Task 6 - Psychoanalysis

Question 1

Asylum

Answer 1

Institutions for the insane established from the 16th century on; first modeled after prisons, later after hospitals.
Over the 18th century (Age of Enlightenment) the belief grew that people in asylums were not criminals but ill patients.

Question 2

William Beattie

Answer 2

Published the first book on psychiatry, Treatise on madness (1758)

Question 3

Philippe Pinel

Answer 3

Liberated the insane of Bicetre from their chains after the French Revolution.

Question 4

Sigmund Freud

Answer 4

1856-1939
Founder of Psychoanalysis.

Question 5

Psychodynamics

Answer 5

A view that considered living organisms as energy systems governed by the principles of physics and chemistry.
(Freud)

Question 6

Psychoanalysis

Answer 6

Freud’s theory and therapy.
The first coherent framework for the treatment of nervous disorders and was welcomed among neurologists.
• resulted in neurologists replacing psychiatrists in the asylums

Question 7

Treatment of hysterical symptoms

Answer 7

Freud started his own medical practice in neurology, in which he started a new type of treatment (PSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT) based on conversations with patients.
• on the basis of this treatment Freud became convinced that hysterical symptoms were due to repressed sexual childhood experiences (PATHOGENIC IDEA)
• these symptoms could be alleviated by the process of bringing the unconscious memories into the patient’s consciousness and by freeing them from their emotional energy

Question 8

Pressure Technique

Answer 8

Method used by Freud to treat patients with hysteria, who could not be hypnotized.
Hand pressed on patients forehead. Was supposed to stimulate memory.

Question 9

Method of free association

Answer 9

Freuds standard method.
As pressure therapy but without applying pressure.
Encouraging his patients to let their thoughts run free and report everything, whether relevant or not.

Question 10

Overdetermination

Answer 10

Freud’s idea that several pathogenic ideas were causing a hysterical symptom (e.g. a patient with hysterical hand tremors has her symptoms explained by 3 memories: being strapped on her hand as a childhood punishment, being scared while playing the piano and being required to massage her father’s back).

Question 11

Repression

Answer 11

Freud’s idea that his patients unconsciously resisted the free-association process as at some level they did not want to recall some of their pathogenic ideas.

Question 12

Intrapsychic conflict

Answer 12

Different aspects of a person battling for mutually exclusive goals.
Freud initially discovered intrapsychic conflict by noticing that his patients consciously wanted to heal, but other parts of themselves unconsciously repressed pathogenic ideas as they were afraid that the treatment would be quite emotionally painful.

Question 13

Seduction Theory

Answer 13

Published by Freud in 1896, stating that all hysterics have undergone sexual abuse as children.

• theory states that children did not experience this abuse as sexual.
• However, when their sexual drive started being aroused in puberty, the patients would unconsciously produce hysterical symptoms as a substitute for revisiting these old memories.
•The hysterical symptoms function as defenses against the psychologically dangerous pathogenic ideas.

Question 14

Freud classified a dream’s content into two categories:

Answer 14

1. MANIFEST CONTENT: the consciously experienced content of the dream, as reported by the patient.
2. LATENT CONTENT: the original inspiration for the dream, but which emerged in consciousness only after free association.
   • dreamers resisted the uncovering of the latent content in the same way as hysterical patients resisted the recollection of their pathogenic ideas.

Question 15

Dream work

Answer 15

3 processes by which the sleeping mind transforms a set of latent ideas into manifest content:

DISPLACEMENT: the psychic energy of the highly charged latent content becomes displaced onto the related but more emotionally-neutral manifest content.
• Serves a defensive function, enabling the dreamer to experience images less disturbing than the thoughts that originally inspired them.
CONDENSATION: the logic of 2 or more latent thoughts sometimes condense (combine) into a single manifest dream image.
CONCRETE REPRESENTATIONS: the manifest content represents latent ideas by means of concretely experienced sensations or hallucinations.

Question 16

Freud hypothesized 2 ideal and opposite modes of mental activity:

Answer 16

PRIMARY PROCESS: an unconscious mode of mental activity associated with dream and hysterical symptom formation, but also with positive things such as creative and artistic thinking.
SECONDARY PROCESS: a conscious mode of mental activity responsible for rational thought.
• REGRESSION: instances in which secondary-process thinking is abandoned in favor of the developmentally earlier primary process (e.g. dreaming and hysterical symptoms)

Question 17

Fulfillment of wishes

Answer 17

Freud concluded that all dreams represent some element of the fulfillment of wishes - the latent content of the dreams included significant conflict-rich and anxiety-arousing wishes.

Question 18

Oedipus complex

Answer 18

Freud
A set of unconscious wishes of sexually possessing the opposite-sexed parent and getting rid of the same-sex parent as the major rival for the first wish.

Question 19

Latency stage

Answer 19

After repression, the child enters a latency stage, which lasts until puberty reawakens the sexual drive. During this period negative feelings for the same-sex parent are repressed. The positive feeling of the child toward the same-sex parent facilitates a positive identification with that parent as a socially approved role model.
• Because the child is free from the anxieties generated by the sexual drive, this period is ideal for learning.

Question 20

Freudian character types

Answer 20

Freud believes that the Oedipus complex is never destroyed, but merely repressed. Differences in childhood sexual experiences lead to distinctive individual differences in adulthood.
ANAL CHARACTER - adult personality traits such as orderliness, parsimony & stubbornness - caused by strict enforcement of toilet training, leading to a fixation of infantile sexuality at the anal stage.
ORAL CHARACTER - adults have this character if they are very interested in oral activities such as eating, drinking, smoking and talking - caused by overindulgence or underindulgence during the oral period.
• If overindulged, it results in a cheerful and optimistic character.
• If underindulged, it results in an envious & pessimistic character.
PHALLIC/GENITAL CHARACTER - adult personality marked by curiosity, competitiveness or exhibitionism.

Question 21

Transference

Answer 21

Freud believed that his patients transferred attributes of the important people in their past life onto him who were implicated in their neurotic symptoms.
• Freud learned that for therapy to proceed optimally, he and his patients would have to pay attention to the transference relationships between themselves.

Question 22

The Ego and the Id

Answer 22

In 1923 Freud published a book titled The Ego and the Id, in which he argued that the human mind constantly has to face 3 kinds of demands that conflict with one another and the mind’s major function is to resolve these conflicts as best as it can:
INSTINCTS - biological demands arising from the body itself (e.g. urges for food, warmth, sexual gratification, etc.)
REALITY-BASED DEMANDS- imposed by the external reality - in order to survive, a person must manipulate the environment in order to avoid physical dangers and obtain the necessary objects.
MORAL DEMANDS - distinct from the other 2 because one’s conscience often prevents someone from following his/her impulses even if there is nothing in the reality to prevent it.

Question 23

3 kind of psychic demands (Freud)

Answer 23

ID - a repository of unconscious impulses and energies from the instincts.
PERCEPTION-CONSCIOUSNESS SYSTEM (pcpt.-cs.): a system that conveys information about external reality to the conscious mind.
• Also leaves behind memories that remain accessible to future consciousness in a storage called the PRECONSCIOUS.
SUPEREGO - a system imposing moral demands, arising independently of instincts and external reality.
EGO - a system that produces the compromises between the conflicting demands of the other 3 systems. Devises and executes responses that will satisfy all 3 systems to some extent.
• Hysterical symptoms represent maladaptive compromises in which considerations of external reality are ignored and the impulses of the id are confronted mainly by the superego. As a result, the impulses are expressed in a disguised way.

Question 24

Defense mechanisms

Answer 24

Projection, Intellectualization, Denial, Rationalization, Identification

Question 25

Projection

Answer 25

Occurs when a person does not directly acknowledge their own unacceptable impulses and attributes them to someone else instead.

Question 26

Intellectualization

Answer 26

Approaching an impulse- and emotion-charged subject in a strict intellectual manner that avoids emotional involvement.

Question 27

Denial

Answer 27

Believing and behaving as if an instinct-driven event had not occurred.

Question 28

Rationalization

Answer 28

Acting because of one motive but explaining the behavior on the basis of another, more acceptable one.

Question 29

Identification

Answer 29

During the latency stage, when the child identifies with the same-sex parent. Results in internalization of that parent’s prohibition against childhood sexuality and Oedipal impulses. The internalization in the formation of the superego, which reflects the internalized parent.

Question 30

Castration complex (Freud)

Answer 30

A period during which boys and girls become acutely aware of the major obvious anatomical differences between them (presence or absence of a penis).
For boys, this results in anxiety. They fear that their fathers will castrate them if they openly revealed their Oedipal wishes.
Girls, who have already been castrated, respond with envy - an unconscious wish to be like a boy and have a penis.
This results in boys having more Oedipal anxiety to deal with
• requires stronger internalization of parental restraint to deal with it
• boys develop stronger superegos than girls.