Psychoanalysis, Symptoms and Treatments

Question 1

What are the concepts of psychoanalysis?

Answer 1

• unconscious
• transference
• countertransference
• narcissism
• projection (defence mechanism, project difficulties about ourself onto others and thus dislike them for it)
• introjection
• prohective identification

Question 2

What are the 3 areas of mental life that Freud distinguished?

Answer 2

• conscious
• unconscious
• preconsciousness

Question 3

What are the narcissism defences?

claustro-agoraphobic cycle

Answer 3

• acquisition (baby and mother aren’t separate being, feel trapped and stuck depending on them)
• attribution (baby’s feelings attributed to mother, feel abandoned)

Question 4

What’s involved in the claustrophobic state?

Answer 4

• hatred of love
• only want to be apart
• outside the object
• pseudo-independence
• dropped
• attack on possibility of connection
• elevated mood

Question 5

What’s involved in the agoraphobic state?

Answer 5

• only love
• only want to be with
• inside the object
• malignant regression
• trapped
• attack on possibility of separation
• schizoid state mimicking depression

Question 6

How does therapy work in treating the cycle of trapping/dropping?

Answer 6

• spots projected state of mind in themselves
• able to talk about what the patient can’t bear to feel
• relate outside the patient’s relational predictions
• don’t drop/trap them
• enough support to respond to patient most in need without admittance to hospital
• model using relationships with others to resolve rather than repeat problems