The psychoanalytic (a.k.a., “psychodynamic”) perspective

(FREUD & his followers)

Basic emphasis: Early childhood experiences, unconscious or repressed thoughts that we cannot voluntarily access, and the conflicts between conscious and unconscious forces that influence our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

Basic idea: Many of our motivations and elements of our personalities are rooted in the unconscious.

Historically: Freud noticed that certain kinds of symptoms that looked neurological in nature could be explained only in psychological terms -- in terms of THE UNCONSCIOUS, a part of our psyches of which we're not aware.

Freud experimented with HYPNOSIS (to get at the unconscious), but turned his attention to three other therapeutic processes, all of which attempt to bring the unconscious into conscious awareness by following the chain of its symbolic expression.

1. FREE ASSOCIATION, in which he asked his patients simply to relax, and to speak freely about whatever occurred to them, as a way of accessing the unconscious content of normal speech.

2. DREAM ANALYSIS, in which the symbols in dreams are analyzed to get at their unconscious content. Dreams consist of

MANIFEST CONTENT -- the story-like part we remember

LATENT CONTENT -- the symbolic expression of unconscious desires, memories, etc.

3. FREUDIAN SLIPS -- analyzing slips of the tongue, mistakes, etc., again to get at how they’re expressions of the unconscious.

Let's look at the unconscious:

-- much larger than our conscious awareness

-- composed of IMPULSES (mostly sexual & violent) and MEMORIES (mostly from childhood) that we've REPRESSED (stuffed down into the unconscious).

-- when the unconscious threatens to emerge into our conscious awareness, ANXIETY is the result.

One way of finding out about the unconscious is…

PROJECTIVE TESTS -- involve responding (usually verbally) to AMBIGUOUS STIMULI (e.g., pictures, inkblots). The idea is that people project meaning into (i.e., read meaning into) these stimuli, and how they do so is reflective of their unconscious themes & dynamics.

RORSCHACH inkblot test -- inkblots. People say what they look like, and what makes them look like that.

TAT -- pictures. People tell stories about the pictures

Generally, these projective tests are sometimes criticized for their

RELIABILITY -- that they produce consistent results

VALIDITY -- that they measure what they're supposed to measure

(notice that a test has to have reliability before it can have validity)

Still, many clinicians find them useful, esp. as an initial entry-point into what's going on for a client/patient.
 
 

PERSONALITY according to Freud -- 3 basic parts

ID

-- a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy.

-- constantly trying to satisfy basic drives, e.g., sex, aggression, survival.

-- operates according to the PLEASURE PRINCIPLE (seeking immediate gratification).

EGO

-- partly conscious, partly unconscious

-- attempts to balance id's demands against the reality of the world (as well as the demands of the superego).

-- operates according the REALITY PRINCIPLE -- the "personality executive"

SUPEREGO

-- partly conscious, partly unconscious

-- the voice of conscience & idealism -- tells us how we ought to behave

-- shaped by how we internalize the values of our parents & culture

-- the source of pride & guilt

Personality Development

As we saw in module 17, Freud proposed a sequence of PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES where the EROGENOUS ZONE (i.e., the center of bodily pleasure) shifts from one area of the body to another.

1. ORAL STAGE

2. ANAL STAGE

3. PHALLIC STAGE: OEDIPUS/ELECTRA CONFLICT

4. LATENCY STAGE

5. GENITAL STAGE

Another aspect of personality has to do with DEFENSE MECHANISMS, i.e., how we characteristically defend ourselves psychologically, esp. against the threat stress & the threat of emerging ID impulses/memories.

RATIONALIZATION -- unconsciously generating self-justifying explanations to cover-over what's unacceptable.

DENIAL -- simply ignoring what’s unacceptable to us.

REPRESSION -- simply stuffing what we can't accept into the unconscious.

PROJECTION -- attributing threatening impulses to others.

REACTION FORMATION -- ego makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposite.

DISPLACEMENT -- diverts one's unacceptable impulses toward a more acceptable objects.

SUBLIMATION -- transforming unacceptable impulses into socially-valued activities.

NEO-FREUDIANS -- psychoanalytically oriented thinkers who came after Freud.

1. Some of whom placed more emphasis on fortifying the ego.

2. Others had different views of the unconscious, especially as

less sexual/aggressive, more social

CARL JUNG

-- proposed a COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS -- composed of basic mythic themes called ARCHETYPES (e.g., mother archetype, trickster

archetype).

-- a more spiritual vision of psychoanalysis -- oriented around "the soul"

KAREN HORNEY

-- sought to reduce Freud's gender-bias

Principal criticisms of Freud

a. Gender-bias (e.g., Phallic Stage, Oedipus Complex, Castration Anxiety)

-- too oriented toward male experience

b. Doesn't generate testable predictions (but of course, it wasn't supposed to)

-- not scientific enough

c. Sexual repression has diminished generally, but psychological disorders haven't (still, the types that Freud saw have diminished).

THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE

Arose in the 1960s -- out of people's disenchantment with

behaviorism's objectivity (and neglect of people's experience), and

psychoanalysis's emphasis on pathology & psychological disturbance.

An emphasis on exploring people's experience, esp. with respect to fulfillment of potentials. E.G., Viktor Frankl.

3 main components:

1. A phenomenological approach -- looking at people’s subjective experience (life as they see it) as the primary psychological datum.

2. A holistic view -- emphasis on seeing human beings in their entirety, rather than via reductionisms or determinisms (as Frankl notes).

3. Self-actualization -- a movement toward the fulfillment of personal and collective potential that’s basic to human existence.

ABRAHAM MASLOW

-- emphasis on SELF-ACTUALIZATION (fulfilling one's highest potentials)

Characteristics: Perceiving reality accurately

Being independent & autonomous

Having deep, loving relationships

Accomplishing one’s goals

Sometimes with PEAK EXPERIENCES

PEAK EXPERIENCES -- powerful ecstasies, inspirations, epiphanies, spiritual experiences, etc. -- life’s highest moments

Maslow casts human development & motivation in terms of a HIERARCHY OF NEEDS that moves toward self-actualization:

Maslow's hierarchy of needs:

CARL ROGERS: “SELF THEORY”

Emphasis on the SELF-CONCEPT (i.e., how people view themselves)

-- a big part of personality.

The REAL SELF -- based on our actual experiences

The IDEAL SELF -- how we would like to see ourselves

Positive self-concept correlates more optimism & success,

Negative self-concept correlates with less conformity, drug-use, depression & anxiety, interpersonal problems, hostility, racial prejudice.

Rogers saw people as fundamentally good & endowed with tendencies toward self-actualization.

-- evil & pathology arise from of TOXIC SOCIAL INFLUENCES (i.e., environment).

For Rogers, the best environment for self-actualization (also the goal of humanistic psychotherapy) is marked by:

EMPATHY -- non-judgmentally sensing & reflecting others' feelings & meanings.

GENUINENESS -- honesty, dropping of facades

ACCEPTANCE -- accepting others as they are -- even with their faults.

"UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD" -- valuing a person for who they are (usually we give conditional positive regard -- we value people for what they do, or whether their values agree with ours, etc.).
 
 

Criticisms of the humanistic perspective

-- not objective/scientific enough

-- too much emphasis on the self invites self-absorption

-- doesn't take evil seriously enough