PIAP Week 2 - Neo-psychoanalytic theories PDF

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Lecturer: Dr Ruth Ford....

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PIAP Lecture 2 Week 2 - Neo-psychoanalytic theories Overview: - Freudian dissenters - Carl Jung - Alfred Adler Freudian dissenters: ● Main disagreements involved three issues: ● The negativity of Freud’s theory: pessimistic picture of human nature, people largely controlled by instincts and unconscious forces ● Freud’s belief that most of the adult personality is shaped by early childhood experiences: Neo-Freudians argue that later experiences in adolescence and early adulthood are also important in shaping personality ● Freud’s emphasis on instinctual influences on personality and failure to adequately incorporate social and cultural influences: Neo-Freudians instead focus on interpersonal relations Dissenters: - Carl Jung (1875-1961) - analytic psychology - Alfred Adler (1870-1937) - individual psychology - Karen Horney (1885-1952) - object relations theory - Erik Erikson (1902-1994) - ego psychology Carl Jung ● Agreed w Freud’s model of the unconscious, what Jung called the ‘personal unconscious’, but he also proposed the existence of a second, far deeper form of the unconscious underlying the personal one, called the ‘collective unconscious’ ● ‘Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throughout the world. There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums, and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than textbooks a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul’ - Carl Jung ● Jung believed that humans desire higher religious fulfillment and self-development ● Jung’s thinking was dominated by the principle of opposites - human experience consists of polarities that oppose and balance each other ● Jung saw the mind as being divided into 3 parts: the conscious ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious ● His theory postulates the existence of archetypes and synchronicity ● The conscious ego: the centre of conscious awareness ● The personal unconscious: repressed or forgotten material from a person’s own experiences that is organised into complexes ● The collective unconscious: the characteristic fears, behaviours, and thoughts that are shared by people across time and culture. Contains archetypes Complex-organised groups of thoughts

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Archetypes are inherited predispositions to respond to the world in particular ways Represent core ideas of how people think about the world and appear in myths, dreams, and art ● Many of Jung’s patients reported dreams containing vivid images that could not be traced to their own experiences - Jung argued that such images often corresponded to mythical and religious themes found in many different cultures ● According to Jung, we are born with a psychological heritage as well as a biological heritage ● Psychological heritage is presumed to be the source of our most powerful ideas and experiences ● ‘Just as the human body represents a whole museum of organs, each w a long evolutionary history behind it, so we should expect to find that the mind is organised in a similar way. It can no more be a product without history than is the body in which it exists’ Key archetypes - Mother: Virgin Mary, Mother Earth - Mana: spiritual connection - Shadow: negative or dark side to the personality - Persona or mask: public image, represents a compromise between our true self and the expectations of society - Anima: the feminine side of a man - Animus: the masculine side of a woman - Also: hero, wise old man, maiden, trickster - The central archetype is the self: the self strives to unify the various parts of the personality Jung’s psychological archetypes

Synchronicity: ● Jung coined the term to describe what he called ‘temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events’ - in other words, meaningful coincidences that reflect the underlying dynamic of the collective unconscious ● According to Jung, synchronous events are not due to chance but reveal an underlying pattern or conceptual framework that unifies individual human minds and behaviour Individuation - Term for the process of personal development that involves establishing a connection between the ego and the self - Ego is the centre of consciousness whereas the self is the centre of the total psyche, including both conscious and unconscious - According to Jung, dialogue between conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche enriches the person Jungian psychotherapy ● Goal is to reconcile unbalanced aspects of personality ● Therapy involved a number of different methods ● Described as dialogue between patient and doctor, conscious and unconscious ● Dreams have prospective and compensatory functions: amplification method of dream interpretation Alfred Adler (1870-1937) - Individual psychology: - We all begin life w a sense of inferiority - Strive for superiority is the motivating force in life - If unsuccessful, then an inferiority complex may develop - Well-adjusted people express their striving for superiority through concern for the social interest Adler’s basic concepts ● Striving for superiority - the drive for competence and effectiveness in whatever one strives to do ● Inferiority feelings arise from childhood dependence and lead us to strive for superiority ● Initially assoc. Inferiority w femininity, but later realised that society played a role in

perpetuating male dominance Suggested exaggerated masculinity had negative impact on men and women Creative self - interprets experiences of the organism and establishes a person’s style of life ● Individuals create their own personalities ● Consciousness central to personality - we can understand our motives through selfexamination ● This view is the opposite of Freud’s emphasis on the unconscious ● Style of life - unique way each individual seeks to cope with environment and develop superiority.. Influenced by: ● Family constellation (birth order) ● Family atmosphere (quality of emotional relationships in the family) Birth order - The order in which you are born into a family inherently affects your personality: - First borns suffer dethronement, making them at risk of neuroticism and substance addiction in adulthood - Middle born children have the best prognosis - Youngest child tends to be overindulged, leading to poor social empathy - Research examining birth order effects does not support Adler’s predictions - impact of birth order on personality is different to what Adler suggests - First born and only born children tend to be higher achievers than later-born children - Later-born children tend to have superior interpersonal skills - More than ½ US presidents were first borns - 21 of NASA’s first 23 astronauts were first borns or only children - ⅔ entrepreneurs are first borns - All 7 original Mercury astronauts were first born Parenting ● Two parenting styles that can cause problems in adulthood: ● Pampering - overprotecting a child - child will be ill-equipped to deal w reality and may doubt own abilities ● Neglect - child is not protected from the world and is forced to face life’s struggles alone - may grow up to fear the world, have a strong sense of mistrust for others, and have a difficult time forming intimate relationships Adler’s personality types - The Getting or Leaning type - those who selfishly take w/out giving back, also tend to be antisocial and have low activity levels - Avoiding types - those that hate being defeated, may be successful, but have not taken any risks getting there, likely to have low social contact for fear of rejection or defeat in any way - Ruling or Dominant type - strive for power and are willing to manipulate situations and people, anything to get their way, also prone to antisocial behaviour - Socially Useful types - those who are v outgoing and v active, have a lot of social contact and strive to make changes for the good Adlerian psychotherapy ● Neuroses = unrealistic life goals (fictional finalisms) ● Goals: ● Establish contact and win confidence of patient ● Disclose errors in patients’ lifestyle and provide insight into present condition ● ●

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Restore patients’ sense of reality, examine and disclose errors in goals and style of life, cultivate social interest

Lecture 2 - Neo-psychoanalytic theories Overview: - Ego psychology: Anna Freud & Erik Erikson - Object relations theory: Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Melanie Klein, Heinz Kohut, John Bowlby Anna Freud (1895-1982) ● Freud’s youngest daughter ● Analysed by her father and subsequently became his colleague ● Developed the use of diagnostic profiles for children ● Furthered the study of ego defences Anna Freud - Developmental Line - Dependency → emotional self reliance - Sucking → rational eating - Wetting and soiling → bladder control - Irresponsibility → responsibility - Play → work - Egocentricity → companionship Erik Erikson (1902-1994) ● Ego psychology: ● Trained as analyst under Anna Freud ● Two major contributions to psychodynamic thought: ● Reappraisal of the ego - ego’s main job is to establish and maintain sense of identity ● Psychological development continues throughout life ● Emphasised social as opposed to sexual development ● According to Erikson: ● Ego has a positive role in dealing w stress and resolving conflict ● Does not merely fulfil negative function of avoiding anxiety ● Ego is strong, a vital and positive force, an organising capacity of the individual that produces ‘that strength which can reconcile discontinuities and ambiguities’ (1975) Development - 8 stages of psychosocial or ego development - Each stage characterised by conflict/crisis that can be resolved in two different ways: one maladaptive, one adaptive - How we resolve each conflict determines the direction our personality development will take

Erik Erikson: ego development

Object relations theory ● Emphasises early childhood experiences and interpersonal relations, esp. Between

mother and child Main assumption of ORT is the child develops an unconscious representation of significant ‘objects’ (others) in their environment ● The way the child internalises the parents’ image along w the kind of attachment they feel to their parents influences their ability to develop meaningful attachments with others as adults ● ORT became the springboard for attachment theory Karen Horney (1885-1952) - Changed the way psychology looked at gender differences - Disagreed w Freud’s view of women - Countered Freud’s concept of penis envy w womb envy - men compensate for their inability to bear children by striving for achievement and success in other realms - Disagreed w Freud’s belief that men and women are born w inherent differences in their personalities - argued for a social and cultural explanation - Adult personality and behaviour often represent attempts to deal w basic anxiety - Basic anxiety results from disturbances in child’s relationship w parents - Horney defined neurosis as a maladaptive and counterproductive way of dealing w adult relationships - Horney introduced some new ideas about coping strategies: expansive solution, selfeffacement, resignation - Described case studies of symbiotic relationships between arrogant-vindictive and self-effacing individuals, which she described as morbid dependency - Identified ten patterns of neurotic needs (or coping strategies) that are formed by an upbringing in a neurotic family: they reflect 3 primary ways of dealing w the world: - Moving toward people - Moving against people - Moving away from people Horney’s ten neurotic trends: ●

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) ● Originally worked w Karen Horney ● Subsequently founded his own theory, attempting to integrate ideas of Freud and Marx ● Fromm argued freedom is a basic human condition that posits a ‘psychological problem’ ● Fromm (1941) postulated 3 common mechanisms: ● Authoritarianism ● Destructiveness ● Automaton conformity

Melanie Klein (1882-1960) - Argued children construct mental representations of significant others and then project these representations onto other people - Because children are unable to acknowledge both good and bad aspects to their significant others, they treat the internalised object as either clearly good or bad while continuing to love the actual person (who embodies both good and bad) - Leads to concepts of ‘good me’ and ‘bad me’ Heinz Kohut (1913-1981) ● Kohut’s ‘self theory’ maintains that children need to be mirrored and that early idealisation of parents enables children to develop goals ● Interested in narcissistic individuals whom he presumed were searching for an idealised parent substitute Attachment theory John Bowlby: - Interested in how the infant-mother relationship sets the tone for later romantic relationships - Fear of being alone motivates us to desire protection - Desire for protection leads us to develop attachments

Evaluation of psychoanalytic theory and its offshoots

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Drew Westen (1998) proposed 5 propositions that he regarded as established: Much of mental life is unconscious The mind does many things at once and so can be in conflict w itself Childhood events are important in shaping personality of the adult, particularly w respect to attachments/social relationships Relationships formed w significant others (like parents) form patterns that tend to be repeated throughout life w new people Psychological development involves moving from an unregulated, immature and selfcentred state to a regulated mature state in which relationships w other people become increasingly important...