Week 2

Question 1

Patient theory

Answer 1

• For most of history, people with mental/ psychological orders treated as possessed, treated inhumanely
• Pinel – pioneer in humane treatment of patients, classification of disorders

Question 2

Roots of Freudian theory

Answer 2

• After work with Charcot, Fliess and Breuer, Freud became convinced that mental illness was not just physiological, and that psychological treatment be effective
• Breuer’s talking cure was the seed for psychoanalysis
• Freud’s clinical work suggested that many neurotic symptoms could be traced to early traumas, unconscious in adult life, that affected the development of personality
• He abandoned an early theory of childhood seduction
• But he retained the idea that sexuality was a part of early parent-child relations

Question 3

Psychodynamic perspective

Answer 3

• Freud believed psychology influences caused disorders
• Wanted to see what these psychological influences were

Question 4

Psychoanalysis treatment process

Answer 4

Patients revealed painful, embarrassing thoughts in the unconscious – through talking, free association
- Once these memories were retrieved and released the patients would feel better

Question 5

Psychodynamic – parts of the mind

Answer 5

• The mind is like an iceberg
• Consciousness – what you are currently aware of
• Preconscious – information not in conscious but is able to be retrieved when needed
• Unconscious – massive amount hidden from view

Question 6

ID

Answer 6

• Primitive, unconscious portion of the personality
• Houses the most basic drives and stores repressed memories
• Pleasure principle

Question 7

Superego

Answer 7

• Mind’s storehouse of values, moral attitudes learned from parents and society
• Same as common notion of conscious

Question 8

Ego

Answer 8

• Conscious, rational part of the personality
• Charged with keeping peace between superego and id

Question 9

Eros and thanatos

Answer 9

• Love and death
• Eros drives us toward life and procreation
• Thanatos drives us to risk-seeking

Question 10

Unconscious influences

Answer 10

• Latent content of dreams
• Symbolic meaning of dream images
• What your unconscious mind is thinking

Question 11

Freudian slip

Answer 11

• Slip of the tongue
• Not something you meant to say
• But was brought out through your unconscious thought

Question 12

Psychoanalysis

Answer 12

• Freud’s system of treatment for mental disorders
• Believed we go about our daily business without knowing the real motives behind our behaviour

Question 13

Hypnotherapy

Answer 13

• Franz Anton mesmer - Mesmerism
• Jean-Martin Charcot - Neurologist who used hypnosis on patients
• Joseph Breuer - Could reduce severity of symptoms

Question 14

The talking cure

Answer 14

• With James Breuer developed the talking cure
• First used on Anna O
• Patient with hysteria
• Talking about disturbing memories from part alleviated the symptoms
• Talking releases repressed memories in unconscious

Question 15

Free association

Answer 15

• Developed by Carl Jung
• The person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

Question 16

How does the ego negotiate between the id and the superego

Answer 16

• Clashes called intrapsychic or psychodynamic conflicts
• Psychic energy cannot be destroyed, only redistributed
• Cause stress and anxiety
• Ego tries to prevent anxiety, guilt and other unpleasant feelings
• Sometimes the ego helps us negotiate situations well
• And sometimes we use defence mechanisms

Question 17

Psychosexual development

Answer 17

• Personality formed during life’s first early few years
• Divided into psychosexual stages
• The id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on pleasure sensitivity body areas called erogenous zones – the pleasure principle
• In each stage the child must get enough gratification to be able to move to the next stage

Question 18

Fixation

Answer 18

• Being stuck and struggling through a particular psychosexual stage
• You move on in life, but have issues that arise from the struggles during the stage

Question 19

The oral stage

Answer 19

• Birth to 18 months
• Focus on the mouth
• Pleasure is gained through sucking
• Eg breast feeding
• Fixation – smoker, bite fingernails, sexually attracted to large breasts

Question 20

The anal stage

Answer 20

• 18 months to 3 years
• Focus on the anus
• Pleasure gained from going to the toilet
• Eg potty training
• Anally retentive – fussy, overly tidy, OCD if punished during potty training
• Anally expulsive – messy, disorganised

Question 21

The phallic stage

Answer 21

• 3 to 6 years
• Focus on the genitals
• Exploration and interest in the genitals
• In Greek mythology – a phallic symbol is that of a male genital and deal with incestuous feelings

Question 22

Oedipus complex

Answer 22

• Young boys desire his mother
• Jealous of father for his mother’s attention and larger penis
• Fear father will castrate him
• State of conflict
• Give rise to development of superego

Question 23

Electra complex

Answer 23

• Starts to sexually desire her father who has a penis
• The girl begins to develop penis envy
• She blames her mother for removing her penis
• The girl sees her mother as a sexual rival for her father
• The superego develops, she replaces penis envy with desire for a baby

Question 24

Identification

Answer 24

• End of the phallic stage
• Children cope with the threatening feelings by repressing them and by identifying with the rival parent
• Through this process of identification, their superego gains strength incorporating parents’ values

Question 25

The latency stage

Answer 25

• 6 years to puberty
• The sexual drive remains dormant
• Focus on school
• Play mostly with same sex peers
• Until puberty begins

Question 26

The genital stage

Answer 26

• Adolescent and up
• Focus on genitals
• Begin to become attracted to the opposite sex

Question 27

Adult sexuality

Answer 27

• Feeling more comfortable with the mature understanding of what sex means and what it is about
• Comfort and maturity in expressing sexual feelings towards others

Question 28

Evaluating the science of psychodynamic theory

Answer 28

• Freud would say these images are the unconscious expression of psychodynamic influences
• is there science to support this

Question 29

Legacy of Freud – theoretical influence

Answer 29

• developed grand ideas with massive overall and overarching reach
• no longer influential in psychology, but in literature

Question 30

Legacy of Freud – therapeutic influence

Answer 30

• he didn’t invent the talking cure
• but popularised it as a treatment for psychology disorders
• still used today

Question 31

Legacy of Freud – personality stages and theory

Answer 31

• 1st comprehensive personality theory ever

Question 32

Legacy of Freud - Role of the Unconscious

Answer 32

• Freud’s theory pins itself to the unconscious
• There are many ways that the unconscious mind plays a pivotal role in human behaviour

Question 33

Alfred Adler

Answer 33

• Childhood tension – social in nature and not sexual
• A child struggles with inferiority complex during growth and strives for superiority and power
• Founder of individual psychology
• Studied inferiority complex
• Is recognised for making major breakthrough in that area of personality

Question 34

Inferiority complex

Answer 34

• Thought Freud emphasised on the unconscious too much
• There are conscious drives too
• Began early work with people with physical disabilities
• Observed that while some people with disabilities motivated to overcome, others felt defeated
• We gained confidence when we realise, we are able to meet external goals
• Those who do not learn this develop inferiority

Question 35

Kate Horney

Answer 35

• Sex and aggression are not the primary constituents for determining personality
• Social aspects of childhood growth and development – children trying to overcome sense of helplessness
• Founder of humanistic psychoanalysis and feminist psychology

Question 36

Tyranny of shoulds

Answer 36

• Karen Horney
• Influenced by growing up in 20th century Germany – high conformity
• Toxic social environments create unhealthy belief systems in people
• Shoulds – internalised beliefs from toxic environment
• Bargain with fate – we think we can control environment if we follow shoulds
• Real self (authentic desires) vs ideal self (should)

Question 37

Anna Freud

Answer 37

• The super ego becomes clear only when it confronts the ego with hostility
• Super ego speaks with language of guilt and shame
• We hear the super ego when we berate ourselves

Question 38

Defence mechanisms

Answer 38

• Methods used by the ego to unconsciously protect itself against anxiety
• Caused by conflict between id’s demands and superego’s constraints
• Only unhealthy when we cause self-defeating behaviour and emotional problems

Question 39

Carl Jung

Answer 39

• Collective unconscious which contained a common reservoir of images derived from our species past
• A psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
• Concepts of the extraverted and introverted personality, archetypes and collective conscious
• Influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, literature and related fields
• Disagrees with Freud over concepts of the unconscious
• Saw Fraud’s theory of the unconscious as incomplete and unnecessarily negative

Question 40

The collective unconscious

Answer 40

• Myths and symbols are strikingly similar across cultures
• Results from a shared knowledge and experience
• The memory of this shared experience is the collective unconscious
• Expressed as archetypes – symbols that organise behaviour patterns

Question 41

Carl Jung archetypes

Answer 41

• Wise old man
• The goddess
• The shadow
• The hero
• The trickster
• The animus
• The anima
• The persona – our public image

Question 42

Neo-Freudians

Answer 42

• Adler
• Freud
• Horney
• Jung