Theories of Counseling Chapter 4

Question 1

Psychoanalytic Perspective of Human Nature

Answer 1

• Deterministic.

- Behavior is determined by irrational forces, unconscious motivations, and instinctual drives.

Question 2

Id

Answer 2

• Untamed drives.
• Largely unconscious
• Ruled by the pleasure principle, which is aimed at reducing tension, avoiding pain, and gaining pleasure

Question 3

Ego

Answer 3

• Mediate between the id and the reality of dangers posed by the id’s impulses.
• Ruled by the reality principle, does realistic thinking and formulates plans of action for satisfying needs.
• It is the executive that governs, controls, and regulates the personality.

Question 4

Superego

Answer 4

• Internalized social component, its what the person imagines to be.
• The judicial branch of personality, it includes a person’s moral code.
• It functions to inhibit the id impulses, to persuade the ego to substitute moralistic goals for realistic ones.

Question 5

Consciousness and the Unconscious are the Key Components in Understanding Behavior

Answer 5

1. Dreams, symbolic representations of unconscious needs and conflicts.
2. Slips of the tongue
3. Posthypnotic suggestions
4. Material derived from free-association techniques
5. Material derived from projective techniques
6. The symbolic content of psychotic symptoms

Question 6

Psychoanalytic Approach

Answer 6

• Grounded on id psychology, and it holds that instincts and intrapsychic conflicts are the basic factors shaping personality.
• The two goals include:
  1. To make the unconscious conscious
  2. To strengthen the ego so that the behavior is based more on reality and less on instinctual cravings or irrational guilt.

Question 7

Reality Anxiety

Answer 7

The fear of danger from the external world, and the level of anxiety is proportionate to the degree of real threat.

Question 8

Neurotic Anxiety

Answer 8

The fear that the instincts will get out of hand and cause the person to do something for which she or he will be punished.

Question 9

Moral Anxiety

Answer 9

• The fear of one’s own conscience.

- Feeling of guilt.

Question 10

Ego Defense Mechanisms

Answer 10

• Help individuals cope with anxiety and prevent the ego from being overwhelmed.
  1. They either deny or distort reality
  2. They operate on an unconscious level.

Question 11

Erikson’s Psychosocial Model

Answer 11

• Stages refer to basic psychological and social tasks, which individuals need to master at intervals from infancy through old age.
• Each stage of life we face the task of establishing equilibrium between ourselves and our social world.
• A crises is equivalent to a turning point in life when we have the potential to move forward or to regress.

Question 12

Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Answer 12

Does not deny the role of intrapsychic conflicts, but emphasizes the striving of the ego for mastery and competence throughout the human life span.

Question 13

Self Psychology (Kohut)

Answer 13

• Emphasizes how we use interpersonal relationships (self objects) to develop our own sense of self.
• Focuses on the nature of the therapeutic relationship, using empathy as a main tool.

Question 14

Limitations to Psychoanalysis

Answer 14

• Costly and is perceived as being based on upper and middle class values.
• Problematic for clients from cultures who expect direction from a professional
• Long commitment required to accomplish analytic goals
• Difficult/Costly to train

Question 15

Ego Psychology

Answer 15

• Assist clients in gaining awareness of their defenses and help them develop better ways of coping with these defenses.
• Looks at both early and later developmental periods

Question 16

Transference

Answer 16

The client’s unconscious shifting to the analyst of feelings, attitudes that are reactions to significant others in the client’s past.

• Symbolizes unfinished business
• When feelings become conscious and are transferred to the therapists, clients can understand and resolve past unfinished business.

Question 17

Working-Through Process

Answer 17

• Process consists of dealing with transference.

- Repetitive and elaborate explorations of unconscious material and defenses

Question 18

Countertransference

Answer 18

• A phenomenon that occurs when there is inappropriate affect.
• When therapists respond in irrational ways, or when they lose their objectivity in a relationship because their own conflicts are triggered.

Question 19

Psychoanalytic Counselor Role

Answer 19

• Analysts assume an anonymous nonjudgmental stance, “blank-screen”
• They avoid self-disclosure and maintain neutrality
• Pays attention to both what is spoken and what is unspoken, listens for gaps and inconsistencies in the client’s story.
• Teach clients the meaning of these processes (through interpretation) so that they are able to achieve insight

Question 20

Six Techniques of Psychoanalytic Therapy

Answer 20

1. Maintaining the analytic framework
2. Free Association
3. Interpretation
4. Dream Analysis
5. Analysis of resistance
6. Analysis of transference

Question 21

Free Association

Answer 21

Clients try to say whatever comes to mid without self-censorship.

Question 22

Maintaining the Analytic Framework

Answer 22

• Refers to range of procedural and stylistic factors.

- Anonymity, maintaining neutrality and objectivity

Question 23

Interpretation

Answer 23

• Analyst explanation of behavior that is manifested in dreams, free association, resistances, defenses, and the therapeutic relationship itself.
• Should be presented when the phenomenon to be interpreted is close to conscious awareness.
• Should start from the surface and go only deep as the client is able to go.

Question 24

Dream Analysis

Answer 24

• Procedure in uncovering unconscious material and giving the client insight into some areas of unresolved problems.
  1. Latent content: consists of hidden, symbolic, and unconscious motives, wishes, and fears.
  2. Manifest content: the dream as it appears to the dreamer

-The process by which the latent content of a dream is transformed into the less threatening manifest content is called dream work.

Question 25

Resistance

Answer 25

• Anything that works against the progress of therapy and prevents the client from producing previously unconscious material.
• The client’s reluctance to bring to the surface of awareness unconscious material that has been repressed.

Question 26

Psychodynamic Therapy

Answer 26

• Simplifying the lengthy process of classical psychoanalysis.
  1. Remain alert to transference manifestations
  2. Explore the meaning of clients’ dreams
  3. Explore both the past and the present
  4. Offer interpretations for defenses and resistance and 5. Concerned with unconscious material.
• They interpret less frequently and use more supportive interventions.

Question 27

Termination

Answer 27

• Reasons include:
  1. The reduction of transference
  2. Striving and childhood fantasies
  3. Increased capacity for love and work
  4. Achieving more stable coping patterns

Question 28

Relational Psychoanalysis

Answer 28

• Therapists present meanings associated with a client’s thoughts as a hypothesis rather than a truth.
• Relational Interpretations are collaborative
• Based on the assumption that therapy is an interactive process between client and therapist.
• Client-therapist relationship

Question 29

Jung’s Perspective

Answer 29

• Believed during midlife we need to let go of many of the old values and confront our unconscious.
• It is essential to accept our dark side, its primitive impulses.
• The capacity of humans to move toward wholeness and self-realization.

Question 30

Individuation

Answer 30

The harmonious integration of the conscious and unconscious aspects of personality is innate and primary goal.

Question 31

Collective Unconscious

Answer 31

• The deepest and least accessible level of the psyche

- It contains the accumulation of inherited experiences of human and prehumen species.

Question 32

Archetypes

Answer 32

• Persona: a mask to protect ourselves.
• Animus/Anima: masculinity and femininity, which coexist in both sexes.
• Shadow: represents the thoughts and feelings, and actions that we tend to disown by projecting them outward.

Question 33

Mahler’s view that individual begins in a state of psychological fusion with the mother and progresses gradually to separation.

Answer 33

1: Autism
- The infant is presumed to be responding more to states of physiological tension
- The infant is unable to differentiate itself from mom
2. Symbiosis
- The infant has a pronounced dependency on the mother.
3. Separation-Individuation
- The child experiences separation from others yet still turn to them for a sense of comfort.
- The children can begin to relate without being overwhelmed with fears of losing their sense of individuality

Question 34

Failure to Differentiate

Answer 34

Children who do not experience the opportunity to differentiate, and those who lack the opportunity to idealize others while also taking pride in themselves, may later suffer from narcissistic character disorders and problems of self-esteem.

Question 35

Object-Relations Theory

Answer 35

• Investigates attachment and separation.
• Emphasize on how our relationships with others are affected by the way we have internalized our experiences of others and set up representations of others within ourselves.

Question 36

Tried Psychodynamic Therapy

Answer 36

• Work within the framework of time-limited therapy
• Target a specific interpersonal problem and goals during the initial session.
• Assume a less neutral therapeutic stance than traditional approaches.
• Establish a strong working alliance early in the therapy
• Use interpretation relatively early in the therapy relationship
• Emphasis on the here and now and of the client’s life rather than exploring the there and then of childhood.
• Practitioners ask questions, are more direct and confrontive, and deal quickly with transference issues.

Question 37

Positives of Psychoanalytic Perspective

Answer 37

-Therapists can help their clients review environmental situation at the various critical turning points in their lives to determine how certain events have affected them either positively or negatively.