seeking emotional or sexual support outside of marriage. In his psychoanalytic view, Freud stipulated that human nature consists of three systems: the id, the ego, and the superego. 
The ID
In the Freudian view, the ID system of personality resides in the subconscious. The id is the original personality system and the only system present at birth (Corey, 2013, p. 65). It is where instinct resides and the only source of psychic energy. It is immoral, illogical, unorganized, insistent, blind, and demanding and prefers pleasure to tension where it only serves immediate gratification and instinctual needs. The system never matures, does not think. It is unconscious and only wishes to act even out of awareness. 
The Ego
The ego acts as the executive that regulates, controls, and governs personality by mediating between the id and the external environment (Corey, 2013, p. 65). It is a home of rationality and intelligence that formulates actions that lead to the satisfaction of needs by controlling the blind impulse of the id. The ego is ruled by the principle of reality, which discerns mental images from the real world's realities. 
The Superego
The superego plays the judicial role in personality by the formulation of a moral code concerned with whether an action is right or wrong. Therefore, it focuses on the ideal rather than the real and always seeks perfection rather than pleasure. It represents the values and ideals handed down by people, including society, involved in people's early lives. It persuades the ego to pursue moralistic objectives instead of immediate pleasure and is related to the idea of punishment and reward. Rewards include self-love and pride, while punishment includes guilt and the feeling of inferiority. 
The Concept of Unconsciousness
Levels of consciousness and the concept of unconsciousness are vital in understanding personality and behavior. Since the unconscious cannot be directly studied, it can only be inferred from behavior (Corey, 2013) by postulating dreams, wishes, conflicts, slips of the tongue, forgetfulness, and posthypnotic suggestion. Compared to unconsciousness, consciousness is just but a small part of the mind. The unconscious is the storage of repressed material, memories, experiences, and motivations and needs inaccessible by the conscious.  The contents of the unconscious are the drivers of the id system of personality. Therefore, psychoanalytic therapy aims to interrogate the unconscious to uncover the causes of behavior, the meaning of symptoms, and to understand the repressed material that challenges the ego and burdens the superego systems. 
Appropriateness of Psychoanalytic Theory in Marital Infidelity
Often, married men and women live in secret double lives, existing in a perpetual state of ambivalence in which they cannot resolve the apparent inherent love triangles (Josephs, 2018). In Freud's hypothesis, adult romantic relationships and love triangles are ubiquitous because of the ubiquitous nature of childhood oedipal conflicts. Therefore, according to Freudian theory, young children wish to be sexually involved with the opposite sex parent. Often, children reconcile with these feelings by developmentally accepting the mechanism of monogamy. However, where these conflicts are not reconciled, children become embroiled in endless love triangles once they become adults. Taking this perspective, actions that lead to infidelity are shaped by childhood experiences. The factors that determine whether a child reconciles with the early life conflicts cannot be directly discerned because they are buried in the unconscious mind (Corey, 2013). 
According to Nielsen (2017), there are five central psychoanalytic domains that therapy should target. These include underlying divergent subjective experiences, underlying issues, transferences, acceptance, and projective identification. The psychoanalytic approach to therapy must focus on both systematic processes and underlying issues. A typical example of a systematic process involves nagging. When one partner feels nagged, they tend to withdraw, and the withdrawal results in more nagging, which then increases the distance between couples. Focusing on such a system alone negates the importance of underlying issues. The underlying issues may include sensitivities, fears, and hopes: often, fundamental human concerns (Nielsen, 2017). Partners in a relationship hope for love, understanding, concern, closeness, and appreciation while they fear abandonment, domination, incompetence, and disapproval. These characteristics often operate in the unconscious, so some couples may not express them consciously. As argued by Freud, the id resides in the unconscious and is often seeking pleasure over pain (Corey, 2013). Thus, in situations where fear trounces hope, the most immediate action for gratification is to escap...