psychodynamic Flashcards
The Theory of Templates
In our earliest relationships we establish templates, patterns into which we fit all subsequent relationships.
Repetition compulsion
Repetition compulsion is a need to create for ourselves repeated replays of situations and relationships that were particularly difficult or troubling.
Freud considered himself
Freud considered himself an archaeologist of the mind, uncovering and reconstructing the stories of a person’s life
“Working Through”
“Working Through” describes the process through which new insights become so well integrated in the personality, that old patterns and beliefs are abandoned. Freud realized that it takes clients more than simply knowing their unconscious feelings
Two key Freudian points to keep in mind:
1) Therapy is effected by remembering past experiences and how it’s influenced present behavior and 2) that he saw transference as a distortion and by bringing this to light for the client will help to see distortions throughout their life
agape love
Believed a therapist should convey agape love.
Agape - to Rogers/khan, is a “strengthening love, a love that by definition does not burden or obligate the loved one
empathy
The therapist continual attempt to understand the client’s experience from the client’s point of view
Unconditional positive regard
We have to view clients as “prized”
Implications of Roger’s Theory
- “No special intellectual or professional knowledge is required of therapists or will do them the the slightest good” – Meaning, it is more important to be an “encounter therapist,” learning in person and practicing in session (while training)
- No therapeutic value in a diagnosis”
- “People are neither valuable nor unvaluable; they are simply interesting to figure out.”
- Understand your client - then help your client understand him or herself, while helping the client to not implement self destructing behaviors along the way
excessive repression leads to
- takes too much energy to keep impulse repressed = no energy for living life
- Repressed material is by definition unconscious and therefore not under the control of the conscious, rational faculties; that is, it’s not under the control of ego which causes all sort of issues
- Repressed material acts as a magnet, drawing other impulses into the unconscious
remembering & insight is necessary but not sufficient
need re-experiencing: must have an opportunity to relive emotionally the impulses, the anxieties, and the conflicts of their past to relive them under certain specified conditions
Conditions for Re-experiencing
- experienced presently toward person
- must be expressed toward person
- new object of old feelings must discuss
- client must learn source of re-experienced impulses
resistance is inevitable
true
Therapist’s most important and delicate job is to
help clients through this resistance
transference might be seen as having to do with
- relationship with other
- another situation
- concern fo hwo another feels about client
Intersubjectivists
- Therapist exert significant unconscious influence on the interaction, influence they can learn about only from the client
- They must learn to be gently skeptical about their own objectivity and their own view of the client’s reality
Gill does not follow Freud in thinking transference as a distortion
We are not distorting the client’s world but trying to arrive at the most plausible construction of it given the ambiguities and our own history: most important aspect of the intersubjective position
Major Goal: help clients learn the ancient roots of their unconscious attitudes
gill believes in
the importance of remembering and transference as royal road to remembering
Three ways to interpret resistance:
- Here and now interpretation
- Contemporary life interpretation
- Genetic interpretation
Here-and-now Interpretation -
uses aspects of the therapy situation to help the client see that a particular response to the therapist is not as inevitable as it seems.
Contemporary Life Interpretation
- helps the client see that a particular attitude toward the analyst is similar to his attitudes toward other people he deals with. If the client can see that their feelings about the therapist are similar to feelings they often have towards other people, they will come to see that those feelings toward the therapist are in part transference.
Genetic Interpretation -
helps the client see the similarity between feelings toward the therapist and feelings toward people in the client’s past.
primary goal
The patient’s experience of the relationship
the most accurately demonstrable pattern of interpersonal interaction is that being enacted between the patient and therapist
Therapeutic relationship
Remembering is not enough.
It must be accompanied by an opportunity for the client to re-experience the old feelings and expectations in the presence of the new object of those feelings, the therapist.
Therapist’s nondefensive support and encouragement will be a unique experience for the client because…
- The clinical relationship is where therapuetic re-experiencing is possible
- Talk about other relationships and childhood events are helpful but might be more fascinating than useful.
- Encourage client to discuss relationship with therapist.
2 hidden dramas
client’s psyche and therapist’s.
Countertransference .
- Freud saw as obstacle. All Therapist’s feelings and attitudes towards client. Process taught something about the client’s problems that they could not have learned otherwise
Intersubjective theory (2 values)
two unconscious dramas playing out.
Two values of intersubjective perspective:
1 - emphasis on therapist’s contributions. 2- demand for skepticism of therapist’s view of situation.
4 forms of countertransference:
1- realistic responses - realistic, some people tend to evoke similar responses from a wide variety of others.
EX: client is friendly and attractive - therapist feels positive towards her.
2- responses to transference - countertransference is response to transference.
EX: client is seductive, therapist feels excited or frightened.
3- responses to material troubling to the therapist- when area is particularly troubling to the therapist.
EX: I am going through a divorce, when hearing about client’s happy marriage, I feel envious.
4- characteristic responses of the therapist - some countertransference feelings I take everywhere with me, no matter what the client does. EX: some people need to be liked by everyone they meet, some of them are therapists.
realistic responses
responses to transference
responses to material troubling therapist
characteristic responses of therapist
4 forms of countertransference
Obstructive countertransference
- interferes with the therapist’s clarity and empathy, expose us to dangers.
Use countertransference
feelings and attitudes are those that an alert therapist succeeds in employing to the client’s advantage by continuing to observe and ponder them until they become empathic insights.
*important point- at every moment our deep characterological, habitual responses lie in wait for us, looking for opportunity to express as countertransference.
(repetition compulsion)-history that wants to make itself known.
2 main forms of projective identification
- The client may want to project onto the therapist feelings too difficult for the client to own. The client will then attempt to induce the therapist to experience these feelings. If the projective identification is successful, the therapist then feels the way he imagines the client feels; that is, he identifies with that aspect of the client.
- A client wants to cast the therapist in the role of a significant other person and uncover an internal relationship too difficult to access in any other way. The client attempts to induce in the therapist the feelings of the significant other.
all empathy begins with
a countertransference response
The Necessary Conditions for the Production of Empathy:
- The only countertransference that is a potential generator of empathy is the countertransference stimulated by the client
- it becomes therapeutic empathy when the therapist can maintain or achieve an optimal distance from the feeling
For the therapist, ________is often the most difficult task of all
remaining aware of the countertransference
goal of countertransference
The goal is to shorten the time it takes to recognize and resolve a countertransference attitude or impulse.
Countertransference is the source of empath
The purpose of increasing one’s awareness of countertransference forces is not to eliminate countertransference.
TRUE
We learn the most about clients by allowing ourselves to feel what they are feeling, to enter their world as if it were our own.
empathy is not a technique its an attitude
