Psychoanalysis Freud

PsychoanalysisFreud http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/pub/eres/EDSPC715_MCINTYRE/freud.JPG

http://blogs.atlassian.com/news/Confluence-ad-torn.png The three great shocks to the collective human ego • Copernicus • Darwin • Freud

Freud’s Life (1856-1939) • Family • Authoritarian, older father • Young, pretty mother who doted on Freud • Older half-brothers (same age as his mother) • Medical training • “The Cocaine Incident” http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/freud/images/amalia.jpg

Early Influences on Freud's Theory • Trained as a neurophysiologist • A biological basis existed for all psychological events • Charcot (1885) • Hypnotism to treat hysteria • Physical symptoms could originate solely from thought • Bernheim (1889) • Unconscious memories possible • Unconscious suggestions could influence behavior http://myhome.iolfree.ie/~lightbulb/Images/Early-Freud.gif

Early Influences on Freud's Theory • Breuer (late 1870s) and the case of Anna O. • Talking is cathartic (catharsis) • Anna had to express feelings to get well • Transference – switching feelings from someone to the therapist http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20001203/spectrum/6pic.jpg

Early Influences on Freud's Theory • The development of free association

Influence of Biology • Basic motivator for humans • Seek pleasure, avoid pain (hedonism) • Instincts • Life and Death Instincts • Libido or Eros/ the Life Instincts • Thanatos/ the Death Instinct

Freudian Personality Structure • Id: • Primitive and unconscious part of personality, the “it” that is present when born • Produces instincts, drives, wishes • pleasure principle • drive for immediate gratification, out of touch with reality • Primary Processes: • Reflex action • Wish fulfillment http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20001203/spectrum/1freud-p3.jpg

Freudian Personality Structure • Ego: • A small part of the Id becomes the ego, the “I” • Secondary Processes: • Identification • Matching id’s desires to possible ways of satisfying id’s desires • reality principle • the ego’s capacity to delay gratification • Mediates between id and superego • Acts to avoid/reduce anxiety

Freudian Personality Structure • Superego: • An internal record of past punishments and rewards, eventually becomes the superego • Fully developed by age 7 • Two parts: • Conscience (from past punishments) • Ego Ideal (from past rewards) • Produces feelings of pride, shame, and guilt • Represents “society”

Iceberg model

Psychic Energy • Helmholtz’s Principle of Conservation of Energy • Applied the principle to psychic energy • Cathexis (ca-thek-sis) • Investment of psychic energy in wish-images • Persists until the wish is satisfied (creating a tension) • Anticathexis • Investment of psychic energy to prevent undesirable cathexes • Displacement • Superego and ego divert undesirable cathexes to alternative objects

Anxiety • Derived from the birth trauma • Functions to warn ego if actions or thoughts are dangerous • Reality Anxiety--related to real-world dangers • Neurotic Anxiety--fear that id will overpower the ego • Moral Anxiety--fear of actions or thoughts contrary to superego

Ego-Defense Mechanisms What causes them? • Irrational attempts to protect against anxiety • Unconscious • Falsify or distort reality

Ego-Defense Mechanisms • Repression • The basic defense mechanism--must occur before any of the others • Prevention of ego-threatening thoughts from entering consciousness • Primal repression: Protects against id impulses • Repression proper: Protects against painful memories

Ego-Defense Mechanisms • Displacement • Substitution of one goal/activity for another that provokes anxiety • Sublimation: Displacement that is advantageous for society • Identification • Self-protection through affiliation with powerful persons or groups • Denial of Reality • Denial of facts despite evidence to the contrary

Ego-Defense Mechanisms • Projection • Anxiety-provoking truths about the Self are attributed to others • Undoing • Using ritualistic acts to atone for past actions that provoke anxiety • Reaction Formation • Overt actions that are the opposite of anxiety-provoking thoughts

Ego-Defense Mechanisms • Rationalization • Logically explaining away anxiety-provoking actions or thoughts • Intellectualization (Isolation of Affect) • Stripping emotional content from anxiety-laden thoughts via analysis • Regression • Returning to an earlier mode of gratification or anxiety relief

Psychosexual Stages of Development • Each stage has an erogenous zone as its greatest source of pleasure • Too much or too little gratification causes fixation (substantial cathexes)

Psychosexual Stages of Development 1. Oral Stage • Pleasure from stimulation of mouth, lips, and tongue • Early fixations result in oral-incorporative character (gullible) • Later fixations result in oral-sadistic character optimism (cynical)

Psychosexual Stages of Development 2. Anal Stage • Pleasure from stimulation of anus/buttocks (toilet training) • Early fixations result in anal-expulsive character (messy, disorganized, generous) • Later fixations result in anal-retentive character (organized, controlled, stingy)

Psychosexual Stages of Development 3. Phallic Stage • Pleasure from stimulation of penis/ clitoris • fantasy of parental partner • males: Oedipus conflict (castration anxiety) • females: Electra conflict (penis envy)

Psychosexual Stages of Development PHALLIC ISSUES • vanity vs. self-hatred • pride vs. humility • gregariousness vs. isolation • chastity vs. promiscuity • happiness vs. sadness • weak superego • impaired sex role identity • problems with sexuality (inhibition, promiscuity, homosexuality)

Psychosexual Stages of Development • 4. Latency Stage • Sexual interests are repressed and displaced • 5. Genital Stage • Characterized by adult, heterosexual interests

Feminine Psychology • Viewed women as failed or inferior men • Believed women to be morally inferior due to weak Superego development • Admitted failure to understand women

Tapping the Unconscious Mind • Free Association • Dream Analysis • Parapraxes in everyday life: Unconscious revealed in action • Religion • Religion as an illusion to prevent anxiety • Human Nature • A pessimistic, biological view of human nature

Dream analysis • Lesson from patients • Dreams a rich source of information, providing clues to causes of a disorder • Freud’s deterministic belief • Everything has a cause • Led him to look for unconscious sources of the meaning in dreams • Two dream levels • Manifest content: conscious dream recollection • Latent content: underlying meaning • Freud analyzed his own dreams for 2 years • Emergent themes • Hostility toward father • Childhood sexual attraction to mother • Sexual wishes regarding eldest daughter

Evaluation of Freud’s System • 1930’s and 1940’s psychoanalysis • Popular with the general public • Public often confused it with mainstream psychology (experimental psychologists furious) • The academics’ response • Claimed experimental tests of psychoanalytic concepts showed it to be inferior to experimental psychology (tests questionable)

Evaluation of Freud’s System • Problems with revisions of the seduction theory • Problems with repression of memories • Problems with distortion of the “Freudian History”

Evaluation of Freud’s System • Based on evidence formulated, revised, and extended by Freud who was sole interpreter • Data not quantified or analyzed statistically • Not possible to determine their reliability • Only six case histories were published, and none provides compelling support • Data consisted of what Freud recollected • Freud may have recalled and recorded primarily the material consistent with his theses • Freud destroyed most of his data (patient files)

Criticisms of psychoanalysis • Freud’s assumptions about human nature • Freud’s views on women

The scientific validation of psychoanalytic concepts • More valid tests of Freudian concepts followed the more unconvincing studies of the 1930s and 1940s • Overall results: • Some concepts difficult to test experimentally: e.g., id, ego, superego, libido • Some support for: • Aspects of oral and anal personality • Castration anxiety • Relationship between dreams and emotional processes

The scientific validation of psychoanalytic concepts • Some support for: • Unconscious aspects of cognition • Defense mechanism of repression • Freudian slips • No support for • Link between male oedipal complex resolution and identification with and acceptance of superego standards of father through fear • Inferiority of women’s bodily conceptions, morality, and sense of identity • Personality determined by age 5

Contributions of psychoanalysis • Freud explored otherwise ignored areas • Unconscious motivating forces • Conflicts among those forces • Defense mechanisms, the unconscious mind, and dream analysis useful concepts

Freud’s Views on:What causes behavior? • Genetics • Learning • Traits

Freud’s Views on:What causes behavior? • Cultural Norms • Existentialism (meaning, free will) • Unconscious Mechanisms • Cognitive Processes

Psychoanalysis Freud