Clinical Psychology Flashcards
Clinical psychology is concerned with the study, diagnosis, and treatment of psychological and behavioral disorders
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
The worldview underlying Freudian psychoanalysis has been summarized as ?
“Essentially pessimistic, deterministic, mechanistic, and reductionistic. According to Freud, human beings are determined by irrational forces, unconscious motivations, biological and instinctual needs and drives, and psychosexual events that occurred during the first five years of life.”
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
Freud’s personality theory consists of two separate, but interrelated theories. What are these theories ?
Structural drive theory and developmental theory
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
What is structural drive theory ?
“Structural drive theory posits that personality has three structures, the id, the ego and the superego.”
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
What is the id?
“It is present at birth and consists of the person’s life and death instincts, which serve as the source of all psychic energy. “
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
How does the id operate/ function ?
“the id operates on the basis of pleasure principle as it seeks immediate gratification of its instinctual drives and needs to avoid tension”.
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
What is the ego ?
“It develops at about six months of age. It is the response to the id’s ability to gratify all of its needs and operates on the basis of the reality principle.”
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
How does the ego operate/ function ?
“It defers gratification of the id’s instincts until an appropriate object is available in reality and employs secondary process thinking that is characterized by realistic, rational thinking and planning.”
It also mediates conflicting demands between reality and the superego.
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
What is the superego ?
“emerges when a child is between four and five years of age and represents an internalization of society’s values and standards, as conveyed to the child by his or her parents through their rewards and punishments.”
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
How does the superego operate/ function ?
“it attempts to permanently block the id’s socially unacceptable impulses.”
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
What is developmental drive theory ?
a theory which emphasizes “the sexual drives of the id and proposes that an individual’s personality is formed during childhood as the result of certain experiences that occur during 5 predetermined psychosexual stages of development.”
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
Name the 5 psychosexual stages of developmental drive theory ?
Oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
True or false: Over or under gratification during each phase of the 5 psychosexual stages of developmental drive theory, leads to a respective dependent personality outcome ?
True
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
_________ is an essential component of Freud’s personality theory.
Anxiety
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
What role does anxiety play in Freud’s personality theory?
“Described as an unpleasant feeling, Anxiety is linked with excitement of the autonomic nervous system and proposed that its function is to alert the ego to an impending internal or external threat., to danger arising from a conflict between the id’s impulses and the demands of the superego or reality or from an actual threat in the external environment.”
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
What are defense mechanisms ?
The ego’s attempt to ward off danger when rational and or realistic means do not work.
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
What are the two characteristics of defense mechanisms ?
Defense mechanisms operate on an unconscious level and may serve to deny or distort reality.
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
Name and define the different types of defense mechanisms.
Repression: “when the id’s drives and needs are excluded from conscious awareness by maintaining them in the unconscious.”
Reaction formation: “Avoiding an anxiety-evoking impulse by expressing its opposite, and projection when a threatening impulse is attributed to another person or other external source.”
Psychodynamic - Personality theory
True or False: Repression does not underlie all other defense mechanisms.
false
Psychodynamic - Maladaptive behavior
Psychopathology stems from __________, __________ ___________ that occurred during __________.
“unconscious”, “unresolved conflict” that occurred during “childhood”.
Psychodynamic - Maladaptive behavior
Explain phobias through a psychodynamic perspective
“Phobias are the result of displacement of anxiety onto an object or event that is symbolic of the object or event involved in an unresolved conflict.”
Psychodynamic - Maladaptive behavior
Explain depression through a psychodynamic perspective
“Depression is due to object loss coupled with anger toward the object turned inward”
Psychodynamic - Maladaptive behavior
Explain mania through a psychodynamic perspective
“Represents a defense against libidinal or aggressive urges that threaten to overwhelm the ego.”
Psychodynamic - Therapy Goals and Techniques
What is the goal of psychoanalytic therapy ?
“To reduce or eliminate pathological sxs by bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness and integrating previously repressed material into the personality.”
Psychodynamic - Therapy Goals and Techniques
What is the primary technique of psychoanalytic therapy ?
Analysis
Psychodynamic - Therapy Goals and Techniques
What are the main targets of analysis in psychoanalytic therapy ?
Free associations, dreams, resistances and transference.