Neopsychoanalytic Approach Flashcards
What is the theme of most post-Freudian psychoanalysts?
To move away from the emphasis on sex and aggression towards a focus on interpersonal relationships.
What are objects, as formulated by Freud?
Partially accurate mental images of people that affect our relationships.
What are the common differences from Freud between neo-Freudians?
1- They view sex as less important by reinterpreting libido as a general motivation toward life and creativity
2- They put less emphasis on the unconscious mental processes and more emphasis on the conscious thought than Freud did.
3- They put less emphasis on instintual drive and mental life as the source of psychological difficulties and focus on interpersonal relationships instead.
What did Alfred Adler think Freud put too much thought into? What did he focus on instead?
He thought Freud focused too much on sex as the ultimate motive for behavior. He instead put that importance into social interest.
What is social interest?
Social interest is the desire to relate posivitely and productively with other people.
What is Adler’s idea of organ inferiority?
It’s the idea that individuals are motivated to achieve equality with (or superiority over) others to compensate for whatever they felt it was their weakest aspect in childhood.
What is the masculine protest?
It was Adler’s term for overcompensating power-seeking behavior on adults. He believed it to be particularly acute for men as society tells boys that they have to be powerful but the power figure presented in their lives since early on is their mom, bringing feelings of inferiority.
Why was Carl Jung’s feud with Freud more dramatic? What caused the feud?
Because they were good friends and close. The feud was mainly due to Jung’s deviation towards spirituality and the mystical while Freud was a devoted atheist.
What are Jung’s ideas?
The collective unconscious, archetypes, persona, anima and animus, his distinction between introverts and extroverts and his classification of four basic ways of thinking.
What is the collective unconscious? What are archetypes?
The belief that all humans share inborn memories and ideas that reside on the unconscious due to the history of the species. Archetypes are basic images Jung believed was shared and at the core on how people think about the world.
What is the persona?
Jung’s term for the social mask one wears in public. To some degree, everyone’s persona is false as one keep some aspects of their real selves private. The danger is when the individual come to identify more with the persona than the real self.
What are the anima and animus?
It’s Jung’s concept of the prototype a gender holds of the other. Anima is the idea of woman as held in the mind of a man while animus is the idea of a man as held by the mind of a woman. These images cause the aspects of the other gender on one’s psychological makeup and shape one’s response to the other gender.
What are Jung’s four classification of the basic ways of thinking?
Rational thinking - recognizes meaning
Feeling - tell us value
Sensing - establishes what’s present
Intuiting - points to possibilities
He believed everybody had all four, but we differ in the dominant kind.
What is different about Horney?
Horney never feuded with Freud and she focused more on the sexist part of Freud’s theory.
What are some key ideas from Horney?
She wrote about self-analysis for those unable to get professional help, disagreed vehemently against Freud on women having “penis envy” and a desire to be a men, instead pointing out the structure of society as faulty for women looking at men for fulfillment. Lastly she talked about basic anxiety and neurotic needs.
What is basic anxiety and neurotic need according to Horney?
Basic anxiety is what sets the table for adult behaviour. As adults try to overcome the feat if being alone and helpless, the attempts to avoid such anxiety can cause neurotic needs. Needs that people feel but are not realistic or truly desirable.
What are some important distinctions between Erik Erikson and Freud?
Erikson believed a lot of the conflicts actually take place on the conscious mind and the basic conflicts happen throughout life.
What are the basic distinctions between Erikson’s psychosocial theory and Freud’s psychosexual theory of development?
Erikson’s theory covers psychological change throughout life, not just childhood and it focuses on the conflicts experienced instead of the physical focus of libido.
What are Erikson’s stages of development?
Trust x mistrust (0-2)
Autonomy x shame and doubt (3-4)
Initiative x guilt (4-7)
Industry x inferiority (8-12)
Identity x identity confusion (13+)
Intimacy x isolation (young adult)
Generativity x stagnation (middle age)
Integrity x despair (old age)
Correlate Freud’s stages to Erikson’s.
The oral stage can be correlated to the trust x mistrust stage as a baby, seeing if your needs are met. The anal stage can be correlated to the autonomy x shame and doubt stage, where the kid has to balance obeying orders and act independently. The phallic stage can be correlated to the initiative x guilt stage, where the kid starts having adults thoughts and fantasies but might be ashamed of them depending on the response. The latent stage can be roughly corresponded to the industry x inferiority stage, focused on competency and skills.
What is object relations theory?
The analysis of interpersonal relationship, the approach we can only relate to others via our mental images of them. Objects is the term for emotionally important people, as we don’t always see them as ppl.
What are the four main themes included in object relations theory?
1- Every relationship has elements of satisfaction and frustration, pleasure and pain. As Klein would put it, it all starts with the breast.
2- Significant people are sources of both pleasure and frustration.
3- Distinction between the parts of the love object and the whole person. The mom is not separate from the breast, she is a whole person with value beyond from what she provides.
4- To some degree, the psyche of the person is aware of and disturbed by these contradictory feelings. The baby feels anger, envy, fear and guilt.
What are the paranoid and depressive position by Klein?
Terms that come from the child splitting their important love objects into a good and a bad part. The paranoid position is the wish to destroy bc of the fear of the bad part and the depressive position is the wish to worship and protect the good part as they are afraid to lose it.
What is Winnicott’s niffle?
The term “niffle” arose from a patient of his, as that was the name of the patient’s special blanket to which he developed an emotional attachment. The term describes a transitional object.
What is a transitional object by Winnicott’s definition?
Objects of emotional attachment that helps the child transition from constant caretaking to independence, from feeling like one with the mother to understanding they are separate beings, and that exists in a transitional state between fantasy and reality.
What was Winnicott’s term for the social mask used to please other? When is it problematic?
The false self. When children are forced to use it too early on.
What is the purpose of psychotherapy in the view of the object relations?
Minimize discrepancies between the true and false selves and help the rational resources of the mind work through the irrational defenses.
What are the points included that make researches a “little bit psychoanalytic”?
1- An examination of independent mental processes that occur simultaneously and might be in conflict
2- Unconscious mental processes
3- Compromises negotiated outside consciousness
4- Self-defensive thoughts and self-deception
5- The influence of the past on current functioning
6- Sexual or aggressive feeling’s influence on personality
What is perceptual defense and what does research says about it?
It’s the protection against anxiety from the ego by keeping the stimulus from entering awareness.
A research about critical and neutral words impact on exposure time to perception and sweat gland activity showed that critical words took longer to consciously perceive but the same amount of time for the sweat glands to react.
What is the Parallel Distributed Processing?
It says the mind does many different things at once and only a small fraction becomes conscious.
What is another psychoanalytic idea that research support? What about one that research proved wrong?
One supported is defense mechanisms, as it can be perceived on speech pattern. Catharsis (freely saying what is troubling you) shown mixed results. One showed to be wrong was Freud’s idea that success brings about sickness.
Describe TWO key differences between Freud and Jung’s theory of the mind.
Here are two key differences between Freud and Jung’s theories of the mind:
1. Structure of the Unconscious:
1. Freud emphasized a personal unconscious filled with repressed desires, thoughts,
and memories specific to an individual’s experiences.
2. Jung expanded this to include a collective unconscious, a deeper level shared
among all humans, containing universal archetypes and symbols that shape
behavior and experiences across cultures.
2. Role of Libido:
1. Freud viewed the libido as primarily a sexual energy driving human behavior and
shaping personality development.
Jung saw the libido more broadly as a general life energy that could fuel creativity, spiritual
pursuits, and personal growth beyond just sexual motivation
how can one compensate for inferiorities in Adler’s theory? What are some problems that it may cause?
Finding strength in other areas.
Superiority complex, overcompensating, exaggerated sense of strength
Inferiority complex, under compensating, exaggerated sense of worthlessness
What was Jungs view of the ego?
It was fully conscious.
How did Jung divide the unconscious?
Personal unconscious: repressed and unimportant info and complexes, clusters of emotionally loaded thoughts
Collective unconscious: inborn memories and ideas that shape personality and it’s transpersonal
Whats Jungs part of self?
Persona: social mask
Shadow: dark part, impulses
Self: resides in between, conscious part that balances the conflicting parts of the mind.
what are the virtues learnt at the psychosocial stages?
Hope - trust x mistrust
Will - autonomy x shame/doubt
Purpose - initiative x guilt
Competence - industry x inferiority
Fidelity - identity x confusion
Love - intimacy x isolation
Care - generativity x stagnation
Wisdom - integrity x despair
What are some critiques of Eriksons?
He focused on specific social expectations which made them culturally bound, what are the age cutoffs? not enough about adult.
Wha are the key differences between Freud and Erikson?
Psychosexual vs psychosocial
Early childhood vs life-span
No free will vs desire and ability to pursue personal growth
Focused on unconsciousness vs consciousness
whats the key difference between psychological maturity and the maturity principle?
one is at population level while the other is at individual level.
What did Klein say was the defense of the tension between contradictory feelings towards your loved ones?
Splitting the love objects into good and bad parts in attempt to resolve conflict. The good and bad breast.
What is the “good enough mother” by Winnicott?
It was an idea that said basically mothers loving the child and having basic standards was good enough.
