Psyc. 192 Ch. 13: Psychoanalysis

Resistance

A blockage or refusal to disclose painful memories during a free-association session

Free association

A psychotherapeutic technique in which the patient says whatever comes to mind

Dream analysis

A psychotherapeutic technique involving the interpretation of dreams to uncover unconscious conflicts

Freudian slip

An act of forgetting or a lapse in speech that reflects unconscious motives or anxieties

Oedipus complex

At ages four to five, the unconscious desire of a boy for his mother and the desire to replace or destroy his father

Defense mechanisms

Behaviors that represent unconscious denials or distortions of reality but which are adopted to protect the ego against anxiety

Sigmund Freud (1856-1938)

Freud developed the concept of transference and adopted Breuer's methods of hypnosis and catharsis to treat his patients, but he grew dissatisfied with hypnosis and soon abandoned it. He retained catharsis as a treatment method and developed from it the technique of free association. His goal in psychoanalysis was to bring into conscious awareness repressed memories or thoughts, which were assumed to be the source of the patient's abnormal behavior. He states that in most cases of childhood seduction, the experiences described by his patients were not real; they had not actually happened. Because the fantasies focused on sex, then sex remained the root of the problem. By this reasoning, Freud preserved the basic idea of sex as the cause of neurosis. Freud believed that a patient's dreams were rich a rich source of significant emotional material and could contain clues to the underlying causes of a disturbance. Because of his positivist belief that everything had a cause, he assumed that dream events could not be completely without meaning and that they most likely result from something in the patient's unconscious mind. Freud's methods of treatment involved resistances and repressions. Freud's system differed greatly in content and methodology from traditional experimental psychology. Despite his scientific training, he did not us experimental research methods, relying instead on free association, dream analysis, and case histories. Freud believed that all mental events, even dreams, are predetermined, and that nothing occurs by chance or free will. Every action has a conscious or unconscious motive or cause. Although some concepts resisted attempts at scientific validation, others were found to be amendable to scientific testing: 1) some characteristics of the oral and anal personality types, 2) castration anxiety, 3) dreams reflect emotional concerns, 4) aspects of the Oedipus complex in boys. Freud's methods of collecting data were highly criticized as well as his views on women.

Psychoanalysis as a system of personality

Freud's system dealt with unconscious motivating forces, conflicts among those forces, and the effects of conflicts on behavior. He was trying to develop an approach to a complete understanding of the human personality. Freud believed that instincts are the propelling forces of personality, the biological forces that release mental energy. He proposed three levels of personality, the id, the ego, and the superego. Anxiety induces tension, which motivates the individual to take some action to reduce it. According to Freud's theory p, the ego develops protective defenses, the defense mechanisms. Freud was convinced that his patients' neurotic disturbances originated in their childhood experiences. Thus, he became one of the first theorists to emphasize the importance of child development. He believed that the adult personality was formed almost completely by age five. According to his psychoanalytic theory of development, children pass through the a series of psychosexual stages. During this time, children are considered to be autoerotic; that is, they derive sensual pleasure from stimulating the body's erogenous zones or being stimulated by parents in normal caregiving activities. Each developmental stage centers on a specific erogenous zone.

Psychosexual stages

In psychoanalytic theory, the developmental stages of childhood centering on erogenous zones

Monadology

Leibnitz's theory of psychic entities, called monads, which are similar to perceptions

A new school of thought

Psychoanalysis was neither a product of the universities nor a pure science but arose within the traditions of medicine and psychiatry from attempts to treat person's labeled by society as mentally ill. Thus, psychoanalysis was not a school of thought directly comparable with other schools of psychology. From its beginnings psychoanalysis was distinct from mainstream psychological thought in its goals, subject matter, and methods. It's subject matter is psychopathology. It's primary method is clinical observation rather than controlled laboratory experimentation. Psychoanalysis deals with the unconscious. There were three major sources of influences in the psychoanalytic movement: 1) philosophical speculations about unconscious psychological phenomena, 2) early ideas about treating mental disorders, and 3) evolutionary theory. The work of Charcot and Janet in treating mental disturbances helped change the focus of psychiatrists from the somatic (physical) to the psychic (mental) point of view. Darwin discussed several ideas that Freud later made central issues in psychoanalysis, including unconscious mental processes and conflicts, the significance of dreams, the hidden symbolism of certain behaviors, and the importance of sexual arousal. Overall, he, like Freud, focused on the nonrational aspects of thought and behavior. Darwin's ideas also affected Freud's ideas about childhood development.

Life instincts

The drive for ensuring survival of the individual and species by statistics the needs for food, water, air, and sex

Superego

The moral aspect of personality derived from internalizing parental and societal values and standards

Transference

The process by which a patient responds to the therapist as if the therapist were a significant person (such as a parent) in the patient's life

Repression

The process of barring unacceptable ideas, memories, or desires from conscious awareness, leaving them to operate in the unconscious mind

Catharisis

The process of reducing or eliminating a complex by recalling it to conscious awareness and allowing it to be expressed

Ego

The rational aspect of personality responsible for controlling the instincts

Id

The source of psychic energy and the aspect of personality allied with the instincts

Death instincts

The unconscious drive toward decay, destruction, and aggression

Instincts

To Freud, mental representations of internal stimuli (such as hunger) that motivate personality and behavior

Libido

To Freud, the psychic energy that drives a person toward pleasurable thoughts and behaviors