Psychodynamic approaches 2 Flashcards
Psychoanalytic Therapy: Goal
- insight, the bringing into conscious awareness of formerly unconscious material
- Sufficient for curing psychological disorders.
Psychoanalytic Therapy: Tools (interpretation)
- Interpretation, suggesting hidden
meanings to patients’ accounts of their lives. - Psychoanalysts must overcome resistance of
patient.
Psychoanalytic Therapy: Tools (neutrality)
- Neutrality, a distant stance to minimise
therapist’s personal influence. - Facilitates transference, whereby patients
transfer their feelings about people in their life
onto the analyst.
Psychoanalytic Therapy: Tools
- Analysts use the transference to aid
interpretations, must avoid reacting as the real figure would. - Must also be on guard for countertransference,
where their own feelings influence their responses.
(Counter)transference - transference
- Idealization: You are the best.
- Invitation to rescue: Only you can help me.
- Acting the helpless child.
- Naughty behaviour: being late, not turning up, lack of adherence.
- Seeking approval.
- Invitation to intimacy: eliciting personal information, divulging personal information.
(Counter)transference - counter
- Inappropriately intense response.
- Preoccupation.
- Loss of objectivity.
- Typical: Rescue fantasy.
Malan triangles
Developed to represent transference in psychotherapy
Three windows into the unconscious
- free association
- slips of the tongue
- dreams
free association
- the client verbalises whatever comes to mind without editing or censoring the stream of thought
- goal is to reveal aspects of the unconscious mind, unconscious desires
slips of the tongue: what is Psychic Determinism?
- Freud: the little ‘accidents’ of daily life are often expressions of the motivated unconscious, (such as calling someone by the wrong name)
- Nothing actually happens by accident—instead, there is a reason behind every act, thought
slips of the tongue: Bushisms
silly statements attributed to George Bush
i.e. “First, I’d like to spank all the teachers…”
The Interpretation of Dreams
- Dream analysis - the Royal Road to the
unconscious. - Manifest content. Latent content. Relaxation of censorship.
What is dream work
the process by which the brain censors dreams
Evaluating Freud: influence
- Some would argue he is more influential outside of psychology
- 86% of classes on psychoanalysis are taught outside of psychology departments
Evaluating Freud: unscientific
A rich source of theorizing – but weak on science
Data - what is the Universal theory of human behaviour based on?
- observations of wealth, educated Viennese women
- Freud recorded his interpretations rather than describing actual behaviour
Parsimony
Freud’s theory is convoluted rather than frugal and economical
Falsifiability - Karl popper
- Karl Popper – falsifiability is what distinguishes scientific from unscientific theories.
how can a theory be falsifiable?
there must be conceivable
empirical outcomes/observations that
would prove it to be false
What did Einstein say about falsifiability?
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove
me wrong”
Is the psychoanalytic theory falsifiable?
- The theory provides few, if any, testable
hypotheses. It also changed over time.
Freud’s views on his own theory
Freud’s own view was that attempts to
empirically confirm his assertions were
unnecessary
What happens if evidence doesn’t support the theory?
it can always be argued that this was a consequence of the individual’s defence mechanisms
what have psychoanalysts argued about psychoanalytic ideas:
any opposition to psychoanalytic ideas is a form of resistance (Kline, 1981)
other issues
sexism
women essentially castrated men -> thus develop weaker superegos and have weaker moral character
other issues
overemphasis on sex
psychoanalytic theory pros
- innovative
- insightful
- importance of early childhood
psychoanalytic theory cons
- overly sexualised
- sexist
- unscientific
