Chapter 3 - The Psychoanalytic Approach

Question 1

What is free association?

Answer 1

A procedure used in psychoanalysis in which patients say whatever comes into their mind.

ex. the therapist says, ‘mother’ and the client immediately responds with ‘witch.

Question 2

What was a startling discovery with free association?

Answer 2

Uncovered traumatic sexual experiences (usually from childhood)

• claimed that this caused the hysteria

Question 3

What is the topographic model?

Answer 3

Freud’s original model of personality structure, in which personality is divided into three different levels of awareness.
1. conscious
2. the preconscious
3. the unconscious

Question 4

What is the conscious in Freuds topographic model?

Answer 4

the part of personality that contains the thoughts we are currently aware of

Question 5

What is the preconscious in Freuds topographic model?

Answer 5

the part of personality that contains thoughts that can be brought into awareness with little difficulty.

Ex. what did you have for breakfast? Who was your third-grade teacher? What did you do last Saturday night?

Question 6

What is the unconscious in Freuds topographic model?

Answer 6

The vast majority of thoughts, and the most important from a psychoanalytic viewpoint

This is material to which you have no immediate access.

Cannot bring to conscious unless in extreme conditions

unconscious material is responsible for much of your everyday behavior

Question 7

What is Freuds structural model?

Answer 7

divides personality into the id, the ego, and the superego.

personality as made up of parts often not at peace with one another.

Question 8

Structural Model: What is Id?

Answer 8

the part of personality concerned with immediate gratification of needs.

Only structure at birth

Selfish - only based on pleasure

Kept in check by adult personality

Also uses wish fulfillment (if somethings not there - it imagines what it wants)

Question 9

Structural Model: What is ego?

Answer 9

part of personality that considers external reality while mediating between the demands of the id and the superego.

Satisfy Id impulses in a socially acceptable way

Considers consequences

Question 10

Structural Model: What is The super ego?

Answer 10

represents society’s—and, in particular, the parents’—values and standards.

conscience , morality based on what society views as moral

Children often dont have this

People with too much of this: suffer with moral anxiety

Question 11

What is the Triebe?

Answer 11

idea that human behavior is motivated by strong internal forces (called: drives or instincts)

Question 12

What are the two categories on instincts?

Answer 12

libido: the life or sexual instinct,

Thanatos: death or aggressive instinct

Earlier suggested they opposed
Later suggested they were intertwined

Question 13

What are the defense mechanisms he talks about?

Answer 13

Devices the ego uses to keep threatening material out of awareness and thereby reduce or avoid anxiety.

Question 14

Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Repression…

Answer 14

active effort by the ego to push threatening material out of consciousness or to keep that material from ever reaching consciousness

Ex. boy sees father hit mother. When later asked he may say he didnt see anything. Not lying - just repressed it cuz horrifying

Drains our ability to function

Question 15

Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Sublimination…

Answer 15

“Only successful defense mechanism”

Ego channels threatening unconscious impulses into socially acceptable actions.

Ex. express aggressive id impulses by playing an aggressive style of hockey or football. - Socially rewarded by being good at the sport

Question 16

Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Displacement…

Answer 16

channeling our impulses to nonthreatening objects.

Unlike sublimation, these displaced impulses don’t lead to social rewards

Ex. if angry at spouse - might direct it at coworkers.

He argued much irrational fears came from this.
- Ex. a fear of horses expressed by a client’s son was really a displaced fear of the father, who was symbolized in the child’s mind as the powerful horse.

Question 17

Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Denial…

Answer 17

we refuse to accept that certain facts exist.

Insist something is not true despite all the evidence saying it is

Question 18

Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Reaction Formation…

Answer 18

hide from threatening unconscious ideas or urges by acting in a manner opposite to our unconscious desires

Ex. woman who constantly tells people how much she loves her mother could be masking strong unconscious hatred for her mother.

Question 19

Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Intellectualization…

Answer 19

remove the emotional content from the thought before allowing it into awareness

Ex. Under the guise of pondering the importance of wearing seat belts, a woman might imagine her husband in a gruesome automobile accident.

Question 20

Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Projection…

Answer 20

projecting the impulse onto another person

The woman who thinks everyone in her neighborhood is committing adultery may be harboring sexual desires for the married man living next door.

Question 21

What are the psychosexual stages of development?

Answer 21

The innate sequence of development made up of stages characterized by primary erogenous zones and sexual desires.

Usually pass through the stages as children.
Have healthy personality as adults

If they struggle to pass through phases, result is fixation

Question 22

What happens when adults with fixation are stuck in a particular stage of development?

Answer 22

less energy available for normal adult functioning, but also the adult is said to express behaviors characteristic of the stage at which the energy is fixated.

Question 23

Stage of Development: What is Oral?

Answer 23

• first 18 months of life,
• the mouth, lips, and tongue are the primary erogenous zones, that is, the source of pleasure

-Traumatic weaning or feeding problems during this stage can result in fixation and the development of an oral personality

• Personality Result:

adults with an oral personality tend to be dependent on others

excessive levels of aggression

need for oral satisfaction: They may smoke or drink excessively and are constantly putting their hands to their mouth.

Question 24

Stage of Development: What is Anal?

Answer 24

-Around 18 months

-anal region becomes the most important erogenous zone

• Time kids are toilet trained
• Personality result:

orderly and rigid

can also be stubborn or even generous,
depending on how the toilet training progressed.

Question 25

Stage of Development: What is phallic?

Answer 25

• ages 3 to 6
• when the penis or clitoris becomes the most important erogenous zone.

-End of this period= children experience the Oedipus complex, Freud argued that children at this age develop a sexual attraction for their opposite-sex parent.

Question 26

Stage of Development: Phallic
What is:
- castration anxiety

• penis envy

Answer 26

-castration anxiety:
a fear that their father will discover their thoughts and cut off their penis. If the boy has seen his sister’s genitals, he is said to conclude that this fate has already befallen her

• penis envy:
  upon seeing male genital a desire to have a penis, coupled with feelings of inferiority and jealousy because of its absence.

Question 27

Stage of Development: Phallic

How do children pass the Oedipus complex?

Answer 27

children repress their desire for their opposite-sex parent, whom they realize they can never have as long as the other parent is around

Then start identifying with same sex parent- then take on masculine / or feminine characteristics

adopting the parents’ values and standards paves the way for the emergence of the superego

Question 28

Are people ever free of the Oedipal desires?

Answer 28

NO, just repressed

Can influence our behavior later in life

Question 29

Stage of Development: What is latency?

Answer 29

Sexual desires abate during these years, and boys and girls are largely uninterested in each other.

Question 30

Stage of Development: What is genital?

Answer 30

• Puberty Hits

-Erogenous urges return and are focused in the adult genital regions.

-If a child has progressed to this genital stage without leaving large amounts of libido fixated at earlier stages, normal sexual functioning is possible.

Question 31

What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?

1. Dreams

Answer 31

• Dreams: a type of wish fulfillment; our dreams represent the things we desire.

distinction between the manifest content of a dream (what the dreamer sees and remembers)

and the latent content (what is really being expressed).

common dream symbols:
A house represents the human body, one’s parents are disguised as king and queen, children appear as small animals, birth is associated with water, a train journey is a symbol for dying,

Question 32

What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?

2. Projective tests

Answer 32

Tests designed to assess unconscious material by asking test takers to respond to ambiguous stimuli.

(Inky pages)

Question 33

What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?

3. Free Association

Answer 33

Say aloud whatever thoughts come to mind, even if they are not what you expect and even if you are a little surprised or embarrassed by what comes out.

Goal: bypass the censoring mechanism the ego employs.

Question 34

What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?

4. Freudian Slips

Answer 34

slips of the tongue:
A husband might refer to his wife by her maiden name

or say that her mind is really her “breast” feature.

The husband who uses his wife’s maiden name may unconsciously wish he’d never married this woman.

Question 35

What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?

5. Hypnosis

Answer 35

He came to believe that the ego was somehow put into a suspended state during a deep hypnotic trance, which allowed the hypnotist to bypass the ego and get directly to unconscious material

Drawbacks: not all clients are responsive to hypnotic suggestion.

Question 36

What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?

6. Accidents

Answer 36

apparent accidents are in fact intentional actions stemming from unconscious impulses.

Clients who claim to accidentally forget their regular therapy appointment might be displaying what Freud called resistance.

Consciously, the clients believe they simply did not remember the appointment. Unconsciously, there has been a deliberate effort to thwart a therapist who may be close to uncovering threatening unconscious material

Question 37

What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?

6. Symbolic Behaviour

Answer 37

Symbolic actions pose no threat to the ego because they are not perceived for what they are

Ex. Adult man hates his mom.

Buys daisy doormat

Cuz mom has daisies all over her house

Symbolic for him stepping on his mother

Question 38

What is psychoanalysis?

Answer 38

The system of psychotherapy developed by Freud that focuses on uncovering the unconscious material responsible for a patient’s disorder.

Question 39

What is transference and countertransference?

Answer 39

Transference: emotions associated with people from the past are displaced onto the therapist. For example, a client might talk to and act toward the therapist as if the therapist were a deceased parent

Countertransference: therapists displace their own feelings toward other individuals onto the client.

Question 40

Popular Projective Tests: Rorschach inkblot test

Answer 40

10 cards, each containing nothing more than a blot of ink, sometimes in more than one color. Test takers are instructed to describe what they see in the images.

Question 41

Popular Projective Tests: Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Answer 41

series of ambiguous pictures. Test takers are asked to tell a story about each picture

relationship between the people are intentionally vague. Thus, test takers may see love, guilt, anger, or grief in the faces.

Question 42

Popular Projective Tests: Human Figure Drawing test

Answer 42

Ask to draw a person (sometimes like family tree etc) seen as an indicator of psychological problems, particularly in children

Take note of those who draw:
-No people with smiles
-Ghoul like creatures

Question 43

People argued the projective tests were useless.
What are the counter arguments?

Answer 43

1. newer, more rigorous systems for coding Rorschach responses have proved far more reliable than earlier methods
2. Hard to establish validity with these types of tests
   Ex. If a therapist concludes from an inkblot test that a client has a certain unconscious conflict, what objective evidence of that conflict can the therapist provide to establish the validity of this claim?

Question 44

Strengths of Freud:

Answer 44

Freud’s greatest achievement probably consisted in taking neurotic patients seriously.

first system of psychotherapy.

popularizing and promoting many important psychological concepts

Question 45

Criticisms of Freud:

Answer 45

Might not have been original (one investigator discovered that between 1870 and 1880 at least seven books were published that included the word unconscious in the title) (Fyodor Dostoyevski used: nconsciously motivated behaviors, erotic symbolism in dreams, intrapsychic conflict, and even hints of an Oedipus complex)

many of the hypotheses generated from the theory are not testable.