Powerpoint outline for unit on psychoanalysis

Unit on Psychoanalysis

Slide 1: Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Karen Horney, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and many others

Slide 2: Some definitions

Psychoanalysis. Based on Freud's ideas, generally emphasizing the importance of the id and superego as well as sexual impulses.
Psychodynamic approaches. Based on ideas of Freud's followers, although often significantly diverging from Freud. Often emphasizing the ego and impulses other than sex.

Slide 3: Psychoanalysis' bad rap

Sexually obsessed.

Psychoanalysis is not so much a question of science as a matter of taste, Dr. Freud being an artist who lives in the fairyland of dreams among the ogres of perverted sex.

Sexist. Penis envy and the inferiority of female superego

-But remember the times...

Racist. Aimed at YAVIS client.

-Again, remember the times. Only recently have cultural differences in preferences for therapies beenacknowledged.

Aimed at wealthy. Very long treatment periods.

-Only recently has therapy been available to everyone.

Monolithic. Anything but!
Simplistic. Perhaps because of the difficulty in summarizing very complicated ideas.
Pessimistic view of the world.

Freud saw people as foolish and weak and often self-deluded. The more empathic theories see people as basically good, but injured, and for a lot of us, this is easier to swallow.

Unscientific and untestable.

But this procedure of free association and so on is queer, because Freud never shows how we know where to stop -- where is the right solution.

Slide 4: Many of these complaints have validity. Why has psychoanalysis continued to be a very influential set of ideas?

Slide 5: Why psychoanalysis?

[Freud is] generally recognized as a figure of immense cultural importance. He changed the way we understand drama, history, biography, and he gave us a whole new picture of how a person becomes a person. He unified dreams, fantasies, fairy tales and myths -- and from many different cultures around the world. -Harold Blum (1988)

Slide 6: What does psychoanalysis contribute to modern therapies?

Our awareness is incomplete.

Slide 7: What is conscious?

Ego. The reality oriented, problem solving part of person.

Slide 8: What else is there?

Id. Our unconscious, unacceptable impulses.
Superego.

Conscience
Ego ideal

Slide 9:
Freud sees us as basically bad beings who must be controlled by superego. Contrast this view with Rogers'.

Slide 10: These are kept from us by defense mechanisms

Repression. Pushes from awareness. Other defense mechanisms are variations on this.
Projection. Sees unacceptable feelings in others
Reaction formation. Transforms unacceptable feelings to polar opposite.
Intellectualization. Cuts off feelings and focuses on thoughts.
Sublimation. Transforms impulse into socially acceptable behavior.

Slide 11:

All defense mechanisms distort reality and ultimately prevent us from coping with the world adaptively.

Slide 12: What does psychoanalysis contribute to modern therapies?

Our awareness is incomplete.
We are affected by unconscious material.
Present is affected by the past.
Increasing insight is important and useful.
Emotional events and flashbacks have meaning.
The meaning of mental events may not be what it seems on the surface.

Slide 13: Our fantasies, wishes, desires can cause guilt and anxiety

We can:

Resolve the conflict openly, or
Use a defense mechanism (which resolves the problem in the short-term, but increases it over the long-term)

Therefore the focus is on insight and adaptive coping mechanisms...

Slide 14: What if we remove symptom without insight?

Psychoanalytic view: Symptom substitution
Behavioral view: No more symptom! No new symptom!

Evidence supports the behaviorists' viewpoint.

Slide 15: Can we address problem directly?

No.

We're not directly aware of the problem. (Remember the iceberg?)
We'll defend against increasing awareness directly.

Slide 16: What can we do instead?

Use free association and techniques based on it:

Dream analysis
Transference. Client's nonreality-oriented perception of therapist.
Countertransference. Therapist's nonreality-oriented perception of client.
Resistance. Avoidance of therapeutic tasks.
Humor
Mistakes.

-Everything is grist for the mill!

Slide 17: Nature of therapeutic relationship

Therapy should be:

Insight-oriented. Postpone making changes until you understand their meaning.

Therapist should:

Take neutral stance to foster the transference.
Be directive. The therapist is the expert.

Page by jms
URL= http://psy1.clarion.edu/jms/cptpsychanalysispp.html
Last modified October 8, 2001.