Psychodynamic Psychotherapies Flashcards
Freudian psychoanalysis worldview
essentially pessimistic, deterministic, mechanistic, and reductionistic
Freud’s structural theory personality components
id, ego, superego
id - 5 characteristics
- present at birth
- life and death instincts
- source of all psychic energy
- pleasure principle
- seeks immediate gratification of its instinctual drives and needs
ego - 7 characteristics
- develops at about six months of age
- response to the id’s inability to gratify all of its needs
- operates on the basis of the reality principle
- defers gratification
- employs secondary process thinking
- realistic, rational thinking and planning
- mediate conflicting demands of the id, reality and superego
superego - 4 characteristics
- develops at four and five years
- internalization of society’s values and standards
- conveyed through rewards and punishments
- attempts to permanently block the id’s socially unacceptable impulses
Freud’s developmental theory
proposes that personality is formed during childhood as the result of experiences that occur during five predetermined psychosexual stages of development
psychosexual stages
oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital
Freud’s definition of libido
id’s sexual energy
Freud’s definition of anxiety
unpleasant feeling linked with excitement of the autonomic nervous system to alert the ego to internal or external threats
defense mechanisms definition
- occur when the ego is unable to ward off danger through rational, realistic means
- operate on an unconscious level and serve to deny or distort reality
repression
underlies all other defense mechanisms and occurs when the id’s drives and needs are excluded from conscious awareness by maintaining them in the unconscious
types of defense mechanisms
repression, reaction formation, projection
reaction formation
avoiding an anxiety-evoking impulse by expressing its opposite
projection
threatening impulse is attributed to another person or other external source
psychodynamic view of maladaptive behavior
psychopathology stems from an unconscious, unresolved conflict that occurred during childhood
psychodynamic therapy goals
reduce or eliminate pathological symptoms by bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness and integrating previously repressed material into the personality
psychodynamic techniques
analysis, of client’s free associations, dreams, resistances, and transferences
psychic determinism
the belief that all behaviors are meaningful and serve some psychological function
parapraxes
slips of the tongue
steps of psychodynamic analysis
confrontation, clarification, interpretation, and working through
Confrontation
making statements that help the client see his or her behavior in a new way
clarification
clarifying the client’s feelings and restating his/her remarks in clearer terms
interpretation
explicitly connecting current behavior to unconscious processes
Catharsis
emotional release resulting from the recall of unconscious material
Working through
allows the client to gradually assimilate new insights into his or her personality
Recent modifications to the Freudian approach
more collaborative, egalitarian view of the therapeutic relationship and a reconceptualization of transference and countertransference
brief psychodynamic therapies
Prochaska and Norcross (2003)
time-limited, target a specific interpersonal problem that is usually identified in the first session, begin using interpretation early in the therapeutic relationship, and emphasize the development of a strong working alliance
teleological approach
regards behavior as being largely motivated by a person’s future goals, rather than determined by past events
Adler’s individual psychology key concepts
Inferiority feelings, striving for superiority, style of life, and social interest
Inferiority feelings
develop during childhood as the result of real or perceived biological, psychological, or social weaknesses
striving for superiority
an inherent tendency toward “perfect completion”
style of life
- specific ways a person chooses to compensate for inferiority and achieve superiority
- unifies the various aspects of the personality
- healthy or mistaken
- affected by early experiences
- established by 4-5yo
healthy style of life
goals that reflect optimism, confidence, and concern about the welfare of others
mistaken style of life
goals reflecting self-centeredness, competitiveness, and striving for personal power
Adler - pampered children
do not develop social feelings
Adler - neglected children
dominated by a need for revenge
Adler’s Individual Psychology View of Maladaptive Behavior
represent a mistaken style of life, characterized by maladaptive attempts to compensate for feelings of inferiority, a preoccupation with achieving personal power, and a lack of social interest
Adler’s Individual Psychology
Therapy Goals and Techniques
- establishing a collaborative relationship
- identify and understand their style of life
- reorienting the client’s beliefs and goals so that they support a more adaptive lifestyle
lifestyle investigation
yields information about the client’s family constellation, fictional (hidden) goals, and “basic mistakes” (distorted beliefs and attitudes)
Adler’s Individual Psychology Application
individual psychotherapy group therapy family and marital counseling parent education teacher-student relationships
Systematic Training for Effective Teaching
based on Adler’s approach and assumes that all behavior is goal-directed and purposeful
misbehavior of young children is viewed as having one of four goals — attention, power, revenge, or to display deficiency
Jung’s definition of libido
general psychic energy
Jung’s beliefs about behavior
determined not only by past events but also by future goals and aspirations
Jung’s analytical psychotherapy view on personality
consequence of both conscious and unconscious factors
Jung conscious factors
oriented toward the external world, is governed by the ego, and represents the individual’s thoughts, ideas, feelings, sensory perceptions, and memories
Jung unconscious factors
made up of the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious
personal unconscious
contains experiences that were unconsciously perceived or were once conscious but are now repressed or forgotten
collective unconscious
repository of latent memory traces that have been passed down from one generation to the next
archetypes
“primordial images” that cause people to experience and understand certain phenomena in a universal way
personality development Archetypes
the self persona shadow anima animus
the self
represents a striving for a unity of the
different parts of the personality
persona
public mask
shadow
the “dark side” of the personality
anima
feminine aspects of the personality
animus
masculine aspects of the personality
Jung personality attitudes
extraversion and introversion
Jung four basic psychological functions
thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting
individuation
integration of the conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche that leads to the development of a unique identity
development of wisdom, which occurs in the later years when a person’s interests turn toward spiritual and philosophical issues
Jung View of Maladaptive Behavior
symptoms are “unconscious messages to the individual that something is awry with him … [and that present] him with a task that demands to be fulfilled”
Jung’s analytical psychotherapy Goal
rebridge the gap between the conscious and the personal and collective unconscious
Jung’s analytical psychotherapy Techniques
interpretations that are designed to help the client become aware of his or her inner world
dreamwork
Jung opinion on dreams
represent an unconscious message to the individual that is revealed in a symbolic form
Jung definition of transference
a projection of the personal and collective unconscious
Object Relations Theory
- consider object-seeking (relationships with others) to be a basic inborn drive
- emphasize a child’s early relationships with objects, especially the child’s internalized representations (“introjects”) of objects and object relations that become part of the self and influence interactions with other people in the future
object-relations theorists
Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, Margaret Mahler, and Otto Kernberg
Mahler Personality Theory
focuses on the processes by which an infant assumes his or her own physical and psychological identity
normal infantile autism, normal symbiotic phase, separation-individuation phase
normal infantile autism
first month of life
infant is self-absorbed and essentially oblivious to the external environment
normal symbiotic phase
the child becomes aware of the mother but is unable to differentiate between “me” and “not-me”
separation-individuation phase
begins at four to five months of age and is composed of four overlapping subphases: differentiation, practicing, reapproachement, and object constancy
object-relations View of Maladaptive Behavior
the result of abnormalities in early object relations
Kernberg - inadequate resolution of splitting mental representations of the self and others into “good” and “bad”
Mahler - problems that occurred during separation-individuation
object-relations Therapy Goals
opportunity to provide the client with support, acceptance, and other conditions that restore the client’s ability to relate to others in meaningful, realistic ways
bring “maladaptive unconscious relationship dynamics into consciousness”
object-relations Therapy Techniques
primary focus is on splitting, projective identification, and other defense mechanisms that serve to maintain pathological object relations
