shafranske_midterm_20150415194621 Flashcards
(228 cards)
Oral Stage Paranoid Schizoid Position
(Klein) the earliest experiences of the infant are split between wholly good experiences with “good” objects and wholly bad experiences with “bad” objects. E.g., good breast when gratifying vs. bad breast when frustrating. The early ego vacillates between a loving orientation and a hateful orientation. To tolerate these two opposing experiential states, Klein postulated that children adopt the paranoid-schizoid position. Paranoid refers to the persecutory anxiety felt as coming from the environment. Schizoid refers to the infant’s use of splitting as a defense against anxiety, i.e., the world is divided into good and bad/love and hate. [see OBJECT CONSTANCY, AMBIVALENCE, and DEPRESSIVE POSITION]
Anal-sadism
It manifests as the toddler’s aggressive wishes connected to discharging feces, which for infants represent powerful and destructive weapons. They may have fantasies of bombings and explosions. In the anal sadistic process both elimination and retention can be points of fixation. In elimination, the toddler derives hostile excretory pleasure from defecation and is invested in destroying and losing the object. When retention occurs, this is preservation of the object and pleasure occurs.
Castration Anxiety
This anxiety is grounded in response to a boy’s confusion about the anatomical difference between boys and girls and his attributing the difference to the fact that the girl’s penis has been cut off. The boy, who is in the throws of the Oedipal Conflict and competing for the attentions of the mother, fears that he will be castrated by the father in response to his romantic feelings for the mother. By internalizing the father’s threat and making it a part of his own psychology, thereby sharing in the father’s sexual omnipotence, the boy is gradually able to master his castration anxiety. Think of this as a “useful fiction” - symbolic rather than real, physical threat to genitals.
Oedipus Complex:
Boy experiences sexual strivings toward his mother while wanting to replace his father for her affections. Mostly unconscious. When successfully resolved, these feelings are fully repressed, and the boy, afraid of castration, learns to identify with his father. He internalizes his parents and acquires a superego whose ego ideal replaces some of his early narcissism. The Oedipus complex is the process in childhood that civilizes us, causing us to repress our incestuous, antisocial drives and to learn to desire someone of the opposite sex. The “cornerstone” of psychological conflict (Freud). Unsuccessful resolution possibilities: 1) boy is invalidated by the father = psychological castration; leads to womanizing tendencies - having to “win” the woman; 2) boy becomes too attached to mother and trouble separating/leaving home.
Electra Complex
the feminine equivalent of the male Oedipal Complex. A chief difference is that the girl isn’t required to shift her identification from her mother to her father. this desire later gets acted out by her choice of a fatherly man to have a baby with. Identifies with mother, realizes her own “castration”, turns her love interest to father and wants a baby as substitute for not having a penis.
Penis Envy
“a woman’s repressed wish to possess a penis”. A daughter’s anger at mother because she blames her for her “castration” since she is also missing a penis. She envies the male equipment and position; the daughter feels conflict between her longing for the mother and her fear of engulfment by the mother. Turns to her father in attempt to compensate for inadequacy and thus desire for a baby. Feminist perspective sees penis envy as symbolic of the power dynamics within families.
Actual Neuroses
Neurosis is a psychological state characterized by excessive anxiety or insecurity without evidence of neurologic or other organic disease, sometimes accompanied by defensive or immature behaviors. a term originally used by Freud to refer to a neurosis which resulted from the tension of real, “actual,” frustrations or real organic dysfunctions; symptoms have a physical basis; anxiety is present. The therapeutic approach for actual neuroses is prophylaxis (prevention of or protective treatment for disease) and deconditoning (adaptation of an organism to less demanding environment, or, alternatively, the decrease of physiological adaptation to normal conditions). Currently, symptoms of actual neurosis fall under the hysteria framework. Two real problems in sexual functioning: 1) Neurasthenia: resulting from sexual excess/emission; excessive masturbation; and 2) Anxiety neuroses: resulting from unrelieved sexual stimulation; incomplete satisfaction
Psychoneuroses:
emotional maladaptation due to unresolved unconscious conflicts (as opposed to real organic dysfunctions). This leads to disturbances in thought, feelings, attitudes, and behavior. Leads to impairment, but not a loss of contact with reality.
Affect
(Freud) the qualitative expression of the quantity of instinctual energy and its fluctuations. Later, Titchener used it as a label for the pleasantness-unpleasantness dimension of feeling. If we can name it, it’s a feeling. Alexthymia is when a person can’t identify affects. Babies have affective reactions. Emotions. How drives are expressed.
Ambivalence
Ambivalence was used by Freud to indicate the simultaneous presence of love and hate towards the same object. During the oral stage the main object the child relates to is the mother’s breast. During the first sub-stage of this stage, there is no ambivalence at all towards the mother’s breast, since the only concern of the child is oral incorporation. In the second sub-stage, named “oral-sadistic,” the biting activity emerges and the phenomenon of ambivalence appears for the first time. The child is interested in both libidinal and aggressive gratifications, and the mother’s breast is at the same time loved and hated. It is being loved when it is a source of nutrition and pleasure, and it is being hated when it is a source of frustration. During the pre-oedipal stages ambivalent feelings are expressed in a dyadic relationship between the mother and the child. In the oedipal phase, ambivalence is experienced for the first time within a triangular context which involves the child, the mother, and the father. In this stage both the boy and the girl develop negative feelings of jealousy, hostility, and rivalry toward the parent of the same sex, but with different mechanisms for the two sexes. The negative feelings which arise in this phase coexist with love and affection toward the parent of the same sex and result in ambivalence which is expressed in feelings, behavior, and fantasies. [see OBJECT CONSTANCY and DEPRESSIVE POSITION]
Anxiety, Psychoanalytic Theory of
The accumulation of energy in the psyche is converted into anxiety. If this energy is not discharged or transformed, neurotic symptoms emerge. Anxiety may result from conflict between the mind’s agencies (ie. Id impulses threaten the Ego). Defense mechanisms mobilize to protect the ego when anxiety is detected. Freud’s first view of anxiety = when libido pushes for expression ego senses danger and represses libidinal urges so this drive cannot be discharged. The result is damming of the libido and subsequent anxiety. Real anxiety=threat from a known danger. Neurotic anxiety=threat from an unknown source. Automatic/Annihilation Anxiety: the infant fears their existence is at risk due to unbearable frustrations over hunger and excessive external stimulation (loud noises, extreme temperatures, etc.) Also fear of loss of the primary object. [see DRIVE/LAW of ENTROPY and ECONOMIC HYPOTHESIS].
Signal Anxiety
anxiety whose purpose is to warn of an impending threat and prepare the individual for flight, fight, or surrender. “…not directly a conflicted instinctual tension but a signal occurring in the ego of an anticipated instinctual tension” (Freud). Can conceptualize as a subset of unconscious mental processes that have a signal function of anticipating danger. Such unconscious anticipatory processes are a general feature of the mind that includes responses to both real and imagined (neurotic) appraisals of a situation.
Anxiety (Anna Freud: instinctual, superego, objective):
Ego employs defenses when faced with three types of anxiety.:- instinctual anxiety- superego anxiety- objective anxiety
Instinctual anxiety
the ego sets out to defend against instinctual impulses; defenses reflect the conflict between the id and ego. In analysis, the ego’s defenses pit themselves directly against the analyst, since the analyst is trying to unearth repressed material. The ego defends not only against the instinctual impulses, but also against affects, such as hatred, anger, and rage, associated with those instincts.
Superego anxiety
: anxiety produced by one’s conscience. the conflict is between the ego and the superego. The ego registers the emergence of an instinctual libidinal or aggressive impulse in consciousness. Since such impulses are unacceptable to the superego, which prohibits their gratification, the threat to the ego leads it to institute a set of defenses.
Objective anxiety
refers to ego defenses motivated by the dread of forces outside the self. The conflict is between the ego and the external world.
Average Expectable Environment
(Hartmann) An environment that is responsive to the child’s psychological needs and allows Conflict-Free Ego Capacities to flourish.
Conflict-Free Ego Capacities
(Hartmann) Intrinsic potentials - innate and inherited. Capacities include language, perception, memory, intention, motor activity, object comprehension, and thinking. The ability to integrate and synthesize experiences and adapt to reality. Contrasted with more traditional psychoanalytic ideas, which hold that adaptation is achieved only as an outcome of frustration and conflict. [see PRIMARY AUTONOMOUS EGO FUNCTIONS (Hartmann)]
Basic Fault
(Balint) a structural deficiency in personality as a result of not having needs met due to a faulty environment. Impairment in object relations which causes a rupture in dyadic relationships. In a relationship, the person considers only their own needs and may either avoid or cling to an object. May display schizoid, narcissistic, borderline personality features and may hamper therapeutic process. Theoretically neutralized when, after being recognized, the patient re-establishes his primary love relationship, and lets go of his compulsive object relations.
Basic Trust
(Erikson) the sustained inner feeling of optimism regarding oneself and the world-at-large. It develops out of frequent experiences of one’s childhood needs being met with satisfaction. If overcome crises and thus develop trusting, confident disposition.
Cathexis
: the attachment/concentration of libido (emotional energy) to a particular object or goal. The investment of libido in objects. Can cause schizoid personality features in children who experienced neglect or abuse.
Component Instinct
In the pregenital stages the sexual instinct consists of non-erotic component instincts such as the sadistic instinct, the instinct for knowledge, and the instinct for mastery. Component instincts often appear as pairs of opposites, for example, the instinct to see and be seen. Certain sexual component instincts (e.g., baby sucking) will eventually contribute to mature genital sexuality. Freud thought that children were “polymorphously perverse” b/c of the variety of instincts that each experiences - and that each instinct has the potential to develop into adult perversions, i.e., oral pleasure as infant develops into adult oral sexual pleasure; sadism, voyeurism, etc.
Compromise Formation
the result (compromise) of an internal conflict. The ego works to meet out a compromise between a certain amount of expression of a drive (id) and a certain amount of repression (superego). This occurs outside of our awareness. Ex: bad compromise formation is when you overreact to something, e.g., yelling at someone for making a mistake. [SEE SECONDARY PROCESS]
Depressive Position
(Klein) Infants no longer need to use splitting and begin the process of integrating good and bad object representations. This begins around 3-4 months and lasts until 6 months. In this phase, infants realize they have the power to do harm to the object and feel remorse. Infant begins to see objects as whole rather than as partial-objects; thus can see the mother as both good and bad. Fear of “loss of the loved object” occurs. This stage results from the gradual separation from the mother, resulting in the child emerging as a separate person. [see OBJECT CONSTANCY and AMBIVALENCE]