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