History of Psychology

History of Psychology Chapter 13 Psychoanalysis: The Beginnings

I. The Place of Psychoanalysis in the History of Psychology • A. 1895 • 1. formal beginning of psychoanalysis • 2. Wundt: age 63 • 3. Titchener: age 28 • 4. functionalism: just beginning to flourish • 5. Watson: age 17 • 6. Wertheimer: age 15

The Place of Psychoanalysis in the History of Psychology • B. 1939 • 1. Freud’s death • 2. Wundtian psychology, structuralism, and functionalism were history • 3. Gestalt psychology: in the process of transplantation • 4. behaviorism was dominant

The Place of Psychoanalysis in the History of Psychology • C. Psychoanalysis • 1. not a school of thought directly comparable to the others • 2. subject matter is abnormal behavior • 3. primary method is clinical observation • 4. deals with the unconscious

A. Background 1. born in Freiberg, Moravia (Pribor, Czech Republic), and then moved to Vienna. 2. Father: strict and authoritarian Mother: protective and loving 3. Personality: self-confidence, ambition, desire for achievement II. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939): The Development of Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • 4. Darwin’s theory: awakened his interest in the scientific approach • 5. 1873: began study of medicine at U. of Vienna • a. 8 years to get his degree • b. initially concentrated on biology • c. moved to physiology: the spinal cord of the fish

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • 6. cocaine • a. used cocaine until at least his middle age • b. 1884: paper on cocaine’s beneficial uses published • 7. 1881: MD degree, began practice as a clinical neurologist

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • B. The case of Anna O. • 1. Josef Breuer (1842-1935) • Helped Freud. Breuer was a father-figure to Freud. • Worked together • 2. Anna O. • a. 21 years old • b. wide range of hysterical symptoms • c. symptoms first manifested while nursing her dying father

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • d. Breuer began with hypnosis • 1) Anna referred to their conversation as "chimney sweeping" and "the talking cure“ • 2) recalled disturbing experiences under hypnosis • 3) reliving the experiences under hypnosis reduced the symptoms • e. positive transference • f. Anna O. not cured by Breuer • g. case introduced Freud to the method of catharsis

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • C. Sex and free association • 1. 1885: Freud received a grant to study with Charcot • a. trained in hypnosis to treat hysteria • b. Charcot alerted Freud to the role of sex in hysteria • 2. Freud became dissatisfied with hypnosis • a. a long-term cure not effected • b. patients vary in ability to be hypnotized

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • c. retained catharsis as a treatment method • d. developed the method of free association • 3. Freud’s system • a. goal: bring repressed memories into conscious awareness • b. repressed memories: the source of abnormal behavior

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • 4. free association material • a. the experiences recalled are predetermined • b. the nature of the conflict forces the material out • c. its roots were in early childhood • d. much of it concerned sexual matters

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • D. The break with Breuer • 1. 1895: Studies on Hysteria(Breuer and Freud) • a. the formal beginning of psychoanalysis • b. the book was praised throughout Europe • 2. the conflicts • a. Freud’s contention that sex sole cause of neurosis • b. Breuer felt Freud had insufficient evidence • 3. Breuer concerned with Freud’s dogmatic attitudes

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • E. The childhood seduction controversy • 1. Freud believed a normal sex life precludes neuroses • 2. 1896: posited that childhood seduction traumas caused adult neurotic behavior • 3. the paper was received with skepticism

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • 4. 1897: Freud reversed his position • a. the seduction scenes were fantasies • b. patients believed they were real experiences • c. sex remained the root of the problem • 5. 1984: Masson’s book

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • 6. contemporary data on the incidence and prevalence of child sexual abuse • 7. whether Freud deliberately suppressed the truth is undetermined • 8. 1930s: Ferenczi determined there were real acts of sexual abuse • 9. Freud led the opposition to Ferenczi

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • F. Self-analysis and the interpretation of dreams • 1. Freud • a. held a negative attitude toward sex • b. experienced sexual difficulties • 2. 1897: • a. Freud gave up sex • b. he began his 2-year self-analysis of his own neurotic symptoms

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • 5. He used method of dream analysis • a. He believed that everything has a cause • b. He conducted a personal dream analysis. He wrote down the dream stories and then free associated to the material

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • 6. 1900: The Interpretation of Dreams • a. analyzing his own neurotic episodes and childhood experiences • b. outlined the Oedipus complex • 7. adopted dream analysis as standard technique

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • G. Recognition-- • 1. 1901: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life • a. Freudian slips: An act of forgetting or a lapse in speech that reflects unconscious motives or anxieties • 2. 1902: began weekly discussion group with students • a. included Jung and Adler • b. Freud tolerated no disagreement about the role of sexuality

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • 3. 1905: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality • 4. 1909:Clark U. lectures: honorary doctorate in psychology • a. 1909/1910: publication of the Clark lectures in the American Journal of Psychology • b. Americana accept idea of unconscious mind

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • H. Freud’s final years • 1. 1923: diagnosis of cancer, followed by 33 surgeries in 16 years • 2. 1933: public burning of Freud’s books by the Nazis • 3. 1934: Nazi destroyed psychoanalysis in Germany • 4. 1938: • a. Anna Freud arrested and detained by the Nazis • b. move to Paris, then London • 5. 1939: his doctor administered an overdose of morphine over 1 24-hour period

III. Psychoanalysis as a Method of Treatment • A. Resistances • A blockage to disclose painful memories during a free-association session • B. Repression • The process of baring unacceptable ideas. Memories, or desires from conscious awareness, leaving them to operate in the unconscious mind

IV. Psychoanalysis as a Method of Treatment • C. Transference • The process by which a patient responds to the therapist as if the therapists were a significant person (such as a parent) in the patient’s life • D. Dream analysis • 1. A psychotherapeutic technique involving interpreting dreams to uncover unconscious conflicts • 2. dreams represent disguised satisfaction of repressed desires

Psychoanalysis as a Method of Treatment • 3. The essence of a dream is the fulfillment of one’s wishes • 4. Patients describe dream, they express theirforbidden desires (latent dream content) in symbolic form. • 5. not all dreams are caused by emotional conflicts

Psychoanalysis as a Method of Treatment • E. No passion for helping • 1. little personal interest in his system's potential therapeutic value • 2. goal: the explanation of the dynamics of human behavior • 3. viewed the techniques of association and dream analysis as research tools for data collection • 4. his passion was the research

V. Freud’s Method of Research • A. Freud’s position • 1. little faith in the experimental approach • 2. believed his work was scientific • 3. believed his cases and self-analysis provided ample support

Freud’s Method of Research • B. The evidence • 1. formulated, revised, and extended • 2. with Freud as the sole interpreter • 3. guided by his own critical abilities • 4. insisted only psychoanalysts could judge his work’s scientific worth • 5. rarely responded to his critics

VI. Psychoanalysis as a System of Personality • A. Instincts • 1. Mental representations of internal stimuli (such as hunger) that motivate personality and behavior

Psychoanalysis as a System of Personality • 2. the life instincts • a. self-preservation and survival of the species • b. manifested in libido • Libido: the psychic energy that drives a person toward pleasurable thoughts and behaviors • 3. the death instinct • a. a destructive force • b. can be directed inward (suicide) or outward (aggressive) • c. only when a death became a personal concern

Psychoanalysis as a System of Personality • B. Conscious and unconscious aspects of personality • 1. conscious • a. small and insignificant • b. a superficial aspects of the total personality • 2. Unconscious • a. vast and powerful • b. contains the instincts

Psychoanalysis as a System of Personality • 3. Later, Freud replaced the conscious/unconscious distinction with the concept of id, ego, and superego. • id (Es) • a. corresponds to earlier unconscious • b. the most primitive and least accessible part of personality • c. includes sexual and aggressive instincts • d. followed pleasure principle • 1) reduces tension • 2) methods: seeks pleasure and avoids pain

Psychoanalysis as a System of Personality • 4. ego (Ich) • a. The rational aspect of personality responsibility for controlling the instinct • b. is aware of reality and regulates id • c. followed the reality principle • Holding off the id’s pleasure-seeking demands until a appropriate object can be found to satisfy the need and reduce the tension

Psychoanalysis as a System of Personality • 5. superego (Uber-Ich) • a. the moral aspect of personality derived from internalizing parental and societal values and standards. • b. represent morality • c. behavior is determined by self-control, postpone id satisfaction to more appropriate times and spaces or inhibit id completely

Psychoanalysis as a System of Personality • C. Anxiety • 1. indicates ego is stressed or threatened • 2. three types • a. objective: fear of actual dangers • b. neurotic: fear of punishment • c. moral: fear of one’s conscience

Psychoanalysis as a System of Personality • D. Psychosexual stages of personality development • 1. one of the first to emphasize the importance of child development • 2. personality pattern almost complete by age 5

Psychoanalysis as a System of Personality • 3. psychosexual stages: marked by autoeroticism • a. oral: sensual satisfaction, oral personality • b. anal: toilet training: dirty/neat, clean • c. phallic: attitudes toward the opposite sex develop • d. latency

VII. Relations Between Psychoanalysis and Psychology • A. Psychoanalysis outside the mainstream • 1. 1924: Journal of Abnormal Psychology • a. complaints about the number of papers on the unconscious • b. at least 20 years: few articles on psychoanalysis accepted for publication

Relations Between Psychoanalysis and Psychology • B. Criticisms by academic psychologists • Psychoanalysis was a product of the undeveloped German mind • C. Psychology textbooks • 1. early 1920s books included some of Freud’s ideas • 2. as a whole, psychoanalysis was ignored

Relations Between Psychoanalysis and Psychology • D. 1930s and 1940s psychoanalysis • 1. popular with the general public • 2. a serious competitor of experimental psychology

Relations Between Psychoanalysis and Psychology • E. The academics’ response • 1. experimental tests of concepts of psychoanalysis • a. psychoanalysis was inferior to a psychology based on experimentation • b. academic psychology could be relevant to the public interest because it was studying the same things as the psychoanalysts

Relations Between Psychoanalysis and Psychology • 2. 1950s and 1960s • a. translation of psychoanalytic concepts into behavioristic terms • E.g., emotions habits; neurotic behavior the result of faulty conditioning. • b. psychology incorporated many of Freud’s concepts • e.g., unconsciousness, childhood experiences, defense mechanism

IX. Criticisms of Psychoanalysis • A. In general • 1. Freud’s methods of data collection • a. unsystematic and uncontrolled • b. data consisted of what Freud recollected • c. Freud may have reinterpreted patients’ words

Criticisms of Psychoanalysis • d. Freud may have recalled and recorded primarily the material consistent with his theses • e. there exist discrepancies between Freud’s notes and the published case histories • f. Freud destroyed most of his data (patient files)

Criticisms of Psychoanalysis • g. just 6 case histories were published and none provides compelling support • h. undisclosed method for deriving inferences and generalizations • i. data not amenable to quantification or statistical analysis

Criticisms of Psychoanalysis • 2. Freud often contradicted himself • 3. Freud’s definitions of key concepts unclear • 4. Freud’s views on women • Women have poorly developed superego and inferiority feelings about their body

Criticisms of Psychoanalysis • 5. the emphasis on biological forces, especially sex, as the determinant of personality • a. the denial of free will • b. the focus on past behavior and exclusion of one’s hopes and goals • 6. the theory is based on neurotics, not on normals

Criticisms of Psychoanalysis • B. The scientific validation of psychoanalytic concepts • 1. an analysis of about 2000 studies from several disciplines support • a. some characteristics of oral and anal personality types • b. the notion that dreams reflect emotional concerns • c. certain aspects of the Oedipus complex in boys

Criticisms of Psychoanalysis • 2. the analysis did not support • a. that dreams satisfy symbolically repressed desires and wishes • b. that fear is the motive for boys’ resolution of the Oedipus complexes • c. several ideas about women (women have an inferior conception of their bodies, less severe superego standards than men

Criticisms of Psychoanalysis • 3. later research • a. supports notion that unconscious processesinfluence thoughts and behavior • b. does not support that personality is set by age 5. • Nowpersonality continues to develop over time and can change dramatically after childhood. • c. indicates Freud’s ideas about instincts are not a useful model of human motivation

History of Psychology