Week 2- psychoanalysis Flashcards
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy
Group of treatments that are rooted in the same theoretical background.
Focus on human subjectivity and its interplay with both the external and internal environments
Classic psychoanalysis
Client on couch not looking at therapist. High frequency, long term
Contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy
Client and therapist facing each other. Medium to low frequency, medium to short term
Psychoanalytic psychotherapies incorporate
A developmental perspective
Unconscious conflict
Defense mechanisms
Internal representations of relationships
The search for authenticity and trust about self
Complex meanings that are attached to experience
Conscious mind
What we are aware of
Pre conscious mind
Thoughts that may become conscious at some point eg. Through dreams and slip of the tongue
Unconscious mind and why it occurs
The part we are unaware of. Contains our biological instincts and drives. Survival and sexual instincts including aggression. Childhood memories. It is the driving, motivating force behind our behaviour & personality
Occurs because:
-The associated affects are too threatening
-Content of the impulses are learned by the individual to be unacceptable through cultural conditioning
How are the unconscious and conflicts explored?
Free association and technical neutrality
A representation is
A distorted lens through which one is looking at oneself and the other. Prediction of how things will go between oneself and the other. It is affective laden. Developed in interactions with important others. Mostly unconscious
Transference
What the client makes of the therapist
Countertransference
What the therapist is experiencing in contact with the client.
Therapists use it to serve the client
Right brain mammals for our first 1000 days
Only feel but cannot think about feelings because our brain wont allow it
Defense mechanisms
What we use not to feel painful feelings.
They are linked to how we conceptualize suffering and personality.
They are unconscious
Grouped on how adaptive they are
Mature person: Uses defense mechanisms that bring things together
Immature personality: Split things and keep things apart
Personality (Freud)
3 part structure: Id, ego and superego
Are in constant conflict and the outcome determines our behaviour
Id
Present at birth
Demands immediate satisfaction
Drives you to act on your urges without restraint
Superego
Morality principle
Mainly unconscious
Not born with it- Develops at 4/5
Act as conscience
Tries to suppress the urge of the id
Dominant superego: Judgemental, critical
Ego
Reality principle
Controls urges and desires so they are expressed in acceptable ways
Acts as mediator between the id and superego
Developmental perspective to psychoanalysis
Suffering comes from events one experienced in the past that are vivid in the present via internal representations through which one sees oneself and others, and has expectations of the interaction
The effect of these experiences varies because of predisposition e.g. temperament, circumstances e.g. poverty
The representations are kept alive through repetition (because we repeat what we know)
Technical neutrality and outcomes
Its easier to tackle difficulties in life if you know different sides of yourself as much as possible.
Outcomes:
Symptom reduce
Know yourself better
More honest with yourself
Better relationships
Mechanisms of change
Affect awareness, emotional insight & processing
Creating meaning & historical reconstruction
Transference & enactments
Therapeutic alliance, containment & rupture and repair
Changes in defense mechanisms & representations
Containment (mechanism of change)
Holding the emotion and staying while its happening
Marked mirroring (mechanism of change technique)
Receiving the emotion but not being overwhelmed by it
When is psychodynamic therapy indicated
-A variety of symptoms: self-esteem, anxiety,
depression, sexual problems, relational problems, etc.
-When one is suffering from a pattern that is repeated over time
-When a symptom focused therapy did not bring enough relief
Personality problems
Freud was convinced fantasy served several psychic functions
RFRM
Need for regulation of self esteem
Need for a feeling of safety
Need for regulating affect
Need to master trauma
Primary process
Raw or primitive form of psychic functioning
Begins at birth
Operates unconsciously throughout the lifetime
No distinction between past, present, future
Feelings and images can be condensed
Infants operate here as part of normal development
Seen in dreams and psychosis
Secondary process
Form of psychic functioning associated with consciousness
Logical, sequential and orderly
Foundation for rational, reflective thinking
Defenses (Freud)
Intrapsychic process that functions to avoid emotional pain by pushing thoughts, feelings or fantasies out of awareness
Intellectualization
Talks about something threatening while keeping emotional distance from it
Projection
Attributing a threatening feeling that you are experiencing to another person
Reaction formation
Denying a threatening feeling and proclaiming to feel the opposite
Splitting
Important to Kleinian theory
Splitting a representation of a person into two different images
Done to avoid their perception of someone as good being contaminated by negative feelings
Commonly done by infants to feel safe with their mothers
Transference (Freud)
When a client views their therapist in ways that they viewed significant figures in their childhood- especially parents
One person psychology
Therapist is an objective and neutral observer who could serve as a blank screen onto whom the client projects his transference
2 person psychology
Therapist and client viewed as co-participants who engage in an ongoing process of mutual influence at both conscious and unconscious levels
Therapist must develop some awareness about his own contribution to the interaction
Reasons for the decline of psychoanalysis
Psychiatry becoming increasingly biological
Rise of CBT
Evidence-based treatment
Negative public reaction to an attitude of arrogance, insularity and elitism that was associated with the psychoanalytic tradition
Lack of receptiveness to valid criticism and empirical research
Talking cure
Talking freely about traumatic experiences and recovering painful memories that had been dissociated
Free association
Clients encouraged to suspend their self critical function and verbalize thoughts, images, associations and feelings that are on the edge of awareness
Seduction theory (Freud)
Sexual trauma always lies at the root of psychological problems
Psychic energy (Freud)
Maintaining it at a constant level is imperative
Once it is activated it needs to be discharged
This restores psychic equilibrium and is experienced as pleasure
How discharge of psychic energy takes place
Expression of affect
Satisfaction of a sexual urge
Repetition of an experience that has become associated with tension reduction through experience
Pleasure principle
The psychobiological push to repeat experiences that have become associated with tension reduction
Object relations theory (stemmed from melanie klein)
The way in which we develop internal representations of our relationships with significant others
British independents/ The middle group
Fairbarn, Balint, Winnicott, Bowlby
Emphasis on the importance of:
Spontaneity
Creativity
Therapist flexibility
Value of providing clients with a nurturing and supportive environment
Relational theorists
Rejected Freud’s drive theory of motivation
Placed greater emphasis on the instinctual need for human relatedness
