Chapter 3 - The Psychoanalytic Approach Flashcards
What is free association?
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.
What was a startling discovery with free association?
Uncovered traumatic sexual experiences (usually from childhood)
- claimed that this caused the hysteria
What is the topographic model?
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
What is the conscious in Freuds topographic model?
the part of personality that contains the thoughts we are currently aware of
What is the preconscious in Freuds topographic model?
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?
What is the unconscious in Freuds topographic model?
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
What is Freuds structural model?
divides personality into the id, the ego, and the superego.
personality as made up of parts often not at peace with one another.
Structural Model: What is Id?
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)
Structural Model: What is ego?
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
Structural Model: What is The super ego?
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
What is the Triebe?
idea that human behavior is motivated by strong internal forces (called: drives or instincts)
What are the two categories on instincts?
libido: the life or sexual instinct,
Thanatos: death or aggressive instinct
Earlier suggested they opposed
Later suggested they were intertwined
What are the defense mechanisms he talks about?
Devices the ego uses to keep threatening material out of awareness and thereby reduce or avoid anxiety.
Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Repression…
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
Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Sublimination…
“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
Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Displacement…
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.
Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Denial…
we refuse to accept that certain facts exist.
Insist something is not true despite all the evidence saying it is
Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Reaction Formation…
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.
Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Intellectualization…
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.
Defense Mechanism: Explain his views on Projection…
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.
What are the psychosexual stages of development?
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
What happens when adults with fixation are stuck in a particular stage of development?
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.
Stage of Development: What is Oral?
- 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.
Stage of Development: What is Anal?
-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.
Stage of Development: What is phallic?
- 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.
Stage of Development: Phallic
What is:
- castration anxiety
- penis envy
-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.
Stage of Development: Phallic
How do children pass the Oedipus complex?
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
Are people ever free of the Oedipal desires?
NO, just repressed
Can influence our behavior later in life
Stage of Development: What is latency?
Sexual desires abate during these years, and boys and girls are largely uninterested in each other.
Stage of Development: What is genital?
- 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.
What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?
- Dreams
- 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,
What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?
- Projective tests
Tests designed to assess unconscious material by asking test takers to respond to ambiguous stimuli.
(Inky pages)
What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?
- Free Association
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.
What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?
- Freudian Slips
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.
What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?
- Hypnosis
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.
What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?
- Accidents
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
What are the 7 techniques Freud uses to study unconscious thought?
- Symbolic Behaviour
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
What is psychoanalysis?
The system of psychotherapy developed by Freud that focuses on uncovering the unconscious material responsible for a patient’s disorder.
What is transference and countertransference?
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.
Popular Projective Tests: Rorschach inkblot test
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.
Popular Projective Tests: Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
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.
Popular Projective Tests: Human Figure Drawing test
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
People argued the projective tests were useless.
What are the counter arguments?
- newer, more rigorous systems for coding Rorschach responses have proved far more reliable than earlier methods
- 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?
Strengths of Freud:
Freud’s greatest achievement probably consisted in taking neurotic patients seriously.
first system of psychotherapy.
popularizing and promoting many important psychological concepts
Criticisms of Freud:
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.
