The Psychoanalysis Approach Applied to Richard Webber from Grey's

Anatomy

This essay is a psychoanalysis approach applied to one of the main characters of

the CBS’ sitcom How I Met Your Mother, Barney Stinson.

Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, was the founding father of psychoanalysis. It

is a theory which explains how psychological processes operate in the human psyche.
Freud proposes a psycho-dynamic model which consists in the division of mind in three
parts, conscious (thoughts and perceptions), preconscious (memories and stored
knowledge near to conscious elements, and fears and doubts near to unconscious
elements) and unconscious elements (Selfish motives and aggression, and the deepest
socially unacceptable desires). This gives rise to Freud’s tripartite personal model. This
theory explains that the human mind is composed for three parts: ego, superego and id.
Ego is the part activated by the conscious part of the mind, superego is activated by the
conscience and id is the part activated by the unconscious and where the libido is
located.

Two behavioral principles rule the human psyche. Reality principle is related to
the ego. It recognizes the need to conform social standards and the need to repress
pleasurable instincts. On the contrary, pleasure principle is related to the id, and it is the
self-necessity to ignore moral boundaries achieving instantaneous satisfaction of desire.
Ego should be ruled by reality principle and it should repress urges of the id. If this does
not happen, we could be talking about a mental disorder. This disorder could set off a
neurosis, when Id imposes itself partially over the ego; or a psychosis, when Id takes
over it disconnecting one from reality. Both disorders provoke physical and emotional
symptoms like anxiety, depression and hysteria and it can activate defense mechanisms
like inversion (obsession with opposite to the desired), projection (prioritizing to other
people or to objects), regression (coming back to an earlier mental state) or
rationalization (assuming arguments to justify urges).

Freud claims that the following six stages of are responsible for development of
the individual psyche. First is the oral stage and it takes place in the breast-feeding
period (1-20 months) with the activation of one’s libido, which is focused on one’s lips.
If it is not properly resolved it could provoke a need for oral stimulation (oral fixation),
like eating disorders, alcoholism, smoking. It is followed by anal stage during the toilet-
training period when we develop our bodily control thanks to a successful supervision
by parents. A bad resolution of this stage could be the cause of an anal- retentive or an
anal-expulsive personality, or even a sublimation of aggressive impulses (sadism). The
third is the phallic stage, during the age of 3 to 6 years when we find out the recognition
of our genitalia as erogenous zones, and we also compare it with other children’s. It
carries us to the recognition of the differences between male and female genitalia. A bad
resolution of this stage could bring to a confusion of our gender identity and gender
socialization. In this stage, Oedipus complex is activated in boys, when boys focus their
libido on their mothers and they see their fathers as enemies, being prompted by Id to
kill the father while Ego force them to accept their father’s superior strength. If Oedipus
complex is not properly resolved, it could be the cause of a fixation with mothers and
mother figures, and a fear of castration by the father. Concurrently, Electra complex in
girls is activated, when girls notice the lack of penis and the inferiority of clitoris,
redirecting libido towards their father while ego prompts them to overcome penis envy.
A bad resolution causes a deviant gender identity, an extreme need to dominate and to
seduce men and a extreme submissiveness. The next stage is the latency stage, in pre-
pubescence (6 years old to puberty) where sexual urges are no evident. The effects are
considered positive when children start to relate to parent of same sex (overcoming
Oedipus and Electra complex) and to socialize with friends of same sex. The effects are
considered negative when they develop an inferiority complex. Next, Genital stage in
time of puberty and adolescence renewal sexual urges toward opposite sex and the
success depend on the transition through the earlier psycho-sexual stages. The last one
is the stage of sexual maturity, from adolescence to onward. It causes the activation of
focus on sexual relations for the purpose of reproduction. Two negative effects could be
caused, a non-reproductive sex which is perceived as a sign of perversion, and an
obsession with sex which is a sign of degeneration.

Barney Stinson is a guy of about twenty who lives in Manhattan, NY. He is

presented as a handsome well-dressed guy who has a great career and salary, and whose
only worry in life is to go to bed with the highest number of good-looking under-thirty-
year-old women. Furthermore, at the beginning of the show he has an extreme aversion
with engagement. But this behavior is as the result of complicated situations of his life.
 Barney grew up in Staten Island. He grew up with his single mother, Loretta
Stinson, and his older black brother James. His mother never took great care of him
while he was growing. To pass the buck, she was often lying to her kids. The ignorance
about the true identity of his father supposed a problem for Barney. His fixation for
knowing how was his father obliges him to ask to her mother anxiously. To protect him,
Loretta told Barney that Bob Baker, TV host of The Price is Right game show, was his
father. Barney's real father was Jerome Whittaker, who child Barney knew as his "Uncle
Jerry". They have a short time relation since a furious Loretta decided that Barney
would never see his uncle again. A carefree mother, a lack of a stable father figure and
all the lies that surround and protect Barney makes him to have problems with the
resolution of the anal stage. The brief period of time that Barney spent with his uncle
(and real father) was not time enough for Barney to relate this person with the paternal
figure.

After graduated in college, hippie Barney started to work in a coffee shop with
his girlfriend Shannon. He had planned to join the Peace Corps and go to Nicaragua
with her and lose their virginity after they got married. But he discovered she had been
cheating on him with a businessman named Greg, who told Barney that the key to
picking up women was money and suits. Then, he recorded a song video trying to
convince her to get back together with him, but it did not work and when he sees her,
both with Greg, both laugh at him. Getting advice from his brother James, Barney lost
his virginity to their mother's 45-year-old friend Rhonda, "The Man Maker", at the age
of 23. From that moment, Barney changed his dress style and personality in order to
look like Greg, quitting his job at the coffee shop and becoming an employee of a big
corporation. On this way, Greg became Barney’s temporary paternal figure. Due to an
inadequate resolution of the anal stage by a non-supervision of parents, an unresolved
phallic stage shows a consistent Oedipus complex in Barney. At this moment, he starts
to see his paternal figure as antagonist, whose id prompts Barney to kill him while his
ego accepts Greg’s superiority. All these conflicts makes Barney a person influenced by
the negative effects of a bad resolved maturity stage, obsessed with non-reproductive
sex, what Freud considers sign of perversion and degeneration. In Barney psyche, it is
clear that it is the pleasure principle what he follows instead of the reality one. He does
not worry to conform to any social standard but he is looking for instantaneous
satisfactions, ignoring any moral boundary. His ego cannot repress his id, which always
imposes over his ego, causing on him a neurosis mental disorder. The term neurosis
comprehends a different number of disorders, between them exist sexual disorders as
already mentioned. Barney suffers a sexual disorder, feeding on his big number of
paraphilia. He has an impulsive necessity to have sex as frequent as he can; but he have
to sleep with those women which at least fulfill his minimum requirements: to be hot
and under thirty . If he does not obtain it, he rapidly has an attack of anxiety manifested
in a hyperactive behavior. In addition, Barney is always resorting to razonalization as
defense mechanism. He turns any pretext into a debt. He commonest mechanism is hear
how someone tell something about how difficult is to hook up with a special type of
woman under a special situation; then he pronounces “challenge accepted” which means
that he has taken this speech as a challenge, independently of how creepy it was. For
example, if Barney listen that some lesbian woman is complained about how difficult is
to hook up with a girl in a straight bar, he immediately will cross-dress to try it; or if
someone says that it is impossible that a twentyish girl could sleep with an
octogenarian, he will try it too. Each situation can turn into a challenge for him, and he
will have the moral obligation to face them. It was in one of those situations when
Barney met the other characters of the sitcom.

The show starts with a future Ted Mosby, the main character, who is telling his
kids the story of how he met their mother. The responsible of the fact that Ted and
Robin meet is Barney, because he introduced them. From this point, Ted will tell how
he looked for the perfect woman to marry her; contrasting with Barney, that will try to
persuade Ted to be single and to enjoy life. The personality of Barney does not change
during the first season, his single goal is to meet women. During the second season, his
friends Marshall and Lily break up and she moves to San Francisco, so Barney gets
excited when he realizes that it is the only time than the three men of the group are
single at the same time. It causes tension between the reality principle and the pleasure
one in Barney. For one hand, he is amazed by the fact that Marshall can help him in his
games to make up, but on the other hand, he feels the necessity to fix the relation
convincing Lily to return to New York for Marshall, and offering his house to stay. But
one night while they are watching TV on Barney’s bed and they just fell asleep, he tells
her to leave. It is impossible for him to spend a night at the same bed with a woman
without make a move. It is due to his rejection to engagement. At the end of the season,
Lily and Marshall become engaged again, and after a big effort to support them in their
social standard relation and being helped by the idea of having an important role during
the wedding, Barney officiates the ceremony.

In the course of the third season, Barney feels really happy about the idea of Ted
and Robin breaking up, because Ted is free again to go out with him. But after an
accident that Barney suffers, he realizes that he starts to feel something about Robin.
During the fourth season, Lily tries to help Barney to get Robin, but he cannot stop
sleeping with other women. Lily gives him an ultimatum but Barney decides to follow
with other women. The idea of a serious relationship with a woman, who in addition is
the ex of his best friend, feels like a violation of a series of invented moral rules, named
“The Bro Code”, which Barney created to give argument to his urges. Later, when Ted
and Robin decide to be “friends with benefits”, Barney’s neurosis raised, provoking an
increase in his sexual encounters; his id imposes over his ego. At the end of the season,
Barney’s love is reciprocal and he starts a relation with Robin. In the fifth season, the
relationship develops with Barney trying to activate his conscience with the imposition
of his superego which causes him a temporary eating disorder. With Barney fighting for
repress his id and an extreme irritable Robin, they realize that their relationship is not
healthy and they break up.

In season six, Barney and James find an un-mailed letter to Sam Gibbs, with a
childhood photo of them and "your son" written on the back. They discovery that Sam is
James' biological father. Then, Loretta offers to tell Barney who his father really is, but
he refuses at first. But when Marshall’s father dies of a heart attack, Barney calls his
mother and tells her that he's ready to meet his father. Barney's father, Jerome, comes to
reconnect with him but he has no intention of getting to know him after seeing that he is
not how Barney expected. Realizing what Barney wants to see, Jerome pretends to drink
and acts crazy to impress Barney, but this leads to them getting arrested. Both get out of
their handcuffs and return to Jerome's house to make a fishing trip. During the trip,
Barney asks his father how he stopped his party lifestyle because he feels "broken".
Jerome says him that he was much more "broken" than Barney is and that the ultimate
challenge is to settle down, but it helps if he is with the right girl. That is the first advice
that Barney take from his father, and it turns Jerome into the paternal figure that Barney
has been looking for during years. This new relationship resolves Barney’s oedipal
conflicts. During this season and the following one, Barney tries to have another serious
relationship with Nora, a workmate of Robin, and after with Quinn, a striper of
Barney’s favorite club. But both relationships were doomed to failure because Barney’s
conscience knows that Robin is his perfect mate. So at the end of the seventh season,
Barney proposed to her and she accepts.

The last two seasons turns around the time after Barney and Robin wedding,
where Ted meets his wife and the story of how he met his wife finishes. This is a time
of changes for Barney, to prove Robin that he can be a sane person, letting that his ego
rules the reality by repressing his id, imposing the reality principle over the pleasure
one, conforming social standards and regulating his deep pleasurable instincts. Barney
tries to take distance from his previous behavior, to become a new person ready for the
thing which previously provoked him fear, the engagement.