Exam 2 Flashcards
Sigmund Freud (early history/training)
- Went to med school but did not want to practice medicine
- Not financially independent, could not afford to only do research
- Entered private practice as a neurologist, trained at Vienna General Hospital
Sigmund Freud (hypnotism)
- Became interested in hypnosis after hearing about colleague’s patient “Anna O.”
- 1886 opened practice
- Hypnosis and electrotherapy
- Both only temporary relief
- Believed that relief resulted from the suggestion that tx was going to work
- Developed theory that people with hysteria suffer from unconscious memories of emotionally painful experiences –> emotion bottled up –> symptoms
Elements of psychoanalysis
- Transference
- Counter-transference
- Dream interpretation
Transference
- This refers to incidents where the feelings, desires and expectations of the patient are transferred on to the therapist.
- Essential for breaking through resistance & bringing unconscious to light
Counter-transference
A largely unconscious phenomenon that occurs when a therapists emotions are influenced by a person in therapy, and the therapist reacts and transfers their emotions onto the client.
Dream interpretation
- Dreams = more benign manifestations of unconscious distressing memories/desires
- Can uncover underlying meaning via free association
- Wrote book “The Interpretation of Dreams” in 1899
- Inspired artists (i.e., Dali)
Free association
- Identified utility when treating pt Baroness Fanny Moser
- Letting her ramble resulted in uncovering unconscious memories whereas his questioning did not
- Later started asking all of his patients to lie down on the couch, close their eyes, and say whatever came to mind.
Psychoanalysis resistance
- Freud believed that forgotten memories or ones retrieved with great difficulty were the ones we were defending ourselves from.
- Uncover using free association
Freud’s books
- “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life” – One of Freuds most widely read books filled with entertaining anecdotes from his life.
- “Three Essays on the theory of Sexuality” – depicted sex as a fundamental force of human nature, infantile sexuality, and sexuality in puberty. Lots of attention for this and not all positive.
- “The Interpretation of Dreams”
Freud’s group of colleaugues
Wednesday Psychological Society later became the International Psychoanalytic Association
Psychoanalysis and women
Sabina Spielrein – the first woman to write a psychoanalytic dissertation (Russia)
Karen Horney – Wrote about feminine psychology and was a critic of Freud. She proposed that men are adversely affected by “womb envy” because they cannot have children.
Melanie Klein – Developed “play therapy”
Edward Lee Thorndike
Using “puzzle boxes” and cats – his research was the basis for behaviorist psychology
Two laws of learning:
- The Law of Effect – Responses that produce a desired effect (reinforcers) are more likely to occur again whereas responses that produce an unpleasant effect (punishers) are less likely to occur again.
- The Law of Exercise – A response will be more strongly connected to a stimulus in proportion to the number of times it has been connected.
Ivan Pavlov
Salivating dog experiments –> believed that all learned behavior was nothing more than a series of conditioned reflexes that were governed by the rules he had discovered.
“Classical conditioning”
Timing in conditioning (Pavlov)
the neutral stimulus (bell) needs to precede the unconditioned stimulus (food) for it to become a conditioned stimulus
Extinction in conditioning (Pavlov)
if the conditioned stimulus (bell) is repeated without reward (food) the response will disappear
Generalization in conditioning (Pavlov)
A dog will salivate even if the bell tones are slightly different
Differentiation in conditioning (Pavlov)
if trained to hear 2 tones with food, and food with the second tone is eliminated, the dog will stop salivating to the second.
Experimental neurosis in conditioning (Pavlov)
could bring on acute neurosis in the dog by altering the form of the conditioned stimuli and making them harder to differentiate
John Watson
“Mr. Behaviorism”
- Psychology should be about behavior not introspection
- It’s methods should be objective and not introspective
- It’s purpose should be to predict and control of behavior
- Human conditioning lab at John’s Hopkins
- Little Albert experiment (conditioned fear of white rat in baby –> generalized to other small white animals)
John Watson romantic life
Had an affair with student Rosalie Rayner, wife found out, Watson got kicked out of JHU
Married Rosalie and worked in advertising
Rise of behaviorism in America
Why?
- It claimed to be scientific
- It was a way of simplifying the study of behavior. We don’t need to understand the mind to explain behavior.
- Given WWI there were hostilities towards things German and this was a fine replacement.
Research was focused on objective observations of behavior, animal studies
B. F. Skinner
- Operant conditioning
- Skinner box inspired by Thorndike’s puzzle box could program variable reinforcement schedules and provide reinforcement automatically (pigeon research)
- operant conditioning was the basis for the behavior modification movement in the 1940s (schools, tx facilities)
Early personality theories
Astrology – Greek astrologers used the position of the planets at the time of one’s birth to predict a person’s personality and fate (“thezodiacstea” has 1.2 million followers)
Physiognomy – Practiced by Hippocrates and Aristotle. Believed that facial characteristics were predictive of personality.
- Bulging forehead = quick tempered
- Large forehead = sluggish
Phrenology
- People with large foreheads are brainy and sensitive
- People with low foreheads are stupid and unfeeling
Robert S. Woodworth
Early personality test creator
- Professor at Columbia University who was asked in 1917 to develop a quick way of identifying emotionally disturbed recruits for WWI
- “Personal Data Sheet” – a series of face-valid questions about symptoms:
Questions such as: When you are in high places do you want to jump off?
- Later determined that neurotics answered 36 unfavorable while normals answered 10
