Psychoanalytic Therapy Flashcards
What are the basics of psychodynamics?
- The unconscious.
- Transference and Countertransference.
- The role of early childhood.
How is our behaviour determined?
By irrational forces, unconscious motivations, and biological and instinctual drives.
What is Libido?
Originally used to describe sexual drive, though broadened to include all life instincts.
What are life instincts?
Serve the purpose of the survival of the individual and the human race - growth, development, creativity.
What are death instincts?
The aggressive drive: an unconscious wish to die manifested through behavior. To hurt others.
What is the structure of personality?
id, ego, superego.
What is the id?
- The original system on personality.
- At birth the person is all id.
- Irrational and amoral.
- Psychic energy.
- Instincts.
- Lacks organisation and is blind, demanding and insistent.
- Functions to discharge tension.
- Ruled by the pleasure principle.
- Largely out of awareness and unconscious
What is the pleasure principle?
Reducing tension, avoiding pain, gaining pleasure.
What is the ego?
- The ego has contact with the external world of reality.
- The executive that governs, controls, and regulates personality.
- Mediates the instincts and the surrounding environment.
- Controls the consciousness and exercises censorship.
- Ruled by the reality principle.
- Controls the blind impulses of the id.
- Operates in the external world as well as in the subjective reality.
What is the reality principle?
Realistic and logical thinking, formulating plans of action for satisfying needs.
What is the superego?
*The judicial branch of personality
*The persons moral code.
*What actions are right or wrong?Good or bad?
*The ideal rather than the real.
Strives for perfection not pleasure.
Strives to inhibit the id impulses and to persuade the ego to substitute moral goals for realistic one and to strive for perfection.
*The internalization of standards.
*Rewards: Pride and self love.
Punishments: Guilt and inferiority.
What is the unconscious?
Stores all experiences, memories, repressed material. Needs and motivations that are inaccessible.
What is the aim of psychoanalytic therapy?
To get the unconscious conscious.
What is anxiety?
A feeling of dread that results from repressed feelings, memories, desires, and experiences that emerge to the surface of awareness.
What is reality anxiety?
The fear of danger from the external world, the level of anxiety is proportionate to the threat from the real world.
What is neurotic anxiety?
The fear that the instincts will get out of hand and cause one to do something for which people will be punished.
What is moral anxiety?
The fear of ones own conscience.
Repression
Threatening or painful thoughts and feelings are excluded from awareness.
Denial
Closing ones eyes to the existence of a threatening aspect of reality.
Reaction Formation
Actively expressing the opposite impulse when confronted with a threatening impulse.
Projection
Attributing to others the opposite impulse when confronted with a threatening impulse.
Displacement
Directing feelings towards another object or person when the original object or person is inaccessible.
Rationalization
Manufacturing good reasons to explain away a bruised ego.
Sublimation
Diverting sexual or aggressive energy into other channels.
Regression
Going back to an earlier phase of development when there were fewer demands.
Identification
Identifying with successful causes or organizations or people in he hope that it will be perceived as worthwhile
Compensation
Masking perceived weakness or developing certain positive traits to make up for limitations.
Oral stage
Deals with the inability to trust oneself ad others, resulting in fear of loving and forming close relationships and low self esteem.
Anal stage
Deals with the inability to recognize and express anger, leading to the denial of ones own power as a person and the lack of a sense of autonomy.
Phallic stage
Deals with the inability to fully accept ones own sexuality and sexual feelings, also difficulty in accepting ones self as a man or a woman.
Psychosocial stages
Refer to Erikson’s basic psychological and social tasks which individuals need to master at intervals from infancy through to old age.
Classical psychoanalysis
Is focused on d psychology. Instincts and intrapsychic conflicts are the basis of personality development.
Contemporary psychoanalysis
Is focused on ego psychology. The driving of the ego for mastery.
What is the ultimate therapeutic goal?
To increase adaptive functioning.
The resolution of conflicts and the reduction of symptoms.
What is the blank screen approach
Where the therapist is relatively anonymous with very little self disclosure.
What is free association?
The fundamental rule - Saying whatever comes to mind without sensorship.
What is classical psychoanalysis?
The traditional Freudian approach to psychoanalysis based on longterm exploration of past conflicts, many of which unconscious and an extensive process of working through early wounds.
What is transference?
The unconscious shifting of feelings and fantasies that are reactions to significant others in the clients past.
What is the working through process?
The working through of the transference, consists of repetitive elaborations of unconscious material ad defences most of which are originated in early childhood.
What is countertransference?
Viewed as the phenomenon that occurs when there is a inappropriate affect, when the therapist respond in irrational ways, or when they lose their objectivity in a relationship because of their on conflicts are triggered. The emotional response to the client.
What are the six basic techniques of psychoanalytic therapy?
- Maintaining the analytical framework.
- Free association.
- Interpretation.
- Dream analysis.
- Analysis of resistance
- Analysis of transference
What is maintaining the analytical framework?
Refers to a whole range of procedural and stylistic factors, such as the analysts’s relative anonymity, maintaining neutrality and objectivity, the regularity and consistency of meetings, stating and ending on time, clarity of fees, and basic boundary issues.
What is interpretation?
Consists of the analysts pointing out, explaining, and even teaching the client the meanings of behavior that is manifest in dreams, free association and the therapeutic relationship in general.
Dream analysis
An important procedure for uncovering unconscious material and giving the client insight into some of his or her problems.
Latent content
hidden, secret, or symbolic motives, wishes and fears.
Manifest content
The dream as it appears to the dreamer
Dream work
The process in which latent content is transformed into manifest content.
Resistance
A concept fundamental to the practice of psychoanalysis. Anything that works against the progress of therapy, and prevents the client from producing previously unconscious material.
Analytical psychology
Jung: is an elaborate explanation of human nature that combines ideas from history, mythology, anthropology, and religion.
Individuation
The harmonious integration of the conscious and unconscious aspects of personality. An innate and primary goal.
Collective unconscious
The deepest level of the psyche containing the accumulation of inherited experiences of human and prehuman species.
Persona
Is a mask, or public face that we wear to protect ourselves.
Animus and Anima
Represent both biological and psychological aspects of masculinity and femininity which are thought to coexist in both sexes.
Shadow
The deepest roots, the most dangerous and powerful. Our dark side, thoughts feelings, and actions that we tend to disown by projecting them outward.
Ego psychology
Is part of classical psychoanalysis with the emphasis on the vocabulary of id, ego, and superego. And on defence mechanisms.
Object-Relations theory
- How our relationships with other people are affected by the way we have internalised our experiences of others and set up representations of others within ourselves.
- Interpersonal relationships represented intrapsychically as they influence our interactions with others around us.
Self-psychology
How we use interpersonal relationships (self objects) to develop our own sense of self.
The relational model
Is based on the assumption that therapy is an interactive process between client and therapist.
Narcissistic personality
Characterised by a grandiose and exaggerated sense of self-importance and an exploitative attitude towards others which serve the function of masking a frail self-concept.
Borderline personality disorder
- Have moved into separation phase of the separation-individuation process however have been thwarted by parental rejection of their individuation. (This explanation is only the explanation for the disorders development in childhood). Rooted in trauma experience in the separation-individuation phase.
Some major concepts of psychoanalytic theory include
The dynamics of the unconscious and its influence on behaviour, the role of anxiety, an understanding of transference and countertransference, and the development of personality at various stages in the life cycle.
