Prelim 1 Flashcards
Why does Freud think slips of the tongue are worthy of study?
They are common experiences, we tend to dismiss them as mental errors, but almost none are random or incomprehensible, they make sense and convey an idea somehow relevant to the sentence
Types of slips
1- speaker slips but not surprised by it, conscious of what he wanted to say
2- speaker slips and surprised by it, but knows why he slipped (confused about difference COME BACK)
3- speaker slips but doesn’t know why
Main point of parapraxes (slips)
Result of conflict between competing ideas- intended sentence (disturbed content) replaced by slip (disturbing content)- usually intended content is reversed by the slip, but always connected by thought underlying speaker’s ideas
Why don’t we think these slips have meaning?
Built-in resistance to this, unconsciously motivated to dismiss these as random errors
What are dreams?
Asleep during them, consciousness qualitatively different, incorporate internal and external stimuli, variety unlimited
How do you find out what a dream really means?
Ask the dreamer
Freud’s rules on associating to dreams
- Don’t worry about what the dream appears to tell us, not unconscious element we are searching for
- Associate to element of the dream without judging the associations
- Keep associating until the connections between the dream material and the underlying thoughts emerge
How does a dreamer interpret own dream?
First says he doesn’t know what it means, ask how he arrived at the dream, first remark is an explanation, encourage free association, ask dreamer to keep dream in mind, works because all thoughts arise from earlier thoughts, dream element often leads to a thought indirectly connected to it
Psychic continuity
All thoughts arise from other thoughts
Dream thoughts
Thoughts that occur to dreamer during dream states, Freud thought always wishes, make up latent content of dream
Dream work
Expresses dream thoughts in hallucinatory images that disguise and distort the dream thoughts (AND SOMETHING ELSE?)
Dream purpose
To keep you asleep
Condensation
Compressing latent dream thoughts into images that omit, combine, or reverse their meanings
Displacement
A latent thought is replaced by a part of itself, a symbol of itself, an allusion to it
Transformation into visual images
Dream thoughts turned into visual hallucinations (I THINK)
Language often reversed or doubled
Ambiguous meaning of primal words exploited in dreams, Freud argues dreams represent both sides of wish or fear (???)
Hysterical symptoms as physical symbols
Freud thinks these symptoms are associations
Patient suffers a trauma- disturbing event- doesn’t fully process it, instead represses it, another event triggers associations to earlier trauma, mind created physical symptoms that are linked to these psychologically (???), hysterical symptoms symbolize the trauma, once patient associates to earlier trauma, the hysterical symptoms begin to disappear
What are the essential resistances to psychoanalysis?
We are biased to value what we can see over what we can’t, we are biased against focus on psychical life (??), psychiatry restricted to observed phenomena, psychoanalysis meant to provide a model for understanding mental experience?
Two provocative hypotheses of psychoanalysis
1- what we experience as consciousness is only a part of mental life, there are mental processes that influence us greatly but remain unconscious
2- sexual impulses play an important role in nervous disorders and that sexual energy when channeled psychologically fuels creativity, rationality, achievement, and the emergence of culture and civilization
Id
Basic, animal part of you, expresses urges of erotic and aggressive drives, seeks to discharge energy through pleasurable acts
Ego
Conscious part of you, strives to control urges, acts according to reality principle, rationally
Superego
Internalized values of family and surrounding culture, sets the standards for which ego tries to maintain control of urges and wishes
Psychosexual stage 1
Ages 0-2, oral, pleasure principle
Psychosexual stage 2
2-3, anal, rise of ego
Psychosexual stage 3
3-5, phallic, exhibitionism
Psychosexual stage 4
5-7, Oedipal, rise of superego
Psychosexual stage 5
7-11, latency, social/cultural internalizations
Psychosexual stage 6
12+, genital/adolescence, reworking of Oedipal stage
Freud’s overall ideas 1
All of our associations are connected to previous associations, no random thoughts- psychic continuity
Freud’s overall ideas 2
Conscious thought is only one layer of consciousness, competing thoughts, feelings, wishes, fears, etc make themselves known through slips, omissions, dreams, these unconscious layers are kept unconscious by the mind which puts up resistance to conscious understanding, to make these conscious, associate to slips or dreams
Freud’s overall ideas 3
Each child must be taught to sublimate (?) their erotic and aggressive impulses, as human species had to in order to develop civilization to survive
Jealous delusion story
Woman had romantic feelings towards son in law, unacceptable to her, those feelings projected onto husband so he carried her wishes to be unfaithful, her feelings disguised through projection, but still powered intensity of jealousy
Obsessional neurosis story
Girl struggling with Oedipal desire for father, wishes to interfere with parents’ relationship, fears growing up and separating from parents, symptoms disguised and symbolized the wishes, (come back), rituals kept her unaware of wishes and fears by occupying her mind with displaced expressions of them
Signal anxiety
Fear of losing parents’ love over aggressive or forbidden wishes, ego moves to suppress the wish by mobilizing a defense
How does ego defend against unacceptable feelings, thoughts, wishes, and fears?
Repression, projection, denial, rationalization, reaction formation, isolation of affect (COME BACK)
Compromise formation
When a conscious wish is in conflict with unconscious wishes, it causes (??) signal anxiety which leads to compromise formation that partially gratifies both conscious and unconscious wishes
Joe’s compromise formation
Conscious wish is to succeed, unconscious wish is to protect father, surpass father, be mom’s favorite, (?), compromise formation is coming to college and trying to work but can’t do it
Prohibition?
confused, end of lecture 7
Types of countertransference
1- Therapist’s unresolved issues negatively affect understanding of patient’s issues
2- Therapist’s making use of their experience of being with the patient in the room
Betty’s compromise formation
Conscious wish to live life fully, unconscious wish to marry father and surpass mother, unconscious fear is being thin is to die and to live is to risk loss, she’s obese and alone
Laughing Man + Freud
Oedipal struggle, reconciling aggressive and loving feelings about parent, wants to compete with chief and sad about his death as the laughing man
Westen’s Five Postulates + Data (COME BACK)
1- Much of mental life is unconscious, people can behave in ways or develop symptoms that are inexplicable to themselves, cognitive research on implicit attitudes, subliminal priming, etc
2- Mental processes work in parallel, leading to conflicts and compromises, people can have conflicting feelings towards same person or situation that motivate them in opposing ways, connectionist models of processing, distortion of feedback (??)
3- Stable personality patterns form in childhood, childhood plays an important role in personality development and social relationships later, strange situation, developmental research, etc
4- Mental representations of things guide interactions and psychological symptoms (?), automatic process, empirically validated projective testing
5- Personality development involves learning to regulate sexual and aggressive feelings and moving from an immature state to a mature interdependence, ?? MISSING
Open ended interviews
Asking questions about history and symptoms, paying attention to how patient responds
Structured interviews
Established questions that follow the DSM
Self-report measures
Answer about mood, etc
Norm based measures
?
Projective tests
Mental associations to pictures, etc
Hans Eysenck
Objective school, attacked psychotherapy and projective tests
Obj v proj
come back
Hans Strupp
Projective school, explored effectiveness of psychotherapy, importance of patient’s degree and quality of trust in therapist
Objective arguments against projective wing
Patients don’t answer them in the same way, hard to quantify, only captures one moment in time, data can be mis or over interpreted, used by psychodynamic clinicians who rely on “out moded” ?? ideas of unconscious
Projective arguments against self report measures
Patients forced to answer complex questions on a small scale, can’t refine questions or qualify answers, data doesn’t convey anything personal about patients, relies on patient to be truthful, used by CBT clinicians who measure success by lower numbers on self report depression scales
Rise of objective wing led to
Rejecting use of projective tests, leaving Freud out of curriculum, emphasizing only objective tests, teaching only empirically validated manualized psychotherapy techniques, emphasis on here and now versus childhood and unconscious
Shedler’s answer to objective wing
Some subset of people show low depression inventory but high physiological stress and negative memories, defensive mental health
