Week 3 - anxiety disorders

Question 1

Normal V pathological anxiety

Answer 1

• anxiety is normal, functional and adaptive to protect us against danger
• when it is clinically significant it interferes excessively with a persons’ life

Question 2

History of anxiety

Answer 2

Anxiety neurosis - Freud

• arises from intrapsychic conflict
• core thought is that impulses seek expression
• > need to express id drive
• > unacceptability of drive to ego or superego

Question 3

Little Hans

Answer 3

• Freud saw little Hans’ anxiety as a manifestation of the Oedipus complex
• Little Hans’ feared horses, thought to represent his father who might castrate him for sexually desiring his mother
• case study criticised -> single study and unfalsifiable
• father may have confounded little Hans’ thoughts

Question 4

Behavioural models of anxiety

Answer 4

• classical conditioning -> little albert experiment
• clear theoretical underpinnings, empirical evidence
• effective treatments emerge
• cognitive factors have since become increasingly important