Chapter 13 - Psychoanalysis Flashcards
(68 cards)
1
Q
What were the two meanings that Freud derived from his strange dream as a child?
A
- Superficial meaning = a little boy afraid losing his mother
- True meaning = symbolized the sexual longing of a seven-year-old boy for his mother
2
Q
What did Freud believe were the three great shocks to the human ego?
A
- Copernicus - Earth is not the center of the universe
- Darwin - The theory of evolution
- Freud - The influence of unconscious forces
3
Q
What was Gottried Wilhelm Leibnitz’s monadology?
A
- Monads = individual mental elements of reality
- The activity of monads create a mental event
- Mental events were on a continuum from unconscious to conscious
- Petite perceptions: lesser degrees of consciousness
4
Q
What was Johann Friedrich Herbart’s theory regarding the unconscious mind?
A
- Theorized that there is a threshold of consciousness
- Conflict develops among ideas as they struggle for conscious realization
- Some ideas are below the threshold (unconscious)
- Ideas above consciousness are ‘appercieved’
- An idea must be compatible with those already in consciousness to pass over the threshold
5
Q
What was Gustav Fechner’s theory regarding the unconscious mind?
A
- Also believed in a threshold between the unconscious and conscious
- The first to suggest that the mind is analogous to an iceberg
- Large portion was below the surface
- This had a great impact on Freud
- Freud quoted Fechern several times in his own work
6
Q
T/F: There was a big of a zeitgeist surrounding discussion of the unconscious during the late 19th/early 20th century.
A
- TRUE
7
Q
How did Greek philosophers think mental illness arose?
A
- Thought mental illness arose from disordered thought processes
- Could be treated using the persuasive healing power of words
8
Q
How did Christianity think mental illness arose?
A
- Blamed evil spirits; treated mental illness with severe punishment
9
Q
What was the common belief in the 18th century as to how mental illness arose?
A
- Mental illness viewed as irrational behaviour; treated by institutionalizing people
- Occurred for a very long time
10
Q
Who was Philippe Pienel, and what were his ideas regarding mental illness?
A
- A French physician from the mid-18th century
- Released patients from institutionalized chains
- Listened to them and took case histories on cure rates
- Cured patients increased
- Had a very gentle, more humane approach
11
Q
Who was Dorthea Dix and her ideas regarding treating mental illness?
A
- An influential reformer
- Deeply religious and lived with depression
- Was inspired by the work of Pinel
- Advocated for the humanitarian treatment of mentally ill
- Influential in the improving conditions for wounded soldiers during the Civil War (i.e., PTSD)
12
Q
What is the significance of Benjamin Rush?
A
- First psychiatrist with a practice in the US
- First hospital for those with mental illness
- Thought mental illness was caused by too much or too little blood. Thought the solution was to drain or pump more.
- Numerous contraptions to ‘treat’ mental illness (rotating chair, ice water, tranquilizer chair, etc.)
13
Q
What two major camps were psychiatrists divided into regarding the causes of mental illness?
A
- Somatic - mental illness has a physical cause (eg. brain lesions, too much blood)
- Psychic - emotional/psychological explanations for mental illness
- More and more scientists began supporting the psychic approach
14
Q
What was the Emmanuel movement?
A
- The Emmanuel Church Healing movement
- Started by Elwood Worcester, PhD with Wundt
- Differed from Wundt, focused on applied psychology
- Offered talk therapy sessions for the mentally ill
- Relied heavily on moral authority and power of suggestion
15
Q
Who is considered the father of hypnosis?
A
- Franz Anton Mesmer
- Thought humans have a magnetic field that can be manipulated through the use of magnets
- Thought you could cure ‘nervous disorders’ by restoring equilibrium
- Clinics were established to offer Mesmer’s cures
- He was discredited, died alone
- But, hypnosis remained popular in the US
16
Q
Who was Jean Martin Charcot?
A
- One of the most well-known and respected neuropsychologists
- Head of the neurological institute at the Salpetriere hospital in Paris
- Charcot’s specialty was treating ‘hysteria’
- Pierre Janet, Charcot’s student, became director
- Advocated that hysteria was psychological in nature
- Believed that hypnosis offered the cure
- Became the norm in medicine to use hypnosis for psychological issues
- The term psychotherapy became part of medical vernacular
- Freud was influenced by these ideas
17
Q
How was Freud strongly influenced by Darwin’s writings?
A
Darwin’s writings include:
- Unconscious mental processes and conflicts
- Significance of dreams
- Hidden symbolism of certain behaviours
- Importance of sexual arousal
Freud’s theory of child development influenced by Darwin
18
Q
What were the attitudes toward sex in 19th-century Vienna?
A
- The culture had become more permissive towards sex
- More open sexuality (passion, prostitution, pornography) existed
- ‘Sexologists’ began to study the human sexual experience
- Several researchers wrote books on the sexual response and libido
- Freud was not the first to study sex (it was simply a product of his time)
19
Q
What’s catharsis?
A
- Process of reducing or eliminating a complex idea or memory by recalling it to conscious awareness and allowing it to be expressed
- Originated with Aristotle, but became a popular topic in Germany of the day
- 140 publications on catharsis by 1890
20
Q
How was dreaming perceived by different thinkers of the time on psychology?
A
- Was already a popular topic before Freud
- Wundt = how external stimuli invaded consciousness during sleep
- Charcot = trauma from hysteria revealed in dreams
- Krafft-Ebing = unconscious sexual wishes
- Calkins = analyzed content of dreams
- Freud took these trends and put them into a coherent whole
21
Q
What’s the life story of Freud?
A
- Born in 1856 in Freiberg, Morovia, which is now in the Czech Republic
- Father was a wool merchant who had 10 children, Freud being the oldest
- Father was 20 years older than his mother
- Very strict and authoritarian father, but not overly religious
- Family moved to Vienna when Freud was a child
- Freud was very bright and was his mother’s favourite
- Could speak 7 languages
- Enrolled in University of Vienna in 1873
- Because of anti-semitism, Jewish students were only allowed to study law or medicine
- Strongly influenced by Darwin
- Took 8 years to complete medical school, often working on basic research
- Trained in neurology with Ernst Brucke
- Desired a career in physiology, but no jobs in the area
- Had been courting Martha Bernays for some time
- For financial reasons, began to practice medicine
- Trained for four months with Charcot in Paris
22
Q
When did Sigmund Freud get married, and what did his career look like after that?
A
- 1886, married Martham they would have 6 children, with Anna Freud following in his footsteps
- Well-respected as a diagnostician and neuroanatomist
- Met Josef Breur during this time
- Learned about Anna O.
- Became interested in ‘hysteria’
23
Q
What was hysteria typically a blanket term for at the time?
A
- Likely ‘conversion disorders’ and other unspecified mental illnesses
- Freud was a prolific writer on hysteria
- Freud eventually left Austria when it was annexed by Nazis in 1938
- Died in London in 1939 by euthanasia, had been dealing with mouth cancer for a long time
24
Q
What was Freud’s relationship with cocaine?
A
- He notoriously used cocaine
- It was legal and easy to find
- First experimented during university
- Saw it as a miracle drug that could treat depression and physical ailments
- Often would use it when writing
25
Who was Carl Koller?
- A colleague of Freud
- Became famous after the discovery of cocaine's anesthetic properties
- This soon fell out of favour once its addictive discoveries were investigated
26
T/F: Freud published a paper on cocaine use.
- TRUE
-It subsequently contributed to increased use
- Became criticized for this
- Admitted he used cocaine in his youth, but then quit
- Historical evidence indicated that he used cocaine into at least middle age
27
What was Freud's relationship with cigars?
- Smoked an average of 20 cigars per day
- However, he understood that smoking was bad for his health
- Attempted to quit, but never did
- Jaw cancer at 67
- Smoked another 16 years
28
Who was Josef Breuer?
- Also a student of Brucke
- Older than Freud, and was already an established physician when they met
- Medical discoveries (e.g., semicircular canals and balance)
- Freud credited him for creating psychoanalysis
- Strong friendship with Freud, but it didn't last
29
How was hysteria described back then?
- A patient has physical symptoms but no clear physical cause
- Often 'neurological' in appearance
- Others suggested that these people were faking their symptoms
- However, Freud believed that the symptoms were rooted in the unconscious
30
What was the case of Anna O.?
- 21 year old Bertha Pappenheim
- A patient of Bruer
- Presented with paralysis in both legs and one arm, speech disturbances, and
dissociative states
- Breuer hypnotized her and had her recall the first appearance of symptoms
- She had been keeping a vigil for her dying father
- Would attempt to trace back each symptom to an individual event in her past
- These feelings would manifest as symptoms
- Each session would help to reduce each symptom caused by 'disturbing events'
- She began to refer to the 'talking cure'
31
What was problematic in the relationship of Anna O. and Breuer?
- They became very close
- Transference occurred, and Anna fell in love with Breuer
- His wife became concerned and jealous
- He eventually ceased their sessions
- Anna experienced a relapse in her symptoms
32
What happened to Anna O.?
- Was institutionalized shortly after Breuer ended their sessions
- Became addicted to morphine to deal with some physical pain
- Did recover and became a social worker
- Feminist, published stories on women's rights
- Died shortly after being interrogated by Nazis
33
What ideas were expressed in Freud and Breuer's publication on Hysteria?
- Included several case studies
- Freud was convinced that sex was the sole cause of neurotic behaviour
- Breuer disagreed with his insistence
- Resulted in the end of their friendship
- Freud later gave credit to Breuer
34
What was the formal beginning of psychoanalysis?
- In 1895 when Freud and Breuer published their findings on hysteria
35
Who told Freud that sex was the underlying cause of hysteria?
- Charcot
36
Who was Rudolph Chrobak?
- A gynecologist in Vienna
- He encountered women with debilitating anxiety
- Described a woman who was married 18 years with no sexual relationship with husband
- Freud suggested that Chrobak told him was sex
37
What were Freud's thoughts regarding the sexual basis of neurosis?
- Adopted the position that sex played an important role in mental health issues
- Freud observed Charcot's use of hypnosis to treat hysteria
- Adopted Breuer's methods of hypnosis and catharsis to treat his patients
- Freud found it difficult to hypnotize neurotic patients
- Eventually stopped using it entirely
38
What was Freud's free association technique?
- The patient says whatever comes to mind
- Patient lies back on the classic Freudian couch
- Encouraged to say whatever comes to mind
39
What did Freud notice about his free association technique?
- Noted that a large percent of topics were from childhood
- repressed memories of physical and sexual abuse
- Freud began to focus increasingly on sexual causes on mental illness
40
What was Freud's childhood seduction theory?
- Freud believed most of his women patients reported traumatic sexual experiences in childhood, often involving family members
41
What happened at the Viennese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology (1896)?
- Freud described it the "Aetiology of Hysteria"
- Argued that symptoms were a result of sexual abuse
- Frafft-Ebing called it a scientific fairytale
- Later revised to suggest that the experiences were not real; they had not actually happened
- Later historical evidence revealed that sexual abuse was more common than Freud would have liked to think
42
What was Freud's dynamic model?
1. Conscious system - All the thoughts that we are aware of
2. Preconscious system - All of the thoughts that we are not presently aware of, but could become aware of
3. Unconscious system - Thoughts that you are not aware of
- Does not have access to the 'conscious' system
- Repressed thoughts are censored and do not have access to the preconscious
- But, material can move from the unconscious to preconscious through dreams
- Dreams can represent an unconscous desire
43
What was Freud's very positivist belief?
- Thought everything had a cause, including dreams
- Freud attempts to analyze himself, yet could not do so using free association
44
What's Freud's dream analysis?
- A psychotherapeutic technique involving the interpretation of dreams to uncover unconscious conflict
45
What did Freud's self-analysis entail?
- Would wake up, and write down his dreams
- Dreams contained hostile content toward his own father
- Incestuous dreams as well
- Exploration of his own unconscious became the basis for his theories
46
What was significant about Freud's publication "The Interpretation of Dreams"?
- Was very well reviewed and was also read by Carl Jung
- Described 40 of Freud's own dreams, a dominant theme being ambition
- Dream analysis became standard in psychoanalysis
47
Manifest content vs. Latent content in dream analysis?
Manifest:
- What the dream seems to be about
- What is experienced by the dreamer
Latent:
- What a dream is truly about
- This is discovered through an analysis by the analyst
- Wish fulfillment: Symbolic expressions of wishes without anxiety or waking (dreams allow people to think about things without feeling judged
48
What does Freud's dream work entail?
- An attempt to help a patient understand the latent content of the dream
- Removing the disguise of the manifest content
- Condensation and displacement
49
Condensation vs. Displacement in Dream work?
- Condensation = an element of a dream symbolizes several things in the person's life
- Displacement = an anxiety-producing topic is replaced by a symbol
50
What's a Freudian slip?
- An act of forgetting or a lapse in speech that reflects unconscious motives or anxieties
- Casual slips are a reflection of underlying motives
- Unconscious ideas struggling for expression, affect our thoughts and actions
51
What was Freud's impression of America?
- Freud was well-received at Clark University but he was not overly impressed with America
- Bad food, lack of public toilets, no manners
- His impressions did not seem to improve over time
52
What was Freud's goal of psychoanalysis?
- Wean patients from this childlike dependency on the therapist and help them assume an adult role in their lives
- Primary concern was not to cure people but to explain the dynamics of human behaviour
53
What was a major flaw of free association?
- It was useful, but would reach a point where the patient would stop providing information
- This was called resistance = blockage or refusal to disclose painful memories during free-association
- Could be that they are simply unable to do so OR they are unwilling
54
What did Freud describe as repression?
- When Freud recognized that resistance was occurring, he began to theorize about why
- Ejecting ideas, memories, and desires from consciousness into the unconscious
- The analyst must help the patient and bring them back into consciousness
- Wean patient from childlike dependence on therapist
55
What did Freud think was the motivating force of personality?
- Instinct
- Not an instinct in how me perceive it today
- Mental representations of internal stimuli like hunger that motivate personality and behaviour
56
What were Freud's three major instincts?
- Life instinct (Eros) = Drive for ensuring survival of the individual and the species by satisfying the needs for food, water, air, and sex
- Libido = The psychic energy that drives a person toward pleasure
- Death instinct (Thanatos) = Leads to a tendency to tear things down. Unconscious drive towards decay. Very few of his followers believed in the death instinct
57
What are the three levels of personality according to Freud?
- The Id = The dark and inaccessible part of our personality. Resides in the unconscious; the pleasure principle. Libido creates an uncomfortable state of tension
- The Ego = Mediator between the Id and the Superego; thinking level of personality
- The superego = The representation of morality; develops early on in life; tries to inhibit the Id
58
What's the reality principle?
- Postpones Id's gratification until the Ego can find an appropriate outlet
59
How did Freud define anxiety?
- Functions as a warning that the ego is being threatened
- Defence mechanisms: behaviours that represent unconscious denials or distortions of reality but which are adopted to protect the ego against anxiety
60
What are common defence mechanisms?
- Denial
- Displacement
- Projection
- Rationalization
- Reaction formation
- Regression
- Repression
- Sublimation
61
What were Freud's psychosexual stages of development?
- Oral stage (birth - 2 years)
- Anal stage (2 -3 years)
-Phallic stage (3-5 years)
- Latency stage (5 years - puberty)
- Genital stage (after puberty)
62
How was Freud influenced by mechanistic ideas?
- Thought all mental events, even dreams, are predetermined
- Nothing occurs by chance of free will
- Freud initially wanted to create a science psychology like physics
63
How was psychoanalysis viewed by academic psychology?
- The popularity of psychoanalysis brought criticisms from psychology
- Thought it was inferior to experimentation
- Refusal to publish articles
64
What was discovered when psychoanalysis was experimentally tested?
- Results were that it was inferior
- Regardless many of its concepts were integrated into mainstream psychology
65
Which of Freud's theories hold some validity?
- Characteristics of the oral and anal personality types
- Castration anxiety
- The notion that dreams reflect emotional concerns
- Some aspects of Oedipus complex (e.g., rivalry with father)
66
What has there been no scientific support for in terms of Freud's theories?
- Symbolism of dreams
- The Oedipus complex and male identification with father
- Women's issues with body image
- Women's identity and superego
- Personality formation by age five
67
What are major criticisms of psychoanalysis?
- Conclusions drawn from case studies of patients (lack validity/generalizability)
- Data collection was unsystematic and uncontrolled
- Freud may have used suggestion to elicit or implant memories when no actual seduction had occurred
- Small and unrepresentative sample of people
68
What were the contributions of psychoanalysis?
- It's based on an intuitive appearance of plausibility
- Tremendous impact on popular culture and academic psychology
- Led psychology to revise thinking about the contributing factors to mental illness
- Freudian psychoanalysis became a vital force in modern psychology
