Psychodynamic Approaches Flashcards
Psychodynamic Theories
Explains origin of personality
Emphasize unconscious motives and desires
Importance of childhood experiences
Behavior is influenced by unconscious thought
vulnerable or painful feelings are resolved by use of defense mechanisms
Psychodynamic Approaches
Aim to help clients review emotions, thoughts, early life experiences, and beliefs in order to gain insight into their lives and current problems
Recognition of recurring patterns to see ways of avoiding distress and/or developing defense mechanism as methods of coping that may be maladaptive
Encouragement to speak freely about emotions, desires, and fears in order to reveal vulnerable feelings pushed out of conscious awareness
Therapeutic relationship is central to empower client through insight and self awareness to transform dysfunctional dynamics
Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud
Client is seen as product of their past; treatment deals with repressed material in the unconscious
Personality is developed through attempts to resolve conflicts between unconscious sexual/aggressive impulses and societal demands to restrain these impulses
3 Levels of Awareness
Conscious - contains all the information that a client is paying attention to at a given time
Preconscious - contains all the information outside of a clients immediate attention but can be readily available if needed (thoughts & feelings that can be brought into consciousness easily)
Unconscious - contains thoughts, feelings, desires, and memories of which clients have no awareness but that influence every aspect of their day to day lives
Freud’s 3 Components to Personality
ID - unconscious instinctual energy; biological urges; impulses toward survival, sex, and aggression
- operates under Pleasure Principle: drive to achieve pleasure and avoid pain
EGO - manages conflict between id and constraints of the real world; restrict inappropriate id impulses
- operates under Reality Principle: gratification of impulses must be delayed to accommodate demands of the real world
SUPEREGO - moral component; standards learned from parents and society; forces ego to conform to ideals of morality; inflicts guilt when going against morales
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Primary technique is analysis
Analysis of dreams, resistance, transference, and free associations
Psychosexual Stages of Development
ORAL (0-1): sucking, biting, chewing
Fixation = excessive smoking, overeating, dependence on others
ANAL (2yo): during toilet training; bowel movements
Retentive = overly controlling personality
Expulsive = easily angered personality
PHALLIC (3-5): interest and pleasure in genitals
Fixation = guilt or anxiety about sex
LATENCY (5-puberty): sexuality is latent, or dormant
No fixation
GENITAL (puberty+): sexual urges return
No fixation
Individual Psychology
Alfred Adler
[follower of Freud]
main motivation for human behavior is striving for PERFECTION, not sexual or aggressive urges
Children feel weak and inadequate; inferiority drives them to adapt, develop skills, and master challenges (compensation)
Healthy individuals have broad social concern and want to contribute
Aim of therapy is to develop adaptive lifestyle by overcoming feelings of inferiority and self-centeredness
Self Psychology
The SELF is viewed as central organizing and motivating force in personality
Goal of treatment is to help a client develop a greater sense of self-cohesion
Self-Objects: receival of empathic responses from caretakers
Self-Object Needs
Self Psychology
Mirroring: behavior validates the child’s sense of a perfect self
Idealization: child borrows strengths from others and identifies with someone more capable
Twinship/Twinning: child needs an alter ego for a sense of belonging
Ego Psychology
Goal is to maintain and enhance ego’s control and management of stress and its effects
Focus on ego functioning of a client
Address:
- behavior in varying situations
- Reality testing: perception on situation
- coping abilities: ego strengths
- capacity for relating to others
Object Relations Theory
Margaret Mahler
Centered on relationships with others; skills rooted in early attachments
Objects refer to people, parts of people, or physical items holding symbolic reference to person or part of person
Relations = relationships with objects
Object Relations Phases
Normal Symbiotic (1-5 months): infant and mother are one
Separation/individuation (5-9 months): interest in world; uses mother as point of orientation
Practicing (9-15 months): explore actively; one with mother
Rapprochement (15-24 months): close with mother again; can lead to fear of abandonment
Object Constancy (24-38 months): understands mother as separate identity
