Midterm Flashcards
Actual Neuroses
psychopathology caused by an actual physical trauma. • A neurosis is a psychological state characterized by excessive anxiety or insecurity without evidence of neurologic or other organic disease, sometimes accompanied by defensive or immature behaviors. • Into the class of actual neuroses fell, chiefly, neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis. Later Freud added hypochondria.
affects
pre-linguistic – once we can put language to it, it’s a feeling
( the conscious subjective aspect of an emotion considered apart from bodily changes; also : a set of observable manifestations of a subjectively experienced emotion)
Anal Stage
Control self for the sake of the other; maintain control by retaining.
- Anal expulsive – clients do whatever they want – impulsive with no consequences
- (2-4 years of age) during which the child derives libidinal satisfaction from the retention or expulsion of feces. Moving toward autonomy and independence, resolution: independence, lack of ambivalence, autonomy, initiative
Anal Sadistic
Struggle b/w control and expulsion
- Anal sadistic – aggression expulsion – response to controls
- Aggressive acting-out - expression of anger wishes connected with discharging feces as destructive (example of fantasies of explosions)
Psychoanalytic Theory of Anxiety
- When child first displays anxiety and shame, the superego is emerging
- Focus on function of anxiety related to threats to the organism
- Real anxiety: threat from a known danger
- Neurotic anxiety: threat from an unknown source
- Anna Freud – three types of anxiety; instinctual (ego vs. id), superego (ego vs. superego), and objective (ego vs. external world).
Average Expectable Environment (Hartmann)
Hartmann; an environment that is responsive to the child’s psychological needs.
Basic Trust
(Erikson) - Erikson’s Epigenetic Sequence of Inst. Zones…. Successful resolution of first crisis stage: disposition to trust others, oneself and have self-confidence.
Castration Anxiety
(during phallic stage) identification with the father. Fear of castration due to the realization of forbidden sexual desire. Symbolic threat to genitals, not physical.
cathexis
An investment of libido energy – goes inside for children of abuse and neglect – can become schizoid.
• energy focused on (attached to) a certain emotion, object, other person, or self.
Component Instinct
Highly charged sexually charged experiences are components that become part of mature sexuality
• Component = certain highly charged sexual experiences are all components that will become part of mature genital sexuality.
compromise formation
- Drive coming up against superego experience that leads to anxiety – the negotiation between the id, ego, and superego.
• It is the balance of defense and expression. Occurs outside our awareness. Think of the ego defense to ward off anxiety
conflict-free ego capacities
synthetic functions of the ego that are conflict free, innate, and inherited. They allow infants to immediately fit into their immediate environment (AKA primary autonomous ego function). The equipment that allows them to do so consists of a set of intrinsic potentials called CFECs. This is in contrast to other psychoanalytic work, which indicates that adaptation comes out of resolution of conflict, whereas Hartmann stated that these abilities are inborn.
consciousness/ system CS
- awareness of the immediate environment.
• The actual contents of awareness; i.e., what one is conscious of at a given moment. Freud’s way of talking about “the conscious” is similar to what a cognitive psychologist means by attention.
developmental lines
Anna Freud believed that development moves back and forth along multiple lines of development, and that a child can develop in one area, but not in another. These development lines tracked the unfolding of a specific maturational theme at different periods of children’s lives and indicated what was typical or atypical. The level a child reaches on a developmental line is the result of the interaction of drives, ego development, and its relation to the nurturing environment. She proposed the existence of multiple developmental lines and made a distinction between normal and pathological development. This presented a major departure from the previous developmental model and instead depended on day-to-day observation of children.
drive and law of entropy
The drives constituted the motive forces that activate the human psyche. The law of entropy stated that, in nature, systems tend to move from a higher to a lower level of organization. Freud conceived of the mind as an energy processing apparatus that obeys the laws of entropy. The accumulation of energy within the psyche is converted into anxiety; unless the energy is discharged or transformed, symptom formation ensues. Energy transformation leads to higher levels of organization whereas symptom formation leads to lower levels.
drive derivative
It is an alternate expression of a plastic instinct. Instincts can be expressed in multiple vehicles. For example a sports car is a drive derivative of the sex instinct. Conscious ideation is a drive derivative of the unconscious drive.
economic hypothesis or Entropy Model
- Newtonian mechanistic view of the workings of physical objects and the law of entropy as compared the workings of the mind. The concept of energy is central to the workings of the psyche. The drives are the motivating forces that activate the human psyche. Energy that accumulates within a system leads to a buildup of pressure, which unless relieved, would lead to the destruction of the system.
Ego/Ego Function
Ego allows you to manage and moderate impulses when your biology wants you to do otherwise
• Intellectual part of selves that does reality testing
• Contact with external reality is an ego function
• All learning and modification comes through the ego
• Creates compromise
ego-dystonic, ego-syntonic
Drives influence ideas and behaviors. These drives are either Ego Dystonic (unacceptable to the ego, or experienced as foreign to the self) or Ego Syntonic (consistent with the ego ideals)
ego ideal
Forms through late anal into phallic stage
• Internalized expectations to perform in a certain way; not living up to these expectations leads to shame
• A component of the superego
ego instincts
Freud’s understanding that there are other kinds of motivations like eating, breathing, sleeping – these are life-sustaining and not related to neuroses; in opposition to drives.
electra complex
the incestuous desire of the daughter to have sexual relations with her father. It begins with the identification with her mother. Then the girl comes upon her own castration. She turns her love interest to her father. Through her father she hopes to gain a substitute penis through babies. Eventually she begins to identify with her mother.
eros
Instinct of love/libido; life instincts.
erotogenic zone
zones of the body that are more gratifying at different stages
• Freudian can be oral, anal, or genital centers in which pleasure is derived.
• These zones he saw as locations of particular instincts known as “component instincts.” In neurosis, nongenital erotogenic zones come to function as substitutes for the genitals. The idea of erotogenic zones was inseparable from the theory of libidinal stages, each of which, at a certain age, is fixed upon a particular zone.
fantasy
can involve imagining images during the daytime, dreaming at night, and can be a creative adjustment function; accompanies all psychological interaction. It is unconscious, something that is being mentally constructed, that we will never fully see at the true unconscious level.
• For the mother, the more positive the prenatal experience is, the more positive her fantasies will be of the unborn child.
• Expectant mothers tend to reduce their fantasies in the 7th month to reduce disappointment if the child is not perfect
fixation
An arrest at a phase of development because of difficulties the child cannot overcome.
genetic Viewpoint
the course of an individual’s development follows inborn laws that represent a sequential series of invariant phases or stages. Freud’s psychosexual model is an expression of the genetic hypothesis.
genital/oedipal phase
- is an area of dispute between theorists. Freud proposed that it takes place between the ages of 2.5 and 6. While Klein suggests that the Oedipus complex begins at the end of the first year or beginning of the second year. She also added the femininity complex for boys.
• Basic ideas of the Oedipus stage/complex:
o A boy fears that his father will punish him for his feelings toward his mother by removing the locus of these feelings, the penis. This fear causes the boy to abandon his incestuous attachment to his mother and begin to identify with his father, imitating him and adopting his values, a process that results in the formation of the boy’s superego.
o Paralleling the castration anxiety felt by boys, girls experience penis envy. The girl blames her mother for depriving her of a penis and desires her father because he possesses one. Ultimately, the girl, like the boy, represses her incestuous desires and comes to identify with the same-sex parent, the mother, through the development of a superego.
o Freud: instinctual drives, aims, object relations, fears, and identifications are organized during the phallic stage.
homeostasis
Cannon described (in Schore, p. 157) the maintenance of the internal milieu by control systems that regulate the functioning of the organs and tissues as homeostatis. • Infant’s internal milieu → relationship with their mother • “tendency of organism to restore equilibrium if constancy is disturbed”
hysteria
conversion d/o – the first ones Freud looked at
• Some psychological content gets affixed to a body part or some external object.
• Neurosis characterized by emotional instability, repression, dissociation and suggestibility. The theory behind this is that the event that is causing the conversion disorder is so disturbing that it can’t be thought of consciously, so it is converted somatically.
identification
“Process where self representation is altered to become more like the representation of another, occurring intrapsychically,” example of child modeling behavior after the same-sex parent
• p. 53 in Stern: Identification is an active dynamic process made of sequences of mental acts in real time… function is to make child more like a parent… general, pervasive process that occurs over a long period of time.
• Karen: Identification may lead to negative results: identification with hated aspects of a parent.
infantile neurosis
- fixation points in childhood. How we manage all of the conflicts in childhood influence how we manage these conflicts as adults
instinct (Freud)
(Per Freud) - Drive, instinct is a psychic representation of a somatic state
• Freud: “a concept that functions between the mental and somatic realms as a psychic representative of stimuli, which come from the organism and exercise their influence on the mind”
instinctual Aim
what it is that the person wants to get out
• If aggression, object is the object of that aim – destroy a specific object
• One of the four elements of an instinct. The idea that the aim of the instinct is always satisfaction.
instinctual object
wherever there is an impulse there needs to be an object. For example, in order to have a sexual instinct there needs to be an object to act out that instinct. Failure to find an object to achieve the instinctual aim leads to instinctual frustration…this leads to pain.
• The object is that in or through which satisfaction can be achieved. The object can be the subject’s own body.
introjection
According to Freud, the ego and the superego are constructed by introjecting external behavioral patterns into the subject’s own persona.
psychic determinism
Nothing is random - everything is some kind of outcome or compromise
The assumption that behind every mental process there is a cause either unconscious or conscious (“Freudian slip”)
Nothing is random, everything is determined and explainable.
We are led by our motivations, even if not conscious of it. Every action is meaningful, and finds its basis in instincts…instincts shape motivation
reality principle
attending to external reality; awareness of the demands of the environment and the necessity of conforming to those demands.
Enables the ego to come to terms with what is real, even though it may be disagreeable, rather than what is merely desired
Reality principle modifies the pleasure principle to meet demands of external reality… closely related to maturation of ego functions (Meissner, 138)
repetition compulsion
drive is attempting to be expressed and keeps being expressed over and over again but is not being fulfilled
Freudian view: A drive being expressed and until it reaches final gratification, it will continue to be expressed in this repetitive manner. If expressing in a neurotic fashion, it will repeat until the direct form of expression is achieved
Contemporary view: Repetition until resolution or compromise is reached
repression
Forceful ejection from consciousness of impulses, memories, or experiences that are painful and shameful and generate a high level of anxiety
resistance
An attempt on the part of the patient to avoid having unconscious material come to consciousness—opposition to the development of insight
return of the repressed
an intolerable drive derivative bursts forth from repression
and gives rise to conflict and compromise formation and is dealt with by reestablishing repression (childish way of thinking - primary process thinking)
