Naively idealizes life, partners, and romantic love ..

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Chapter 4

• PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
• APPLICATIONS, RELATED CONCEPTS, AND CONTEMPORARY
  RESEARCH

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QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED IN THIS CHAPTER

• According to psychoanalysis, what are the causes
  of psychopathology and methods for treating it?
• How can one assess personality from a
  psychodynamic perspective?
• Why did some of Freuds followers break with his
  approach, and what novel theories did they
  advance?
• What recent developments in personality
  psychology were inspired by Freud?
• What does contemporary scientific evidence
  conclude about the psychoanalytic perspective?

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PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

• PERSONALITY TYPES
• At any given developmental stage, a person may
  experience unresolved psychosexual conflict -
  fixation and regression
• Fixation too much or too little gratification
  during a developmental stage that stops
  development
• Regression return to an earlier mode of
  instinctual gratification
• Fixation and regression lead a person to seek
  gratification in a form that reflects the
  unresolved conflict of a specific developmental
  stage
• Oral fixation ? gratification in eating, smoking,
  or drinking
• Regression tends to occur under conditions of
  stress

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PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

• PERSONALITY TYPES
• Oral personality
• Themes of taking things into and for oneself
• Narcissistic
• No clear recognition of others as separate and
  valued entities
• Others seen in terms of what they can give
  (symbolic feeding)
• Always needing or demanding something

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PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

• PERSONALITY TYPES
• Anal personality
• Dynamic processes at the anal stage concern the
  link between bodily functions and interpersonal
  relationships
• Excretion / Withholding power
• Toilet throne
• Anal triad orderliness and cleanliness,
  parsimony and stinginess, and stubbornness
• "Cleanliness is next to godliness"

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PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

• PERSONALITY TYPES
• Phallic personality
• Different implications for men and women
• Pattern for the phallic male hypermasculinity
• Competitive and aggressive qualities are
  expressive of castration anxiety
• Pattern for the phallic female hyperfemininity
• Over-identifies with mother and femininity
• May attract men via flirtatious behavior, but
  deny sexual intent
• Naively idealizes life, partners, and romantic
  love

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PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT PROJECTIVE
TESTS

• Psychological assessments
• Should be reliable and valid
• Should be efficient
• Challenges from the psychoanalytic perspective
• Relevant mental material is often unconscious and
  its mere mention may activate defense mechanisms
  that prevent such material from reaching
  consciousness
• Most people do not want to reveal threatening
  aspects of their personalities
• Freuds approach to assessment - free association
• Not efficient
• Freuds adherents sought new assessment methods,
  including projective tests

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PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT PROJECTIVE
TESTS

• RATIONALE FOR PROJECTIVE TESTS
• Defining feature ambiguity
• The person being assessed is asked to respond to
  unfamiliar and unclear stimuli
• In order to respond, the person must interpret
  the stimulus
• The person will project aspects of his or her
  personality onto the stimulus in order to make
  sense of it
• Projection may reveal underlying, unconscious
  psychodynamics
• Contemporary view a persons interpretation
  indicates how ambiguous circumstances of everyday
  life are viewed

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PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT PROJECTIVE
TESTS

• RORSCHACH INKBLOT TEST AND THEMATIC APPERCEPTION
  TEST (TAT)
• Related to psychoanalytic theory in 3 ways
• Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the complex
  organization of personality and its functioning
• Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes a holistic
  approach to understanding personality
• Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the importance
  of the unconscious and defense mechanisms

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PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT PROJECTIVE
TESTS

• THE RORSCHACH
• Herrmann Rorschach put ink on paper and folded it
  so that symmetrical, but ill-defined forms were
  produced
• Showed images to hospitalized patients and
  identified inkblots that elicited different
  responses from different psychiatric groups
• Settled on 10 cards
• The respondent looks at each card and tells the
  examiner what s/he sees represented
• The examiner then asks the respondent to explain
  in what way a given card represents what s/he
  said it did

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PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT PROJECTIVE
TESTS

• THE RORSCHACH
• When interpreting responses, the examiner is
  interested in
• How the response, or percept, is formed
• Reasons for the response
• Organized and unified perceptions that match the
  structure of the inkblot suggest healthy
  psychological functioning oriented toward reality
• Poorly formed responses that do not fit the
  inkblot suggest unrealistic fantasies or
  potentially bizarre behavior
• Responses are used to hypothesize about the
  respondents personality and are tested against
  other clinical data

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PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT PROJECTIVE
TESTS

• THE TAT
• Consists of cards depicting ambiguous scenes
• The examiner presents these ambiguous scenes and
  asks the respondent to write a story based on
  each
• Since scenes are ambiguous, the respondents
  personality is projected onto the stimuli
  (defenses are bypassed)
• Responses can be scored quantitatively according
  to Henry Murrays needs and press or interpreted
  qualitatively in terms themes

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PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT PROJECTIVE
TESTS

• Why don't projective tests work?
• Problems with inter-examiner reliability
• No guarantee that the respondent's unconscious
  dynamics will manifest when confronted with
  ambiguous stimuli
• What do the limitations of projective tests say
  about Freud's psychoanalytic theory?
• Freud did not develop or use projective tests -
  only free association
• Psychological assessment and prediction are not
  strengths of the psychodynamic tradition

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PSYCHOLOGICAL CHANGE

• FREE ASSOCIATION AND DREAM INTERPRETATION
• More than a simple recovery of memories is
  required to help people grow clients need
  emotional insight into their unconscious wishes
  and conflicts
• Therapeutic change understanding and resolving
  unconscious wishes and conflict in a safe
  environment

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PSYCHOLOGICAL CHANGE

• FREE ASSOCIATION AND DREAM INTERPRETATION
• If fixated, psychoanalysis frees the client to
  resume healthy psychological development
• If defensive, psychoanalysis redistributes
  psychic energy so that more is available for
  adaptive and socially appropriate forms of
  gratification
• If dominated by the unconscious or by the id or
  superego, psychoanalysis makes conscious what was
  unconscious and strengthens the ego so that it
  can assume control of personality

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PSYCHOLOGICAL CHANGE

• THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS TRANSFERENCE
• Transference client attitudes and feelings
  toward the therapist that are based on unresolved
  childhood experiences with parents
• The client becomes emotionally tied to therapist,
  yet knows little about therapist
• The therapist is a blank screen onto which the
  client projects unconscious wishes and unresolved
  conflicts
• Responses to the therapist largely reflect
  unconscious wishes and unresolved conflicts
• The client duplicates in therapy significant
  dynamic interactions with parents
• Psychoanalysts uses transference as a vehicle for
  achieving insight

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PSYCHOLOGICAL CHANGE

• THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS TRANSFERENCE
• Transference neurosis the client plays out
  unresolved conflicts within the therapeutic
  relationship
• Therapeutic change occurs due to the 3 factors
• Conflict is less intense than it was in childhood
• The therapist assumes a different attitude and
  role than that of parents
• The client is older and more mature
  psychologically
• The goal is to gain from the therapist what the
  client did not receive in childhood

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RELATED THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS

• CHALLENGERS TO FREUD - ADLER
• To Alfred Adler, it is the feeling of
  inferiority, inadequacy, insecurity, which
  determines the goal of an individuals existence
  (Adler, 1927, p. 72).
• For example, Freudians view an aggressive woman
  as expressing penis envy
• Adlerians view such women as rejecting the
  stereotypic feminine role of weakness and
  inferiority
• How a person copes with inferiority becomes a
  distinctive dimension of his or her personality
  functioning

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RELATED THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS

• CHALLENGRES TO FREUD - JUNG
• Carl Jung emphasized the evolutionary foundations
  of the human mind
• The collective unconscious holds the accumulated
  experiences of past generations and is universal
• It contains universal images or symbols, called
  archetypes
• Archetypes can be seen in fairy tales and myths
  as well as in dreams and some psychotic thoughts
• The mother archetype is expressed in different
  cultures as life giver, as all-giving and
  nurturant, and as the witch or threatening
  punisher

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RELATED THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS

• CHALLENGERS TO FREUD - JUNG
• Jung also emphasized peoples struggle with
  opposing forces
• Struggle between persona and the shadow (private
  or personal self)
• Struggle between the masculine and feminine
  aspects of ourselves (i.e., anima and animus)
• Fundamental personal task integrate opposing
  forces of the psyche (e.g., introversion and
  extraversion)
• Self an aspect of the collective unconscious
  that serves as an organizing hub
• Mandalas symbols of the struggle for knowledge
  of our opposing selves

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RELATED THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS

• SELF PSYCHOLOGY AND OBJECT RELATIONS
• Self Psychology and Narcissism
• Object relations theorists believe that the
  central events of early childhood involve mental
  representations of the childs relationships with
  others
• In self psychology, developmental experiences
  determine mental representations of oneself
• Narcissism an investment of mental energy in
  the self

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RELATED THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS

• SELF PSYCHOLOGY AND OBJECT RELATIONS
• Self Psychology and Narcissism
• Heinz Kohut all people seek self-development,
  control over the self, and a positive self-image
• In healthy development, individuals respond to
  their own needs while being responsive to others
  needs
• However, if developmental experiences inhibit
  maturity, narcissism may become a predominant
  feature of personality
• Grandiose sense of self-importance
• Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success
  and power
• Lack of empathy
• Vulnerability to blows to self-esteem

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

• ATTACHMENT THEORY
• John Bowlby was interested in the effects of
  early separation from parents on personality
  development
• Bowlbys attachment behavioral system (ABS)
• A stable bond that motives the infant to be close
  to a caregiver, especially when there is threat
• The infant clings to the caregiver for comfort
  and security
• As the infant gains a greater sense of security,
  the proximity of an adult attachment figure
  provides a secure base for exploring the
  environment

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

• ATTACHMENT THEORY
• Key prediction of attachment theory - effects of
  developmental processes related to attachment are
  long-lasting
• Infant-caregiver relations create internal
  working models (i.e., mental representations of
  self-other relationships)
• These mental representations endure
• There are individual differences in attachment
  styles

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

• ATTACHMENT THEORY
• Strange situation procedure of Mary Ainsworth is
  designed to identify individual differences in
  attachment styles
• Psychologists observe infants' responses to the
  departure and return of a caregiver in a
  laboratory setting

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

• ATTACHMENT THEORY
• Secure (70) sensitive to the departure of the
  caregiver, but greet the caregiver upon being
  reunited, are readily comforted, return to
  exploration and play
• Anxious-Avoidant (20) little protest over
  separation from the caregiver and, upon return,
  show avoidance (e.g., turning, looking, moving
  away)
• Anxious-Ambivalent (10) difficulty separating
  from and reuniting with the caregiver (e.g.,
  mixed pleas to be picked up with squirming and
  insistence to be let down)

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

• ATTACHMENT THEORY
• Attachment Styles in Adulthood
• Hypothesis - individual differences in emotional
  bonds in infancy predict individual differences
  in emotional bonds established later in life
• Hazan Shaver (1987) had participants complete a
  "love quiz through which they were matched to
  one of three attachment styles
• Also measured participants style of romantic
  love on 12 love-experience scales

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

• ATTACHMENT THEORY
• Attachment Styles in Adulthood
• Secure attachment style was associated with
  happiness, friendship, and trust
• Avoidant style was associated with fears of
  closeness, emotional highs and lows, and jealousy
• Anxious-ambivalent style was associated with
  obsessive preoccupation with the loved person, a
  desire for union, and extreme sexual attraction

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

• ATTACHMENT THEORY
• What dimensions best capture individual
  differences in attachment styles?
• A model of individual differences in the internal
  working models of the self and others
  (Bartholomew Horowitz, 1991 Griffin
  Bartholomew, 1994)
• Attachment patterns can be defined by 2
  intersecting dimensions
• the internal working model of the self
• the internal working model of others
• Each dimension has a positive pole and a negative
  pole

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

• ATTACHMENT THEORY
• Bartholomew et al.s model leads to the addition
  of a fourth attachment style dismissing
• Those with a dismissing attachment style are not
  comfortable with close relationships and prefer
  not to depend on others, but retain a positive
  self-image