Psychoanalytic Approach to Therapy Flashcards
What is the structure of the personality, according to Freudian psychoanalytic theory?
According to the Freudian psychoanalytic view, the personality consists of three systems: the id, the ego, and the superego.
What is the Id? (Freud)
Text: The Id is roughly all the untamed drives or impulses that may be likened to the biological component. The original system of personality; at birth all is id. Instinctual, and ruled by the “pleasure principle”, the id aims to reduce tension, avoid pain, and seek pleasure.
Class: Basic impulses (sex and aggression); seeking immediate gratification; irrational and impulsive. Operates at an unconscious level.
What is the Ego? (Freud)
Text: The Ego attempts to organize and and mediate between the Id and the reality of dangers posed by the Id’s impulses. Ruled by the “reality principle”, the Ego does realistic and logical thinking, formulating plans of action for satisfying needs.
Class: Executive mediating between id impulses and superego inhibitions; testing reality; rational. Operates mainly at a conscious level but also at a preconscious level.
What is the Superego? (Freud)
Text: The Superego is the internalized social component, largely rooted in what the person imagines to be the expectations of parental figures - established as a way to protect ourselves from the danger of our drives. The Superego may be more punitive and demanding than the person’s parents really were. Includes a person’s moral code, main concern is whether an action is “good or bad” or “right or wrong”.
Class: Ideals and morals; striving for perfection; incorporated from parents; becoming a person’s conscious. Operates at mostly a preconscious level.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is a feeling of dread that results from repressed feelings, memories, desires, and experience that emerge to the surface of awareness. It can be considered as a state of tension that motivates us to do something. Develops out of a conflict among the id, ego, and superego over control of the available psychic energy. The function of anxiety is to warn impeding danger.
There are three kinds of anxiety: reality, neurotic, and moral.
Reality anxiety: the fear of danger from the external world, and the level of such anxiety is proportionate to the degree of real threat.
Neurotic anxiety: fear that the instincts will get out of hand and cause one to do something for which one will be punished; resides in the id, and fear is dominated by impulses.
Moral anxiety: fear of one’s own conscience; internal fear and threat from the superego.
What are the (six) clinical evidences for postulating the unconscious?
1) Dreams are a symbolic representations of unconscious needs, wishes, and conflicts. (manifest content - literal subject of the dream, AND latent content - underlying meaning of the dream).
2) Slips of the tongue and forgetting - ex. a familiar name.
3) Posthypnotic suggestions.
4) Material derived from free-association techniques.
5) Material derived from projective techniques
6) Symbolic content of psychotic symptoms.
What is Freud’s view of human nature?
Text: The Freudian view of human nature is basically deterministic. Behaviour is determined by irrational forces, unconscious motivations, biological and instinctual drives. Originally used the term ‘libido’ to refer to sexual energy, later broadened it to include the energy of all the life instincts - serving the purpose of the survival of the individual and the human race.
Also postulated death instincts, accounting for aggressive drive. Suggesting that people manifest an unconscious wish to die or hurt themselves or others through their behaviour.
Class: Libido - sexual energy. Life instincts serve the purpose of the survival of the individual and the human race.
Freud also postulates Thanatos - death instincts (aggressive drive). People manifest through their behaviour an unconscious wish to die or to hurt themselves.
What is consciousness vs unconscious?
Consciousness is a thin slice of the total mind. Like the iceberg that lies below the surface of the water, the larger part of the mind exists below the surface of awareness.
Unconscious stores all experiences, memories, and repressed material. The root of all forms of neurotic symptoms and behaviours.
What are ego-defense mechanisms?
Ego-defense mechanisms help the individual cope with anxiety and prevent the ego from being overwhelmed. Can be normal behaviours that can have adaptive value, provide they do not become a style of life that enables the individual to avoid facing reality.
Defenses employed depend on the individual’s level of development and degree of anxiety. Defense mechanisms have two characterists in common: 1) they either deny or distort reality, and 2) they operate on an unconscious level.
What is repression?
Repression is a defense mechanism.
Threatening or painful thoughts and feelings are excluded from awareness.
Uses for behaviour: One of the most important Freudian process, it is the basis of many other ego defenses and of neurotic disorders. Freud explained repression as an involuntary removal of something from consciousness. It is assumed that most of the painful events of the first 5 or 6 years of life are buried, yet these events do influence later behaviour.
What is denial?
Denial is a defense mechanism.
“Closing one’s eyes” to the existence of a threatening aspect of reality.
Uses for behaviour: Denial of reality is perhaps the simplest of al self-defense mechanisms. It is a way of distorting what the individual thinks, feels, or perceives in a traumatic situation. This mechanism is similar to repression, yet it generally operates at preconscious and conscious levels.
What is reaction formation?
Reaction formation is a defense mechanism.
Actively expressing the opposite impulse when confronted with a threatening impulse.
Uses for behaviour: By developing conscious attitudes and behaviours that are diametrically opposed to disturbing desires, people do not have to face the anxiety that would result if they were to recognize these dimensions of themselves. Individuals may conceal hate with a facade of love, be extremely nice when they harbour negative reactions, or mask cruelty with excessive kindness.
What is projection?
Projection is a defense mechanism.
Attributing to others one’s own unacceptable desires and impulses.
Uses for behaviour: This is a mechanism of self-deception. Lustful, aggressive, or other impulses are seen as being possessed by “those people out there, but not by me”.
What is displacement?
Displacement is a defense mechanism.
Directing energy toward another object or person when the original object or person is inaccessible.
Uses for behaviour: Displacement is a way of coping with anxiety that involves discharging impulses by shifting from a threatening object to a “safer target”. For example, the meek man who feels intimidated by his boss comes home and unloads inappropriate hostility onto his children.
What is rationalization?
Rationalization is a defense mechanism.
Manufacturing “good” reasons to explain away a bruised ego.
Uses for behaviour: Rationalization helps justify specific behaviours, and it aids in softening the blwo connected with disappointments. When people do not get positions they have applied for in their work, they think of logical reasons they did not success, and they sometimes attempt to convince themselves that they really did not want the position anyway.
What is sublimation?
Sublimation is a defense mechanism.
Diverting sexual or aggressive energy into other channels.
Uses for behaviour: Energy is usually diverted into socially acceptable and sometimes even admirable channels. For example, aggressive impulses can be channeled into athletic activities, so that the person finds a way of expressive aggressive feelings and, as an added bonus, is often praised.
What is regression?
Regression is a defense mechanism.
Going back to an earlier phase of development when there were fewer demands.
Uses for behaviour: In the face of severe stress or extreme challenge, indivudals may attempt to cope with their anxiety by clinging to immature and inappropriate behaviours. For example, children who are frightened in school may indulge in infantile behvaiour such as weeping, excessive dependence, thumbsucking, hiding, or clinging to the teacher.
What is introjection?
Introjection is a defense mechanism.
Taking in and “swallowing” the values and standards of others.
Uses of behaviour: Positive forms of introjection include incorporation of parental values or the attributes and values of the therapist (assuming that these are not merely uncritically accepted). One negative example is that in concentration camps some of the prisoners dealt with overwhelming anxiety by accepting the values of the energy through identification with the aggressor.
