Ego Psychology - Post Freud Flashcards
Anna Freud
(1936) Founder: Ego Psychology. ‘The Ego and its Mechanisms of Defense’ presented a list of ego defenses. Defenses were cataloged according to their operational value along a developmental continuum – from primitive to more sophisticated functioning.
Ego Psychology
Actors: Anna Freud, Hartmann; Kris; Loewenstein; Rappaport; and Erik Erikson. They increased the ego’s importance expanding into broader functions - adaptation, autonomy, drive neutralization. Thye moved the focus from conflict to adaptation, mastery, and deficit. The ego disguises the appearance of the id’s impulses; thereby preventing social censure and resistances that are operating.
Ego Psych - Treatment Implications
Change in technique (focus from id to ego) from free associations to starting at the surface, which shows their defenses. Consequently involves more work analyzing the resistance that is operating (which is the work of the ego).
Ego Psych - Analytic Attitude
Post - WWII psychologistis’ views presented as the objective, distant. scientist.
Erik Erikson
(1950) ‘Childhood and Society.’
He expanded Freud’s psychosexual theory of development.
He believed that each stage (8) had a developmental task “conflict” that needed to be achieved.
Working through these stages leads to a sense of competence and a healthy personality
Erikson v. Freud
Both saw conflict as a turning point
Erikson: placed emphasis on the environment and social factors v. basic needs and drives in the psychosexual stages.
He also expanded his theory into adulthood.
Erikson’s 8 Stages of Development
- Trusts v. mistrust (oral),
- Autonomy v. shame/doubt (anal),
- Initiative v. guilt (I have in a triade I want and I feel guilty if I succeeded in removing one parent),
- Industry v. inferiority (latency),
- Identity v. Role confusion (object relation),
- Intimacy v. Isolation (soulmate opp),
- Generativity v. Stagnation,
- Ego integrity v. Despair (elder life reflection).
Heinz Hartmann
Still based in drive theory, but focused is on exec. functioning. Emphasis on Ego v. Id. Work starts with the surface - w/analysis of resistances/defenses. “Conflict Free Sphere”: the ego had functions that were free of conflict. Language; perception; object comprehension; and thinking are understood as domains of the ego, and are not influenced by intrapsychic conflict. Today we disagree
Ego Functions - 8
- Reality Testing,
- Assessment,
- Regulations of Impulses and Delay of Gratification,
- Object Relations,
- Defenses,
- Stimulus Barriers,
- Synthetic-Integrative Functioning,
- Capacity for Introspection/Self-Reflection
Reality Testing
MSEs
Assessment
can i come into a situation, see what is happening, assess what i need to do, and plan for it? Excellent or compromised judgement planning, assessment. Can you look at a situation in life and assess it within that context?
Regulation of Impulses and Delay of Gratification
the ability to modulate an impulse. Regulation of impulses.
Object Relations
do I have the capacity to connect with people and relate with them in a respricocity of care? Can I have friends that are sustained over time? Can a person establish an intimate relationship with someone else where there is reciprocity in shared goals for their future? Can they give what is needed in a meaningful, intimate relationship?
Defenses
Obstacles, resistances in the way preventing us from getting the work and material into the patient’s mind. Defenses are there to help the person cope. Defenses keep getting acquired throughout life so we develop new ways of coping through things
Stimulus Barriers
Can you filter what is important and what is secondary as opposed to ppl flooded with stimuli which prevents them from reality testing?
Synthetic-Integrative Functioning
Can you extract the essence of what is important. For example, describe a book.
Capacity for Introspection/Self-reflection
does this person take in and reflect on what I said to them? Are they able to look back and reflect on something they did?
Problems w/Ego Psych’s Model
Therapist as omniscient. Compared to today’s 2-person psychology; collaborative therapeutic approach.
Self Psychology
(1966) He viewed the self as the basic constituent of the psychic apparatus. The self is the totality of the individual, consisting of all characteristic attributes, conscious and unconscious, mental and physical. Kohut hypothesized the existence of an archaic grandiose self with fantasies of perfection, to make up for the self’s actual weakness and impotence in order to establish narcissistic equilibrium.
Infantile Origin of the Self
Relatedness with others is essential for psychological growth. The self will form itself through a relationship with others.
Self Objects
Self objects provide the necessary experience for the gradual development of the self. Kohut gives much more weight to the parent attunement toward the baby, and places the blame of pathologies on the caregivers.
3 Types of Self Objects
For self-psychologists, all 3 of these are important to attain a healthy sense of self:
- Mirroring - “I child are perfect and you parent admire me,”
- Idealization, “You parent are perfect and I child am part of you”
- Twinship - “You parent are like me child; we are both perfect”
Narcissism to Cohesion
For healthy development, failures have to be incremental, not traumatic and abrupt - Delay of gratification. These failures allow the child to see the other in a more complex, multifaceted way.
Healthy Self
Two poles - 1. Healthy ambitions, assertiveness 2. Healthy ideals and values. How are these two poles combined to produce behavior.
Parental Failures
Parental failure is the result of the parents’ own
psychological limitations. Repeated empathic failures by the parents, and the child’s responses to them are at the root of almost all psychopathology.
Implications for Treatment (Self)
Need to understand early failures and provide an
environment in which the intrapsychic structures may
effectively develop. Is not crucial; the treatment creates a new experience for the patient.
Healthy Self Requirements (Treatment)
A) Selfobjects who respond to and confirm the child’s innate
sense of vigor, greatness and perfection.
B) Child’s involvement with powerful others to whom the child
can look up and with whom he can merge as an image of
calmness, infallibility, and omnipotence.
C) Experiences with selfobjects who in their openness and
similarity to the child evoke a sense of essential likeness
between the child and themselves.
Empathy (Kohut)
Kohut defined empathy as the capacity to think and feel
oneself into the inner life of another person. Mirroring, idealizing, twinship filled with empathy
Deficit Model
Emphasizes environemental failures, typical byproduct results in aggression. Psychopathology develops as result of environmental failures; innate self as good. (Different from Freud who believed in an innate struggle where aggression and other negative impulses are inborn.)
