Lecture 3: Freud & Psychoanalysis Flashcards
What is the historical context behind psychopathology?
- The middle ages: inmates usually referred as poore or prisoners rather than patients.
- Earliest explanations thought of psychopathology as possession by bad spirits.
- This view of mental health problems existed until the 19th century this is when studying psychopathology began scientifically and compassionately.
- Sought humane approaches.
- Physical punishment banned.
- Hospitals became tourists attractions. Visitors paid to come and view the insane and could purchase sticks to poke at inmates.
- Later 1800s - syphilis found to be a cause of insanity.
- May have medical or biological explanations.
- Led to the view that illnesses could be treated through medication.
What problems were there with the medical model?
- Lots of disorders do not have biological causes.
- Too simplistic
- Not the case that something is broken and needs to be fixed.
What is Social Darwinism?
- Theories claiming the application of biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics.
- Advocate the lifting of social protection measures.
- Advocate abandonments of charitable activities.
Who was Francis Galton?
- He discovered the concept of anticyclone and ultrasound.
- Looks for a way to improve lineages and scientifically select the elite of humanity.
- Inspires and disseminates eugenics ideology which was the policy basis of racial hygiene and Nazism.
What was Freud’s contributions to psychoanalysis?
- Treatment for mental disorders
- Ground breaking: theory derived from clinical practise and careful observation.
- Personalities arise because of attempts to resolve conflicts between unconscious impulses and societal demands.
What is consciousness?
- According to Freud the primary influences on behaviour are unconsciousness drives, especially sexuality and aggression.
- These unconscious impulses sometimes break through into consciousness (Freudian slips).
What did Freud say about Personality?
According to Freud, the human psyche consists of three components, always in dynamic conflict.
- The ego: decision maker
- The Superego: Moral standards
- The ID: Primary process thinking; primary instincts.
What did Freud say about conflict?
- Healthy personality keeps all 3 systems in balance.
- Constant tension/conflict between the 3 forces.
- ID making demands
- The superego denying the ID satisfaction
- The ego trying to satisfy the ID and the superego.
- Internal conflicts -> Pose threat to ego -> Anxiety
- In order to protect ego and defend against feelings of anxiety we have defence mechanisms.
How does personality develop?
- Personality solidifies during childhood.
- Freud proposed that children progress through psychosexual stages to have an healthy personality.
- Concept of fixation: An inability to progress from one stage to another.
- Result of fixation affects personality in adulthood.
What are the 5 psycholsexual stages that freud proposed?
Stage Approx age: Source of pleasure
1) Oral 0-12 months Mouth: eating, sucking, biting, chewing.
2) Anal: 1-3 years Anal region/bowel movements
3) Phallic: 3-6 year Genitals
4) Latency 6 years-puberty Sexuality is latent during this stage
5) Genitals: Puberty onwards Genitals
What are the Consequences of fixation in adulthood?
Oral - Risk of addiction and obesity. egocentric, dependance on others.
Anal - Anal retentive: overly controlling, pedantic, obsessively organised/neat or anal expulsive: irresponsible, unreliable, messy, easily angered, defiant.
Phallic - Guilt or anxiety about sex (oedipus complex/electra complex).
Latency - Suppressed/repressed sexual feelings.
What did Freud say about psychoanalysis?
*Unpleasant memories are repressed and fuse with other unconscious material into complexes.
*However, this material can become conscious but always transformed in such a way that its original content is concealed.
*Dream expresses the repressed materials symbolically.
Thus dreams need to be interpreted.
What was Freud’s approach to treatment?
- Because patients were not aware of these unconscious materials, the job of the psychoanalyst was to uncover them and bring them into conscious awareness, thus resolving the dysfunction.
- Use of free association.
- Controversial
What is the Standard History of Freud?
- His main focus was on treating the causes of hysteria.
- Hysteria referred to any disorder where the patient experiences physical symptoms that have a psychological rather than an organic cause.
- Symptoms: fainting, nervousness, muscle spasms, irritability, insomnia, loss of appetite, fluid retention.
- Freud believed that female hysteria was caused by repressed memories of sexual assaults suffered by patients when they were children (the seduction hypothesis).
- The goal of the therapy was to convert unconsciousness memories of infantile scenes into consciousness recollection.
- Freud argued that his discovery of the link between sexual abuse in childhood and hysteria was the source of the nile (the source from which all psychological problems spring).
What is the Revised History of Freud?
- Freud did not uncover memories in his patients.
- What he recorded of his therapy sessions were not the memories of the patients rather it was his interpretation of their memories.
