Neo-Freudians and Psychodynamics

Question 1

What is Neo-Freudian psychology (often just psychodynamic

theory)?

Answer 1

a general term for the psychoanalytically oriented work of many theorists and researchers who are
influenced by Freud’s theory

Question 2

How is this psychology diff and similar to Freud?

Answer 2

Used the variations on the same methods (like use of the
transference) but tended to focus on certain elements of
Freud’s theory (rejecting or modifying others)

Question 3

What are common themes? (1/4)

Answer 3

Less emphasis on and reinterpretation of the Id (or

libido) as a general motivation behind life and creativity

Question 4

What are common themes? (2/4)

Answer 4

More emphasis on ego functioning and strength,

motivations, and interpersonal relationships

Question 5

What are common themes? (3/4)

Answer 5

Less emphasis on unconscious mental processes and

more on conscious thought

Question 6

Ego psychology:

Answer 6

focus on the processes driving the

perception and conscious comprehension of reality

Question 7

What is Ego’s function?

Answer 7

Ego’s function is to make sense of everything a

person experiences

Question 8

What are common themes? (4/4)

Answer 8

Less emphasis on instinctual drives and mental life as

the source of psychological difficulties, and more on interpersonal relationships

Question 9

What did Alfred Adler think about Freud?

Answer 9

Thought Freud focused too much on sex as the ultimate

motivator and organizer of thought and behavior

Question 10

What did Alfred Adler emphasize in his work?

Answer 10

Emphasized the importance of human culture and society

in the development of individual personality

Question 11

What is Social interest?

Answer 11

: the desire to relate positively and productively with other people

Question 12

What is Finalism?

Answer 12

individuals are oriented toward goals that guide their behavior, many of which cannot be proven and are judged by their usefulness

Question 13

What is Inferiority and the “Will to Power”?

Answer 13

: the idea that individuals are motivated to attain equality with or superiority over other people and try to accomplish this to compensate for what they felt in childhood was their weakest aspect
-Perceptions of weakness are more important than reality

Question 14

What is Masculine protest?

Answer 14

: the desire of an adult to act and become powerful, because of feeling inadequate or inferior

• Can also be experienced by women; everyone feels inferior as a child
• Particularly acute for boys because the most powerful person in their lives is their mother
• Inferiority complex

Question 15

What is Style of life?

Answer 15

: a particular mode of behavior that is based on compensations for perceived childhood inferiorities

Question 16

What are Adler’s theories influential for?

Answer 16

for early social psychology, for the Freudo-Marxist Frankfurt School, and for existential psychology

Question 17

What did Carl Jung Believe in?

Answer 17

Collective Unconscious

Question 18

What was Carl Jung interested in?

Answer 18

-Interested in a transpersonal or transcendent psychology; thought Freud’s model too narrow and too negative

Question 19

What were Carl Jung’s thoughts about ego and the unconscious?

Answer 19

Ego and the personal unconscious only a part of the psyche, but humans motivated toward transcendence and “individuation”; beyond ego to Self

Question 20

What did Carl Jung believe the process involve?

Answer 20

Process involves engagement of the Collective unconscious: memories and ideas that all humans share, most of which reside in the unconscious

Question 21

What is Archetypes?

Answer 21

core ideas of how people think about the world, both consciously and unconsciously
Earth mother, hero, trickster or devil, eternal youth, sky father
Appear in dreams, thoughts, and mythology, typically symbolically

Question 22

Persona?

Answer 22

• the social mask one wears in public
  
  • Everyone’s persona is false to some degree
  • Possible danger: identifying more with the persona than the real self
  • Identification with true self vs. social self

Question 23

What is Anima?

Answer 23

the idea, or prototype, of the female, as held in the mind of a male or identified with by females

Question 24

What is Animus?

Answer 24

: the idea, or prototype, of the male as held in the mind of a female or identified with by males

• Cause a masculine side and feminine side in everyone
  - Shape responses to the other sex
  - Ultimate goal (rarely achieved) of incorporating both into Self

Question 25

What is The Shadow?

Answer 25

similar in ways to aspects of Freud’s unconscious, the rejected and “dark” aspects of the ego; ultimate goal is to face and incorporate it into consciousness

Question 26

Introverts vs. extraverts

Answer 26

psychologically turned inward vs. outward. Essentially the same “journey” either way, the difference is where it was played out

Question 27

Ways of apprehending experience?

Answer 27

: rational thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting

—–People vary in which way predominates. Jung thought thinking and feeling were contrary to one another, as were sensing and intuiting, so one function predominated and the other was left to unconscious operation and projection (the dominant and inferior functions).

Question 28

Who is Karen Homey?

Answer 28

An early co-founder of ego psychology, but later ostracized for her “heretical” critique of orthodox psychoanalysis

Question 29

What did Karen Homey disagree with?

Answer 29

Disagreed with the notion of “penis envy” and women’s desire to be male: women envy freedom to pursue interests and ambitions; Posited men’s “womb envy”

Question 30

What is Basic anxiety?

Answer 30

fear of being alone and helpless in a hostile world

Question 31

What can happen if people avoid anxiety?

Answer 31

Attempts to avoid this anxiety can result in neurotic needs that people feel but that are neither realistic nor truly desirable

Question 32

What are unrealistic ways people try avoid anxiety?

Answer 32

• finding a life partner who will solve all your problems, to be loved by everybody and to dominate everybody, etc.
• can lead to self-defeating behavior and relationship problems because the needs are contradictory