Psychoanalysis Flashcards
Ludwig Helmholtz
tolerated no metaphysical speculation while studying living organisms, including humans. His approach was most medicinal and physiological.
Had a profound effect on Freud. Freud eventually abandoned Helmholtz’s materialism and switched from a medical to a psychological model in his effort to explain human behavior
Josef Breuer
Freud learned from Breuer concerning the treatment of a woman, anonymously referred to as Anna O., that essentially launched psychoanalysis.
Transference: the process by which a patient responds to the therapist as if the therapist were relevant person in the patient’s life.
Countertransference: the process by which therapist becomes emotionally involved with a patient.
Jean-Martin Charcot
assumed hysteria to be a real disease that could be triggered by dissociated dead. Taking hysteria seriously and proposing a partially psychological explanation of the disease. He insisted it occurred in both males and females.
Both hypnotic phenomena and Charcot
a proposed explanation of hysteria strongly influenced the development of Freud’s theory.
In fact, a case cam be made that all components of psychoanalysis existed before Freud.
Sigmund Freud
Freud began using the cathartic method in 1889, and had some problems: Resistance to hypnosis, symptom substitution
Developed method of free association to accomplish the same thing
Repression and resistance showed he was on the right track
Freud’s Cocaine Episode
He tried it for his depression and indigestion, which was prompted by the soldiers of the war who used it for energy. He ended up studying it and trying it himself. He was a vocal proponent of this new miracle drug, being cocaine.
He later got addicted to nicotine, smoking almost 20 cigars a day.
hysteria
the book Breuer and Freud published in 1895.
They noted that hysteria is caused by a traumatic experience that is not allowed adequate expression and, therefore, manifests itself in physical symptoms.
The holding of traumatic memories in the unconscious mind because pondering them consciously would cause too much anxiety
he believed that talking/expressing these feelings was enough to make things better.
unconscious motivation: causes our behavior, the causes of which we are unaware.
free association
freud’s major tool for studying the contents of the unconscious mind. With three association, a patient is encouraged to express freely everything that comes to his or her mind.
Freud tried having his patients lie of a couch, with their eyes closed but not hypnotized. He asked the patients to recall the firs time they had experienced a particular symptom, and the patients began to recollect various experiences but usually stopped short of the goal.
Free association proved only fragmented glimpses of the unconscious.
Psychopathology of everyday life
published in 1901, and discussed paraphrases which are minor errors in everyday life.
Overdetermination: behavioral and psychological phenomena often have two or more causes.
Humor: we use humor to express unacceptable sexual and aggressive tendencies.
The basis of religion is the human feeling of helplessness and insecurity.
Id
powerful, unconscious portion of the personality that contains all instincts It consists of all the inherited (i.e., biological) components of personality present at birth, including the sex (life) instinct – Eros (which contains the libido), and the aggressive (death) instinct - Thanatos.
The id is the impulsive (and unconscious) part of our psyche which responds directly and immediately to the instincts. The personality of the newborn child is all id and only later does it develop an ego and super-ego.
libido
collective energy associated with those instincts
accounts for most behavior in the ID.
satisfying needs
reflex action - automatically triggered (sneezing) and wish fulfillment
ego
The ego develops to mediate between the unrealistic id and the external real world. It is the decision-making component of personality. Ideally, the ego works by reason, whereas the id is chaotic and unreasonable.
The ego operates according to the reality principle, working out realistic ways of satisfying the id’s demands, often compromising or postponing satisfaction to avoid negative consequences of society.
superego
The superego incorporates the values and morals of society which are learned from one’s parents and others. It develops around the age of 3 – 5 during the phallic stage of psychosexual development.
The superego’s function is to control the id’s impulses, especially those which society forbids, such as sex and aggression. It also has the function of persuading the ego to turn to moralistic goals rather than simply realistic ones and to strive for perfection.
death instincts
death has a goal
life instinct seeks to perpetuate life while the death instinct seeks to terminate it.
life-death struggle.
defense mechanisms
ego needs to satisfy needs of the ID and not alienate the superego
ego needs to combat anxiety that occurs when one acts contrary to one’s internalized values.
Mechanisms include: regression, displacement, sublimation, projection, identification, rationalization, reaction formation.
Psychosexual stages of development
oral stage: birth to 1 year old. erogenous zone is the mouth. if this stage causes a fixation to occur the child will become an oral character.
anal stage: 1-2 years old, erogenous zone is butt.
Phallic stage: 3-5
freud’s fate
even while suffering from cancer, he remained productive
his books were banned in Germany because psychoanalysis was labeled as a Jewish science
In Vienna, Nazi’s destroyed Freud’s library and burned all his books in the public library.
Left Vienna after Gestapo took interest in family
Left sisters in germany, who perished in the concentration camps
criticisms
never used controlled experiments
patients didn’t represent the general population
his expectations influenced his results
he was dogmatic, and didn’t tolerate anything that spoke out against his ideas
to be trained as a psychoanalyst, you had to undergo psychoanalysis themselves.
emphasized sex a lot and wasn’t available to all people.
not falsifiable
contributions
expanded the domain of psychology
created the first foundation of personality
created a powerful tool of psychoanalysis.
created a new way of dealing with mental disorders
he better explained normal and abnormal behavior
said psychology is useful in explaining things in everyday life.
seduction hypothesis
sexual abuse in childhood is a cause of hysteria
freud rejected this - says the cause is actually fantasized abuse
this became a base for psychosexual stages of development
ego defense mechanisms
objective, neurotic, and oral anxiety create problems the ego must deal with
neurotic and moral anxiety arouse ego defense mechanisms, distort reality, operate on unconscious level
repression, displacement, sublimation, projection, reaction formation, and rationalization
the case of anna o
cathartic method - as energy dissipates, emotions release
