5: Psychoanalysis

Question 1

What did the contemporary scene look like (1880 - 1910)?

Answer 1

While there was a lot of influence from other fields in Galton and Wundt, Freud tried to separate himself from these figures to prevent being misconstrued in other similar fields to pscyhonalaysis.. He was inspired by Schopenhauer, Meynert and Charcot

Question 2

What is Psychoanalysis?

Answer 2

It is a science and cultural movement based on the dynamic theory of mind and methods to explore the unconscious and to therefore form a treatment (therapy.

Question 3

What is Trieb?

Answer 3

It refers to a biological sexual drive, impulse and desire proposed by Freud.

Question 4

What did Merinelli and Mayer say about Freud?

Answer 4

They said that there is a method called the freudocentric approach and that there is a big disparity between liking/disliking Freud. Manichaen logic is also black and white thinking.

Question 5

What was the context around Freud?

Answer 5

In Vienna at the end of the 19th century, there was a heavy bourgeois social etiquette (finding problem with seduction and taboo), which Freud wanted to go against as well as the anti-semitic culture. The scientific climate was also run by positivism. Already in the 19th century, philosophers, psychiatrists and neurologists were focused on sexuality, the unconscious, drives and dreams

Question 6

Who was Arthur Schopenhauer?

Answer 6

He was one of the first people to suggest unconscious will and drive as influencing people, influencing Freud in such regards.

Question 7

Who was Theodor Meynert?

Answer 7

He was a neuropathologist who suggested that all mental problems are due to some psychical problem or anatomy. Mental illness is a consequence, then, of a lack of vasomotor “cerebral nutrition” and maladjustments brain regions. Freud then thought about developing therapy from criticising these ideas.

Question 8

Who was Jean Martin Charcot?

Answer 8

He was interested in psychopathologies - namely, epilepsy and hysteria. He was using a new method that also inspired Freud, call hypnosis. He inspired Freud in the interests of psychopathology (related to emotional experiences, unconscious, memorise and desires), hysteria due to fixed ideas (therefore therapy like talking needs to be done) and hypnosis as a diagnostic method.

Question 9

What is the controversy surrounding hypnosis and its context?

Answer 9

1. The Nancy school (Bernheim) - hypnosis is a natural process that works thanks to suggestion
2. The Salpêtriére school (Charcot) - only hysterical patients can be hypnotised. Thereby, hypnosis helps in the diagnosis but it does not cure

Question 10

How did Freud and Josef Breuer commit studies on hysteria?

Answer 10

A patient, Anna O (Bertha Pappenheim), was a pre-psychoanalytic patient suffering from paralysis, speech disturbance and visual problems. Treatment in form of the “talking cure” and hypnosis as cathartic method. She reflected on her condition. Freud then came up with his Seduction Theory. In the end, she was never cured and she abandoned therapy and became a leader in the Jewish women’s movement.

Question 11

What is the Seduction Theory?

Answer 11

Theory by Freud that hysterics must have undergone sexual abuse during their childhood.

Question 12

What is Freud’s Drive Theory?

Answer 12

Idea that we have libido that can be contained until no more and is dynamic and that high danger/anxiety situations decreased libido. The 3 stages of drives include: Self-conservation <-> sexual drive, libido, eros <-> thanatos (self-destructive death instinct).

Question 13

What is Freud’s structure of the mind?

Answer 13

Id: the unconscious mind of drive that focuses on the pleasure principle
Supergo: following societal rules
Ego: the arbritor where there should be some concession to the Id to prevent being overpressured without it being incompatible to the superego

Question 14

What is the significance of the Interpretation of Dreams (1900) by Freud?

Answer 14

It was the first psychoanalytic publication containing information on the relation between manifest and latent content, the use of free associations, the symbolic nature of dreams and Freud’s self-analysis

Question 15

What were Freud’s main methods?

Answer 15

1. Breuer’s and Charcot’s cathartic hypnosis
2. Association of ideas
3. Interpretation of ideas

Question 16

What is the Oedipus complex?

Answer 16

Refers an idea by Freud of a child’s unconscious sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and hatred for the same-sex parent. This leads to affective ambivalence, hostility and guiltiness.

Question 17

What is the information in “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life” (1901)?

Answer 17

What happens to mentally ill patients also happens to normal people, but often less disturbing. An example is the freudian slip: Any unintentional occurrences such as slips, mistakes, forgetting something has meaning

Question 18

Who was Anna Freud?

Answer 18

Daughter of Freud. She focused on the defense mechanism and along with other female psychoanalysts, she was one of the founders of psychoanalytic child psychology. She also established a therapy clinic for children after WW2. Anna Freud was known for her work with the Bulldogs Bank children who survived a concentration camp. She showed, along with Klein, that children could form strong bonds, can develop a sense of fairness and could recover from sever deprivation - also highlighting how disturbed behaviour does not always come from suppressed conflict but a disturbed environment.

Question 19

What are the Defense Mechanisms?

Answer 19

1. Repression - ego unconsciously tries to keep disturbing and threatening thoughts from becoming conscious.
2. Denial - blocking external events from awareness where the person simply refuses to experience a hard situation
3. Projection - individuals attribute their own unacceptable thoughts, feelings and motives to another
4. Displacement - satisfying an impulse with a substitute object

Question 20

What is transference?

Answer 20

A phenomenon within psychotherapy where feelings of a person about often a primary relationship are redirected onto the therapist.

Question 21

What is countertransference?

Answer 21

The therapist’s feelings toward a patient which a therapist (according to Freud) should be aware of to understand what their patients are trying to elicit in them

Question 22

How did the psychoanalytic movement develop?

Answer 22

It started as a private club known as the Wednesday Society until a national society was founded - the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. It then became an international movement with the First International Psychoanalytical Congress and Stanley Hall invited talks in the U.S.

Question 23

Who were the big three of the psychoanalytic movement?

Answer 23

1. Alfred Adler
2. Sigmund Freud
3. C. G. Jung
   Freud considered himself to be the originator of psychoanalysis so he criticised Jung’s and Adler’s differences and considered them no psychoanalysts.

Question 24

What led to Freud and his colleagues such as Carl Jung and Breuer going to different ways of psychoanalysis?

Answer 24

Freud insisted on sexual issues being the root of hysterical problems, while the others suggested other causes.

Question 25

How did Freud perceive the stories of childhood SA by his female patients?

Answer 25

Many of his hysterical female patients had revealed sexual abuse as children. While he initially believe them, the sheer amount and persuasion by his colleagues led to him believing them to be untrue and represent unconscious wishes/desires by the patient.

Question 26

What are the stages of development by Freud?

Answer 26

1. Oral stage 2. Anal stage 3. Phallic stage 4. Latency stage

Question 27

What was the impact of Freud's Theories?

Answer 27

They proposed the existence of an unconscious mind that has needs and desires that were different from the person's consciousness. The unconscious mind being detected through dream symbolism, free association and occasional speech errors.

Question 28

Who was Melanie Klein?

Answer 28

She was a psychoanalyst who emphasised early relationships rather than ego development and saw free play as an alternative to formal psychoanalysis when working with children. She focused on the two way attachment between infant and mother - later, object relations theory. She was important in forming play theory.

Question 29

How did the psychoanalytic movement develop near WW2?

Answer 29

Freud and his 7 collegues (who had 7 rings) tried to control the increasingly prominent psychoanalysis so that it was "accurate" to Freud's view - with much difficulty as it was getting traction. When the Nazi's took over and started burning his work, he said "well at least its not the middle ages where they would burn me" and he stayed in Vienna until the last moment where he moved to London.

Question 30

Who was Carl Jung?

Answer 30

He was a psychologist who believed in the spiritual world after witnessing a man hover in the air and as his mother was a medium. He was a psychiatrist who also had interests in paraphyschology. He believed in the collective unconscious that contained powerful symbols (archetypes) which were universal patterns/images such as the earth mother, the trickster etc. We resonate with these archetypes cause they have a direct link with the collective unconscious (synchronicity). He also believed in the persona, a mask which manipulates how we want to be viewed. Also in a shadow which is positive or negative and is the opposite to their open and present conscious (itself being buried in the unconscious) which is also why people ambiverts (their present self is different to the internal shadow).

Question 31

What made Jung disagree with Freud?

Answer 31

While he and Frued initially got along well, Jung was critical of his pansexualism. He viewed libido as a creative and spiritual life force with other origins than sex. Freud was also a materialist who believed his work was based on neurology. Jung, however, believed in a paranormal collective unconscious. While Freud had id, ego and superego; Jung had ego as a part of the conscious mind with a layer of personal unconscious and a deeper layer of collective unconscious.

Question 32

How did Freud view dreams?

Answer 32

He felt that the unconscious communicated itself to the conscious via dreams, the symbols and the ciphers in them (ciphers for particularly confusing dreams). He came up with this based on his research in therapy for hysteria, compulsivity etc (via Breur) and tested it with his parents. The patient must pay attention (not contemplate) to their perceptions and relax and remove all critique they may have of their thoughts/situation. In his famous book, he analyses his dream with Irma.

Question 33

How is Freud viewed today?

Answer 33

Orthodox psychoanalysts still value Freud as a found and pioneer while heretical psychoanalysts rather dislike him for his moral/intellectual dishonesty - pointing to other important psychoanalysts.

Question 34

How did psychoanalysis and Freud develop overall in history?

Answer 34

It started on biographical writing and methodological exposition. The interpretation of dreams became popular introducing the unconscious and dream self-analysis. Then there was a range of criticisms of Freud and departures of psychoanalysis, especially Wittels who critcises his work especially for being cult-like. Bernfield also published work documenting Freud's life after death which was not coherent, forming the biography written by Ernst Jones who wanted to protect Freud's image. It especially couldn't be criticised as most of the sources were locked up in the Freud archives. Freud's original work was treated as textbooks, however more reliance was on english versions after the Nazi book burnings. Later critiques of his work (revisionism movement) which focused on debunking him lacked conceptual depth and did not provide alternative frameworks for the time. Sulloway, however, criticised his work for not being a real science.