PSYCHOTHEP: TOPIC 4 PSYCHOANALYTIC THERAPY

Sigmund Freud

• had numerous psychosomatic disorders, as well as exaggerated fears of dying and other phobias, and was involved in the difficult task of self-analysis.

  • He also recalled his childhood sexual feelings for his mother, who was attractive, loving, and protective

    
    

 human nature

is basically deterministic, our behavior is determined by irrational forces, unconscious motivations, and biological and instinctual drives as these evolve through key psychosexual stages in the first six years of life

Libido

• refer to sexual energy

  • These instincts serve the purpose of the survival of the individual and the human race; they are oriented toward growth, development, and creativity
    

Death Instincts

• account for the aggressive drive.

  • At times, people manifest through their behavior an unconscious wish to die or to hurt themselves or others.

Id

• roughly all the untamed drives or impulses that might be likened to the biological component

• the primary source of psychic energy and the seat of the instincts

• ruled by Pleasure Principle

  • largely unconscious, or out of awareness

 Ego

• attempts to organize and mediate between the id and the reality of dangers posed by the id’s impulses

• It is the “executive” that governs, controls, and regulates the personality.

• controls consciousness and exercises censorship

  • ruled by Reality Principle
    
    

Superego

•  judicial branch of personality.

• internalized social component, largely rooted in what the person imagines to be the expectations of parental figures.

• It includes a person’s moral code, the main concern being whether an action is good or bad, right or wrong. It represents the ideal rather than the real and strives not for pleasure but for perfection

  • related to psychological rewards and punishments.
    

Unconscious

• stores all experiences, memories, and repressed material.

  • Needs and motivations that are inaccessible—that is, out of awareness—are also outside the sphere of conscious control.

Anxiety

• feeling of dread that results from repressed feelings, memories, desires, and experiences that emerge to the surface of awareness.

Reality Anxiety

fear of danger from the external world, and the level of such anxiety is proportionate to the degree of real threat.

Neurotic Anxiety

fear that the instincts will get out of hand and cause the person to do something for which she or he will be punished

Moral Anxiety

fear of one’s own conscience. People with a well-developed conscience tend to feel guilty when they do something contrary to their moral code

 Ego defenses

• are normal behaviors that can have adaptive value provided they do not become a style of life that enables the individual to avoid facing reality.

  • Help the individual cope with anxiety and prevent the ego from being overwhelmed
    

Oral Stage

 inability to trust oneself and others, resulting in the fear of loving and forming close relationships and low self-esteem

Anal Stage

inability to recognize and express anger, leading to the denial of one’s own power as a person and the lack of a sense of autonomy

Phallic Stage

inability to fully accept one’s sexuality and sexual feelings, and also to difficulty in accepting oneself as a man or woman

Defense mechanisms

"unconscious resources used by the ego" to decrease internal stress ultimately

Repression

Defense: Threatening or painful thoughts and feelings are excluded from awareness

Uses for Behavior: One of the most important Freudian processes, it is the basis of many other ego defenses and of neurotic disorders. Freud explained this as an involuntary removal of something from consciousness. It is assumed that most of the painful events of the first five or six years of life are buried, yet these events do influence later behavior

 Denial

Defense: “Closing one’s eyes” to the existence of a threatening aspect of reality

Uses for Behavior: It is a way of distorting what the individual thinks, feels, or perceives in a traumatic situation. This mechanism is similar to repression, yet it generally operates at preconscious and conscious levels

Reaction formation

Defense: Actively expressing the opposite impulse when confronted with a threatening impulse

Uses for Behavior: By developing conscious attitudes and behaviors that are diametrically opposed to disturbing desires, people do not have to face the anxiety that would result if they were to recognize these dimensions of themselves. Individuals may conceal hate with a facade of love, be extremely nice when they harbor negative reactions, or mask cruelty with excessive kindness

Projection

Defense: Attributing to others one’s own unacceptable desires and impulses.

Uses for Behavior: This is a mechanism of self-deception. Lustful, aggressive, or other impulses are seen as being possessed by “those people out there, but not by me.”

Displacement

Defense: Directing energy toward another object or person when the original object or person is inaccessible

Uses for Behavior: Displacement is a way of coping with anxiety that involves discharging impulses by shifting from a threatening object to a “safer target.”

• For example, the meek man who feels intimidated by his boss comes home and unloads inappropriate hostility onto his children

 Rationalization

Defense: Manufacturing “good” reasons to explain away a bruised ego

Uses for Behavior: helps justify specific behaviors, and it aids in softening the blow connected with disappointments.

• When people do not get positions they have applied for in their work, they think of logical reasons they did not succeed, and they sometimes attempt to convince themselves that they really did not want the position anyway.

Sublimation

Defense: Diverting sexual or aggressive energy into other channels

Uses for Behavior: Energy is usually diverted into socially acceptable and sometimes even admirable channels.

• For example, aggressive impulses can be channeled into athletic activities, so that the person finds a way of expressing aggressive feelings and, as an added bonus, is often praised

Regression

Defense: Going back to an earlier phase of development when there were fewer demands

Uses for Behavior: In the face of severe stress or extreme challenge, individuals may attempt to cope with their anxiety by clinging to immature and inappropriate behaviors.

• For example, children who are frightened in school may indulge in infantile behavior such as weeping, excessive dependence, thumb-sucking, hiding, or clinging to the teacher

Introjection

Defense: Taking in and “swallowing” the values and standards of others

Uses for Behavior: Positive forms of this include incorporation of parental values or the attributes and values of the therapist (assuming that these are not merely uncritically accepted).

• One negative example is that in concentration camps some of the prisoners dealt with overwhelming anxiety by accepting the values of the enemy through identification with the aggressor

Identification

Defense: Identifying with successful causes, organizations, or people in the hope that you will be perceived as worthwhile

Uses for Behavior: can enhance self-worth and protect one from a sense of being a failure. This is part of the developmental process by which children learn gender-role behaviors, but it can also be a defensive reaction when used by people who feel basically inferior

 Compensation

Defense: Masking perceived weaknesses or developing certain positive traits to make up for limitations

Uses for Behavior: This mechanism can have direct adjustive value, and it can also be an attempt by the person to say “Don’t see the ways in which I am inferior, but see me in my accomplishments.”

Psychosocial Stages

holds that psychosexual growth and psychosocial growth take place together, and that at each stage of life we face the task of establishing equilibrium between ourselves and our social world.

Classical Psychoanalysis

grounded on id psychology, holds that instincts and intrapsychic conflicts are the basic factors shaping personality development (both normal and abnormal)

Contemporary Psychoanalysis

grounded on ego psychology, which does not deny the role of intrapsychic conflicts but emphasizes the striving of the ego for mastery and competence throughout the human life span.

Ego psychology

deals with both the early and the later developmental stages, for the assumption is that current problems cannot simply be reduced to repetitions of unconscious conflicts from early childhood

 “Blank Screen ” Approach

therapist assume an anonymous nonjudgmental stance avoid self-disclosure and maintain a sense of neutrality to foster a transference relationship, in which their clients will make projections onto them

Free Association

no censorship, just saying whatever comes to mind, known as the “fundamental rule ”

 The client is free to express any idea or feeling, no matter how irresponsible, scandalous, politically incorrect, selfish, or infantile. The analyst remains nonjudgmental, listening carefully and asking questions and making interpretations as the analysis progresses

 Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

emerged as a way of shortening and simplifying the lengthy process of classical psychoanalysis

Contemporary Relational Psychoanalysis

the therapist does not strive for an objective stance

Transference

• involves the unconscious repetition of the past in the present. “It reflects the deep patterning of old experiences in relationships as they emerge in current life”

  • - takes place when clients resurrect these early intense conflicts relating to love, sexuality, hostility, anxiety, and resentment; bring them into the present; reexperience them; and attach them to the therapist
    

Countertransference

• phenomenon that occurs when there is inappropriate affect, when therapists respond in irrational ways, or when they lose their objectivity in a relationship because their own conflicts are triggered

• consists of a therapist’ s unconscious emotional responses to a client based on the therapist’ s own past, resulting in a distorted perception of the client’ s behavior
  
  

Dream Analysis

procedure for uncovering unconscious material and giving the client insight into some areas of unresolved problems. During sleep, defenses are lowered and repressed feelings surface

Manifest Content

the literal dream itself and how it appears to the dreamer. The therapist’s task is to uncover disguised meanings by studying the symbols in the manifest content of the dream

 Latent Content

consists of hidden, symbolic, and unconscious motives, wishes, and fears

Dreamwork

the process by which the latent content of a dream is transformed into the less threatening manifest content

Resistance

fundamental to the practice of psychoanalysis, is anything that works against the progress of therapy and prevents the client from producing previously unconscious material. Refers to any idea, attitude, feeling, or action (conscious or unconscious) that fosters the status quo and gets in the way of change