PSY 1A LESSON 1 PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORY

Psychodynamic Theory

Psychodynamic Theory

Focuses on psychological drives and forces within individuals explaining behavior and personality.

Sigmund Freud

Pioneer of psychoanalysis, emphasized the id, ego, superego, and unconscious mind.

Unconscious Thoughts

• Contains violent motives and traumatic experiences

• Thoughts that are not helpful to the individual

Preconscious

• Holds memories and stock knowledge

Conscious Thoughts

• Involves thoughts and perceptions

• Thoughts understood and deemed helpful in achieving success by the individual

Id, Ego, Superego

Three provinces of the mind.

Defense Mechanism

Techniques like repression, sublimation, projection, etc., used by the ego against anxiety.

Repression

Unconscious act of keeping threatening thoughts out of consciousness.

Projection

Denying impulses and projecting them onto others.

Sublimation

Expressing unacceptable impulses in a socially acceptable way.

Reaction Formation

Turning unpleasant impulses into their opposites.

Rationalization

Justifying unacceptable behavior with logical reasons.

Regression

Reverting to earlier stages of development under stress.

Displacement

Releasing tensions on a less threatening target.

Transference

Patients developing strong feelings towards their analyst during therapy.

Dream Analysis

Transforming the manifest content of dreams into latent content.

Freudian Slips

everyday slips of the tongue or pen, misreading, incorrect hearing, misplacing objects, and temporarily forgetting names or intentions are not chance accidents but reveal a person’s unconscious intentions

Alfred Adler

Born February 7, 1870 in Rudolfsheim, a village near Vienna and founded individual psychology, emphasized striving for success and compensation for inferiority.

Striving for Success or Superiority

Adler's first principle, focusing on overcoming feelings of inferiority.

The Final Goal

Pursuing many subgoals to achieve the final goal of superiority.

Striving Force as Compensation

Seeking superiority to compensate for feelings of inferiority.

Striving as Personal Superiority

Some strive for personal superiority driven by an inferiority complex.

Striving for Success

Others strive for success for societal development.

Subjective Perceptions

Adler's second principle, striving based on subjective perceptions.

Fictionalism

Creating goals like superiority early in life, guiding personality.

Physical Inferiorities

Adler's view that organ deficiencies motivate reaching future goals.

Unity and Self-Consistency of Personality

Adler's third principle, emphasizing a unified and unique personality.

Organ Dialect

The impact of organ deficiencies on the individual's goals and personality.

Social Interest

Natural human condition that binds society together, according to Adler.

Style of Life

Refers to a person's life flavor, including goals, self-concept, feelings for others, and attitude toward the world.

Creative Power

Puts individuals in control of their lives, responsible for goals, striving methods, and social interest development.

Abnormal Development

Lack of social interest is a key factor, along with setting high goals, dogmatic style of life, and living in a private world.

External Factors in Maladjustment

Factors include physical deficiencies, pampered style of life, and neglected style of life leading to distrust.

Safeguarding Tendencies

Symptoms created to protect self-esteem, including excuses, aggression, and withdrawal.

Masculine Protest

Overemphasizing manliness, not based on physiology but historical and social factors.

Application of Individual Psychology

Adler applied principles to family constellation, early recollections, dreams, and psychotherapy.

Family Constellation

Perception of fitting into the family relates to style of life, with characteristics based on birth order.

Early Recollections

Asking for early memories to determine style of life, as they reflect a person's current view of the world.

Dreams

Provide clues to solving future problems, often disguised and needing interpretation.

Psychotherapy

Adlerian therapy aims to foster social interest through a therapist-patient relationship resembling both maternal and paternal roles.

Id

das Es, or the “it,” which is almost always translated into English as __, at the core of personality and completely unconscious is the psychical region, or the not-yet owned component of personality, operates through the primary process

Ego

das Ich, or the “I,” it is governed by the reality principle, which it tries to substitute for the pleasure principle of the id. As the sole region of the mind in contact with the external world, this becomes the decision-making or executive branch of personality, this has no strength of its own but borrows energy from the id.

Superego

das Uber-Ich, or the“over-I,” represents the moral and ideal aspects of personality and is guided by the moralistic and idealistic principles as opposed to the pleasure principle of the id and the realistic principle of the ego, this is not concerned with the happiness of the ego. It strives blindly and unrealistically toward perfection.

Moral anxiety

stems from the conflict between the ego and the superego. After children establish a superego—usually by the age of 5 or 6—they may experience anxiety as an outgrowth of the conflict between realistic needs and the dictates of their superego, for example, would result from sexual temptations if a person believes that yielding to the temptation would be morally wrong

Neurotic anxiety

is defined as apprehension about an unknown danger. The feeling itself exists in the ego, but it originates from id impulses. People may experience this in the presence of a teacher, employer, or some other authority figure because they previously experienced unconscious feelings of destruction against one or both parents. During childhood, these feelings of hostility are often accompanied by fear of punishment, and this fear becomes generalized into unconscious ______ anxiety.

Realistic anxiety

involves actual threats to our physical safety. It is similar to fear, in that there is a real and external object that could harm us, but it differs from fear in that we may not be aware of a specific danger.

Freud’s Later Therapeutic Technique

The primary goal of this was to uncover repressed memories through free association and dream analysis.

Freud’s Early Therapeutic Technique

Prior to his use of the rather passive psychotherapeutic technique of free association, Freud had relied on a much more active approach. In Studies on Hysteria Freud described his technique of extracting repressed childhood memories.

Aggression

Partially as a result of his unhappy experiences during World War I and partially as a consequence of the death of his beloved daughter Sophie, Freud (1920/1955a) wrote Beyond the Pleasure Principle, a book that elevated aggression to the level of the sexual drive. As he did with many of his other concepts, Freud set forth his ideas tentatively and with some caution. With time, however, aggression, like several other tentatively proposed concepts, became dogma.

Anxiety

Sex and aggression share the center of Freudian dynamic theory with the concept of _______. It is a felt, affective, unpleasant state accompanied by a physical sensation that warns the person against impending danger. The unpleasantness is often vague and hard to pinpoint, but the anxiety itself is always felt. Only the ego can produce or feel this.

Dynamics of Personality

Levels of mental life and provinces of the mind refer to the structure or composition of personality; but personalities also do something. Thus, Freud postulated a dynamic, or motivational principle, to explain the driving forces behind people’s actions. To Freud, people are motivated to seek pleasure and to reduce tension and anxiety. This motivation is derived from psychical and physical energy that springs from their basic drives.

Drives

Freud used the German word Trieb to refer to a drive or a stimulus within the person. Freud’s official translators rendered this term as instinct, but more accurately the word should be “___” or “impulse.” Drives operate as a constant motivational force. As an internal stimulus, drives differ from external stimuli in that they cannot be avoided through flight.

Sex

The aim of the sexual drive is pleasure, but this pleasure is not limited to genital satisfaction. Freud believed that the entire body is invested with libido. Besides the genitals, the mouth and anus are especially capable of producing sexual pleasure and are called erogenous zones. The ultimate aim of the sexual drive (reduction of sexual tension) cannot be changed, but the path by which the aim is reached can be varied.

Parapraxes or unconscious slips

are so common that we usually pay little attention to them and deny that they have any underlying significance.

Transference feelings

are unearned by the therapist and are merely transferred to her or him from patients’ earlier experiences, usually with their parents. In other words, patients feel toward the analyst the same way they previously felt toward one or both parents. As long as these feelings manifest themselves as interest or love, transference does not interfere with the process of treatment but is a powerful ally to the therapeutic progress. Positive transference permits patients to more or less relive childhood experiences within the nonthreatening climate of the analytic treatment.