Lecture 6 Flashcards
Which two individuals presented in class were pessimistic about the possibility for happiness?
Schopenhauer and Freud
Who is “the most pessimistic philosopher there is” according to Dr. Roy?
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Schopenhauer’s ideas start with the idea that _____ is inherent to the human mind
suffering
Rationalist thinkers will tend to argue that there is a(n) ______ for our suffering
reason
What did Spinoza think about the cause for our suffering?
- comes from the finite nature of our being
- we suffer bc we don’t understand enough
- if we were all-knowing like God we would understand and accept our finite condition
What did Descartes think about the cause for our suffering?
- comes from our passions
- reason must dominate our passions
What did Leibniz think about the cause for our suffering?
- our world is the best of all possible worlds that God could have created
- so basically it is impossible for us to suffer less but still exist as separate from God (?)
What did Hegel think about the cause for our suffering?
- suffering is necessary antithesis for attaining a new synthesis in a thesis-antithesis-synthesis cycle
- suffering is a necessary evil that allows us to attain a greater good
Who was Schopenhauer’s arch-enemy?
Hegel
What is the key takeaway from this Schopenhauer quote?
“The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.”
- there is no amount of good that can counterbalance suffering
- animal doing the eating feels good but this does not wash out the suffering and pain of the one being eaten
Kant remains ____ about the noumena, but Schopenhauer wants to see if _____
agnostic; wants to see if we can say more about it!
According to Schopenhauer, if the phenomenal world can be described as vast quantities of matter in motion (in space and time), then by deduction the noumena, or ______, must be ___ and _____ (something like ______)
noumena, or ultimate reality
must be ONE and IMMATERIAL (no space and time)
something like ENERGY
According to Schopenhauer, what is the one physical object we can know in a radically different way?
- ourselves! (can know from within)
- still not direct knowledge of the noumena
Why is knowing ourselves still not direct knowledge of the noumena? (3)
- most of our inner life/motivation is unknown to us (unconscious)
- we feel our own self in time (characteristic of the phenomenal world!)
- for there to be knowledge there must be a subject and an object, this distinction can only exist in phenomenal world
Schopenhauer: when we initiate a movement, especially an effortful one, we feel a _______ or ______
below conscious drive or “Will” (similar to noumena)
Schopenhauer: underlying the phenomenal world, there is this _____ (the ___) striving for ______
pure energy (the Will) striving for existence
What value judgement about the Will does Schopenhauer make?
- it is “wicked” or evil
- it makes our suffering a collateral damage of existence
- we are just pure victims
Schopenhauer: we suffer because we are conscious of _____ and ____
the horror of the world and the finitude of our own being (we are born suffering and we die suffering)
Schopenhauer: humans are always striving to become ________. This concept is called ______ and also causes suffering!
something more than what they are
perfectibility
Schopenhauer: striving for perfectibility is driven by ____
the Will
Schopenhauer agrees with what biblical saying? Why?
- Happy are the single minded
- what causes our suffering is our consciousness )we are complex minded)
According to Schopenhauer, we can find a temporary way out of suffering through _____
art!!
- when we look at art we are not trying to fulfill a need or accomplish anything; not so worried ab our own selves
According to Schopenhauer, what should we do to avoid suffering?
- reject/deny the Will; attempt to attain nothingness
Freud was inspired by which philosopher presented in class?
Schopenhauer
Before the 16th century, what was the main strategy for treating mental disorders?
- informal support from family
In the 16th century, what was the main strategy for treating mental disorders?
- asylums as a means of social control, kinda like a prison
- goal wasn’t really to treat patients
What is exorcism? What was it used to treat in the past? How is it still relevant today?
- ritualistic practice that aims to expel evil spirits/demons from a person, place, or object
- was used to treat psychosis, mania, Tourette’s, epilepsy, and other psychiatric/neurological disorders
- still happens today in Catholic church!!
What is trepanation
- drilling hole in skull w belief it could alleviate symptoms or cure various psychological/neurological conditions
- often associated w belief that mental disorders were caused by evil spirits and opening the skull would allow them to escape
- performed since prehistoric times!!
- also used to treat headaches or skull injuries
Who was the Viennese physician famous for curing people with “magnetism”?
Franz Anton Mesmer!
What led to Mesmer discovering animal magnetism?
- realized he could treat patients with just his hands (didn’t need his magnets!) so his body must be a strong source of an internal force
Why did Mesmer flee Vienna for Paris?
- controversy bc he claimed to have cured a girl’s blindness but when she got home her parents were like um excuse me she’s still blind?!
What happened at Mesmer’s salons in Paris?
- invited fanciest French bourgoisie
- would all gather around barrels of magnetized fluid and hold the handles and experience all sorts of things (like fainting!)
What did Benjamin Franklin conclude about Mesmer’s magnetic fluid?
- there is no proof of its existence so it is not useful
What were Mesmer’s salons one of the first examples of?
The placebo effect!!!
Why did Mesmer leave France for Switzerland?What did he do there?
- Benjamin Franklin disproved his magnetic fluid
- used mesmerism/hypnosis for anesthesia!
William Battie’s 1758 book Treatise on Madness argued that mental disorders originated from ________
dysfunction of the material brain and body
**first time we see this idea!!
Who is considered the father of psychiatry?
Philippe Pinel
What did Philippe Pinel’s 1794 book Memoir on Madness argue?
madness can sometimes be cured!
What was Pinel’s first move as head of psychiatric hospital la Bicetre?
unchaining patients!!
What were the 4 kinds of mental disorders (aka _____) proposed by Pinel?
neuroses!
- melancholia (depression)
- mania (psychosis/manic state of bipolar)
- dementia
- idiotism (intellectual disability)
What were the two types of treatment proposed by Pinel?
- “medical”: cold showers, fast spinning around, leeches
- “moral”: persuading patient to behave normally (ancestor of psychotherapy!!!)
____ treatment of mental disorders was dominant for first half of 19th century, but psychiatrists had relatively low status in society
moral!!
In the second half of the 19th century, the ____ view of mental illness made a comeback. This was triggered by the discovery of _____
biological!
discovery of microbe that caused syphilis (which leads to dementia)
Who were 19th century neurologists?
- new group of physicians interested in milder forms of mental disturbances
- treated these patients in private practice (worst cases of madness remained in asylums)
What is hysteria? Who was it treated by? What theory did it lead to?
- treated by neurologists in second half of 19th century
- anxiety, shortness of breath, fainting, insomnia, irritability, nervousness, sexually forward behaviour
- more like an umbrella term
- only affects women (maybe related to uterus??)
- led Freud to develop his theory!!
How does hysteria compare to modern day DSM diagnoses? What does this raise questions about?
- doesn’t really directly correspond to anything
- kinda close to somatic symptom disorder (SDD) or histrionic personality disorder
- raises Qs ab effect of society on presentation of mental disorders
Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893) mainly studied which two conditions/disorders?
epilepsy and hysteria (only at end of career)
Charcot thought that hysteria was related to _____
susceptibility to hypnosis
Why did Charcot link hysteria and hypnosis?
- both transient phenomena (patient seems to have “attacks”)
- epileptic seizures also transient phenomena
- so maybe same thing that causes hysteria (hereditary degeneration) might also cause susceptibility to hypnosis
- thinks both are related to brain dysfunction
What did Charcot do every Tuesday morning?
- would present a case to other doctors
- favourite case to present was Claire Wittman who was hysteric and very suggestible (would essentially present symptoms on command)
- turns out he was suggesting hysteric symptoms in many of his patients!
In 1873, at age _____, Freud entered Vienna’s ___ school
17; medical school
Who was Freud’s first mentor
Ernst Brucke (1819-1892)
Ernst Brucke was a ______ physiologist. He rejected _____ and sought ______ explanations for all organic phenomena.
mechanistic; rejected vitalism; sought mechanistic explanations
Who was Meynert?
- neurologist who mentored Freud in his practical training at Vienna’s General Hospital
- previously taught Wernicke
In 1885, Meynert sponsored Freud to visit ____ in Paris. Why?
Charcot! Paris was the place to be for those into neurology
What was the first phase of Freud’s medical career?
- started own practice but had difficulty making a living by treating only “ordinary” neurological cases
What was Freud’s first topic of study in medical school?
aphasia!
Who was “Anna O”? Who treated her?
- hysteric patient treated by Josef Breuer (Freud’s mentor)
- was squinting all the time; used cathartic method to realize this came from trying to hide her tears from her dying father
- symptoms improve or disappear after the suppressed emotion is re-lived (cathartic method)
- but she became emotionally attached to Breuer which caused issues w his wife so he stopped studying hysteria
What is the cathartic method?
- used to treat hysteria; Breuer and Freud
- under hypnosis, think ab symptom and try to recall first time it occurred
- symptoms improve/disappear after the suppressed emotion is re-lived
What did Breuer and Freud think ab the cause for hysteria?
- cause is reminiscences (pathogenic ideas); NOT neurological
- because they are suppressed, pathogenic ideas can’t be gradually reduced
- stimuli that would normally trigger the memory now only trigger the emotion, which discharges into muscles (think energy metaphor!)
What is Bernheim’s pressure technique?
- telling patients “now you can remember” to try to get forgotten/subconscious info from them
What is free association?
- encouraged patients to follow train of thought w minimal interruption from the therapist
- assumption is that the important/relevant info will come out eventually!
- really interested in the transitions between ideas!
- Freud realized pressure was not an important part of the process
According to Freud, pathogenic ideas are not just forgotten but ______. This process is called _____.
What does this have to do w free association?
actively suppressed; REPRESSION
patients invariably resist free association somewhere along the line – often at crucial points
How is William James’ “stream of consciousness” related to Freud’s theory?
- parallel w Free Association
- by looking at succession of ideas (transitions – transitive part in James’ model), we can get at unconscious processes
What is intrapsychic conflict? (Freud)
- conscious part wants to be cured, but another unconscious part wants to avoid the emotional pain associated with the suppressed memory
- many of most resisted memories involve sexual experiences from childhood
What was Freud’s Seduction Theory?
- all hysterics must have undergone sexual abuse
- only after puberty do these memories become sexualized
- symptoms are defenses against new uncomfy memories
Why did Freud have to update his Seduction Theory?
many of remembered experiences of abuse by patients never occurred…
Which of Freud’s theories did Dr. Roy refer to as Seduction Theory 2.0?
Wish Fulfillment hypothesis
What is Freud’s Wish Fulfillment hypothesis?
- often, latent content of dream is a wish
- dreams stimulated by latent wishes; hysteric symptoms stimulated by latent memories
- maybe sexual scenes reported by patients represented unconscious wishes
What element made Freud’s Wish Fulfillment hypothesis unfalsifiable?
saying that symptoms could be caused by unconscious wishes and not just actual events
According to Dr. Roy, what does the fact that we are all shocked by Freud’s Wish Fulfillment hypothesis show?
- almost proof that his theory is correct!
- if we had these thoughts we would suppress them bc they aren’t acceptable to us!
_____ helped Freud move from Seduction Theory to his Wish Fulfillment hypothesis
DREAMS!
According to Dr. Roy, why did Freud wait to publish his book “The Interpretation of Dreams” until 1900?
he wanted his work published in 20th century bc it was so forward and modern (lol)
How does Freud distinguish manifest vs latent content in dreams?
manifest: consciously experienced content of dream
latent: originally inspired dream but hidden from consciousness
Describe the 3 processes in Freud’s dream work
- Displacement: manifest content symbolizes latent content in relatively “safe” way
- Condensation: several latent thoughts can be symbolized by a single image
- Concrete representation: manifest content is concrete, but latent ideas are abstract
Describe Freud’s dream following Irma’s injection and how this ties into manifest vs latent content
- In dream, Irma fell ill and was given potentially dangerous injection by Freud’s colleague; he saw visions of formula of trimethylamin
- Irma’s nose had been operated on by colleague who forgot to remove all surgical packing
- had had a recent discussion about chemistry of sex (trimethyamin) with same colleague
- latent content of dream: represses anger at colleague, repressed feelings of sexual attraction towards patient
What was the dream that led to Freud developing the Oedipus complex?
- after death of father in 1896 was depressed so decided to treat himself as patient
- had recurrent dream where he saw sleeping mom being carried into bed by two ppl with bird’s beaks
- the birds looked like Egyptian burial gods from family Bible (Philippson’s Bible)
- boy named Philip had taught him german slang for sex which is very similar to word for bird
- realized there was a notion sexuality (unconscious wish) associated w image of his sleeping mother
What did Freud think about randomness? What 2 examples were given in class?
- never completely random
- always a structure that is generating probabilistic events
- ex dice (even if you didn’t know what it was, you could deduce that it is a cube from looking at top pattern of 1000 rolls of the dice bc there needs to be a structure that leads to generating equal chances of each of 6 figures)
- ex random number generator for slot machines
How does the pyramid classifying species of animals tie in to Freud’s theory?
- he basically wanted to do this w dreams
- break them down to find source!
How does Freud distinguish primary vs secondary processes, and how does this tie in to his concept of Regression?
- PRIMARY: displacement, overdetermination, condensation (all unconscious)
- SECONDARY: logical reasoning, conscious
- Regression: dreams and hysteria symptoms are instances in which secondary processes are abandoned in favour of developmentally earlier primary processes
According to Freud, the unconscious (does/doesn’t) follow specific rules
DOES!
According to Freud, primary processes also have a positive role in ____
art
How does the title of Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow connect to Freud’s primary/secondary processes?
thinking fast: primary processes
thinking slow: secondary processes
Why did Freud propose a model of the mind in exclusively psychological terms?
- believed that as our knowledge of nervous system evolves, we will be able to understand the physiological mechanisms underlying the different processes he describes
- BUT science wasn’t there yet!
- couldn’t associate the parts of his model to parts of the brain
Freud: the psyche is continuously influenced by 3 kinds of conflicting demands:
instincts (Id)
external reality
moral demands (Superego)
Define the following terms in Freud’s metapsychology:
Id:
Perception-consciousness system (pcpt-cs):
Superego:
Ego:
Defense mechanism:
Id: origin of unconscious impulses
Perception-consciousness system (pcpt-cs): conveys info ab external reality; leaves memory in pre-conscious area
Superego: moral demands
Ego: intra-psychic entity that governs compromises btw Id, external reality, and Superego
**hysteria symptoms represent harmful compromises where external reality is ignored
Defense mechanism: less dramatic day-to-day compromises
According to Freud, letting the Id loose would cause _____. The only choice we have is between ___ and ___
chaos on a large scale
**so society/superego have to repress it, causing frustration
choice btw chaos and frustration
What is Thanatos (Freud)?
- humans driven by aggressive death instinct
- instinct of the Id
- superego is major vehicle of expression of death instinct
- can disguise death instinct into feelings of patriotism, justice, etc and commit horrible acts that are approved by superego
What is Eros (Freud)?
- life-giving sexual instinct (most of work focusses on this)
What did Freud think about the belief in God?
- form of defense mechanism against anxieties and uncertainties of life
- illusion to provide temporary comfort
