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.