Psy 421: Systems and Theories of Psychology
Psychoanalysis, its Antecedents, and its Alternatives Early treatment of the mentally ill.
  • Hippocrates & Galen--illness due to natural causes and recommended caring treatment
  • In Middle Ages mental illness was tied to possession by demons and treatment often meant beating, locking the mentally ill up, or even strapping them down. Often trephination (cracking open the skull so that the demons could escape) was practiced. Filthy and inhumane treatment of the mentally ill often occurred even well into the 20th century, although there were those who disagreed with such treatment.
  • Pinel (1745-1826) removed the shackles and gave treated the mentally ill humanely.
  • Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) stressed natural causes for mentally ill based on faculty and association psychologies,
  • Dorothy Dix (1802-1887) was a chief mover for humane tratment of the mentally ill in the US.
    •  Highlights from pre-Freudian Hypnosis
  • It had long been known that under certain conditions of religious fervor, people went into convulsions or some sort of trance state. These phenomena were thought to be due to influences of some emanation from the stars or elsewhere. Von Helmont (1577-1644) claimed that people radiated a magnetic fluid which could be guided by their wills to control others. During the next century different people demonstrated mysterious cures via the laying on of hands or some non-physical means.
  • Mesmer (1734-1815)--Used Von Helmont's idea of animal magnetism to treat patients. Mostly concentrated on hysterical patients. Used a "bacquet" and 'treated' problems with theatrical performances which often led to convulsive states by the clients. Mesmer, was evaluated by Benjamin Franklin (among others) who found no evidence that magnetism of any sort was involved.
  • Esdaile (1808-1858)--successfully used mesmerism as surgical anesthetic in India, fantastic survival rate for the time (94%) included mostly limb amputations. He introduced hypnosis as analgesic in 1842. That same year ether was introduced as an analgesic.
  • John Elliotson (1791-1868) tried to introduce mesmerism for treatment of certain nervous illnesses and surgical anesthesia, but was denied the use of his hospital to do so.
  • Braid (1795-1860) introduced the term Neurypnology in 1843 and later he shortened it to hypnotism. He argued that hypnotism was a state based on muscle tension and sensory fixation. Later, he emphasized suggestibility. For Braid, hypnosis was not due to magnetic powers of the hypnotist.
  • Jean Charcot (1825-1893) ran the most fampus neurological clinic in Europe at Salpetriere. He was interested in hypnotism and hysteria (paralyses, amnesias, and anesthesias). He used hypnosis as a method to cure them. Charcot and others at Salpetriere thought that hypnotizability was dependent upon hysteria, thought to be a woman's disease, although he later found that men too exhibited hysterical symtoms and could be hypnotized.
  • Liebeault and Bernheim at Nancy: These individuals did much to develop hypnotherapy and treated many people. They argued that hypnosis was a normal process, which was inducible to a variable amount, as a function of suggestibility of the individual.
    •  Antecedents of Psychoanalysis
  • Leibniz--petite perceptions--unconscious events have an effect
  • Herbart--Apperceptive mass--new experience based on old, active ideas strive for conscious expression, some remain unconscious but affect what is in consciousness
  • Helmholtz and Brücke--antivitalism, physiological causality, conservation of energy
  • Darwin--drives to support existence of the individual and the species
  • Brentano--taught all of Freud's courses in philosophy and psychology. Freud's drives and needs were dynamic and contained objects, which is similar to Brentano's intentions. Also, Freud translated J. S. Mill into German for Brentano. Freud's Association of ideas, and use of the utilitarian hedonism must have been influenced by his reading of Mill.
  • Schopenhauer--taught that much of our activities which we think are rational are due to deep seated drives of which we are basically unaware. We keep thoughts from consciousness if they would arouse feelings of embarrassment, humiliation or shame. Rather direct components of Freud’s system.
    •  Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
  • Freud developed psychoanalysis, which was a general theory of psychology (psychodynamics), a theory of development, a personality theory, a research method, and a method of treatment.
  • Studied with Brentano (association and intentionality), Brucke (Helmholtz, determinism, physiology and conservation of energy) Breuer (hysteria and "talking cure", Charcot (hypnosis, post hypnotic suggestion), Claus (evolution).
  • Freud originally tried to give his psychology a detailed physiological base. In the 1880’s he worked on a project which argued for a specific physiological basis for some of his main psychoanalytic concepts. He never published, although in the 1960’s some psychologists summarized some of his ideas.
  • Highlights: These are really numerous. Freud wrote many books.

    • 1. Ideas are active. They strive for attention in the conscious (just like Herbart). However, ideas are like drives which have objects associated with them (Like Brentano’s acts or intentions). Freud said that drives cathect objects. (The noun is cathexis, pl. cathexes)

    2. Freud applied the concept of conservation of energy to the mind (Helmholtz). He assumed that the organism at any given time had a constant amount of psychic energy available to do psychic work. Some people call this a hydraulic principle, since if something is pushed in at one location of the mind, it must emerge somewhere else.

    3. The primary purpose of the mind is to give the organism pleasure. (This is consistent with the utilitarian approach of J.S. Mill). Freud called this the pleasure principle.

    4. Universal Symbolism:

    A house represents a human organism
    Powerful people and animals tend to represent parents; children and siblings, small animals or vermin, dying by departure, such as a train ride; birth by water; nakedness by clothes.
    Most symbols are sexual: sticks, umbrellas, posts, trees, knives, pistols, rifles, anything from which water flows, balloons, airplanes, snakes, and others, the male sex organ
    Shoes, slippers, tables, wood, boxes, and rooms tend to represent the female sex organ.
    Ladders, steps, staircases, flying, sailing, the sex act, etc.
          5. First mental division is into unconscious, conscious, and preconscious mind. The unconscious mind has resistance keeping ideas from entering consciousness. Early Freud called it a gatekeeper or censor. Later he used repression, which was his major defense mechanism.

    6. Freud introduced the idea of psychic determinism, in which essentially all errors are caused by unconscious influences (Psychology of everyday life.) Slips of the tongue, misreadings of instructions, etc. Dreams are due to unconscious wish fulfillment, but much of it is hidden because the dreamer is being protected from his unconscious desires. Dreams contain a manifest content (the dream itself) and a latent content, its true unconscious meaning.

    7. Freud later had a new division of the mind, this one was more in functional terms. The three organized functional parts of mind were called the id, ego, and superego.

    Id: Entirely unconscious, the earliest part of the mind, it is the part that operates by the primary process, creating an image of what it needs for satisfaction, and the pleasure principle, an attempt to reduce drives. The id contains many drives all clamoring to be satisfied at the same time.
    Ego: formed out of id. Later ego psychologists had the ego there in the beginning. Has a secondary process of identification. It operates on the reality principle. That is to use perception, action, and reasoning to find objects in the world which satisfy the needs of the id. Specifically it is given some energy to do its work because the organism can maximize pleasure better that way..
    Superego: formed out of the ego, and it takes the ego as its object. Two primary components, conscience and ego ideal. It gains energy to control ego actions which cause pain or anxiety.
          8. Dynamics: Id represents instinctive needs of the organism. The parent satisfies them. When needs are not satisfied the person gets anxious and the reality principle begins to come into play.

    9. Life and sexual forces which early Freud had leading to conflict. Libido is the name for sexual forces. Later the conflicting forces were libido (generalized to incorporate both of the early ones, with sex dominant) and the aggressive. These were named "Eros" and "Thanatos" from the Greek gods.

    10. Psychosexual stages--oral, anal, genital; fixation at stages lead to different personalities.

    11. Oedipus complex, sexual repression, and the strengthening of the superego.

    12. Defense mechanisms and their role. Repression, rationalization, displacement, sublimation, projection, reaction formation, regression

    13. Method: free association, transference, reliving, emotional crises

    14. His influence in the world is undoubtedly larger than that of any other psychologist. The concepts are part of the general vocabulary and Freud has had a huge impact in literature, history, psychiatry. It’s hard to assess his influence in current academic psychology as like Gestalt so much has infiltrated the culture.
     

    Highlights summary: Early experience critically important for shaping personality; dynamic striving, instincts or drives with objects attached to them; psychosexual development the most important component of the developing personality; psychic determinism; boys and girls develop differently because of their anatomy; defense mechanisms are the basis of most overt activities; psychic energy that is being used in one function is not available for another. sexual drives get diverted into other things.
          Neo-Freudians:   Anna Freud--Edited many volumes of the psychoanalytic study of the child. Developed child psychoanalysis; developed the defense mechanisms, and argued that the ego should be given central stage.   Karen Horney--put much less emphasis on psychosexual development and on anatomy. When she came to America, she found much more freedom from dogmatic beliefs than in Europe. Stressed the role of culture on formation of ideas. There is no clear definition of a normal personality; a neurotic has a "rigidity in reaction and a discrepancy between potentialities and accomplishments." A real feminist, she argued that women’s neurotic envy of men is due to the society granting them all the power, prestige and freedom, not their penis.
    In this department and elsewhere, there has been a fair amount of study on attachments. The relations between children and their parents; between same sex friends and other Platonic relations; and the relations between lovers. Personality and social relations are taught to be strongly affected by attachment styles. I don’t know the different styles but variations of security, trustingness, defensiveness, openness, etc. play a role.

    Alfred Adler--Individual psychology; organ inferiority, ego-oriented, importance of self-esteem, person is purposive and strives to achieve and gain power; consciousness as basic, individual interpretations of symbols; explanations for neurotic women can be found in the cultural dominance of the male in our culture; thus social causes of mental illness are more important than anatomical.

      Carl Jung--a real scholar of history and mythology; introduced the concepts of introversion and extraversion; known most for presenting the "collective unconscious." Concepts such as archtype, which is the trace of human history in the unconscious; shadow, the trace of evolutionary history; persona, the external 'face' presented to the world; anima and animus, the female and male perspecives which are hidden in all of our unconsciouses; are all concepts that have entered the common parlance.     Existential philosophy and psychology Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was the founder of existentialism. He cast himself in the role of Socrates to show the absurdity of Hegel’s ideas of pure thought and the Absolute. Only from a position outside of existence could one know all of existence. The personal existent self is all one knows, all else is only possibility. Kierkegaard identified different spheres of interest, internally coherent but meaningful only while separated. There is a permanent cleavage between faith and reason; the intellectual and the aesthetic; the ethical and the religious; thought; imagination, and feeling. None of these are more important than any of the others, they are unified, not in thought, but in existence.   Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) reacted against Hegel; early follower of Schopenhauer; thought cannot create existence; it is neither superior to, nor a substitute for, existence; an individual’s possibilities is the real; argued that one cannot identify essence of things. Truth is unattainable and in principle useless. Useful knowledge is a construction, simplifying the chaos of impressions; the world became false owing to the properties which constitute its reality, namely change, evolution, multifariousness, contrast, contradiction, war. Plato identified these as appearence, they may not be true, but they’re real. Nietzsche wanted to combat the illusions of his age, from Christianity, from eternal values, from science, from asceticism; "it seems to us at present absolutely ridiculous when a man claims to devise values to surpass the values of the actual world." (Blackham, p 33) the answer is in the will; "the will to power as the necessary and abiding source of all possible values, even the life-denying ones" (ibid. p 33) existentialism’s major point comes from Nietzsche "man is the standard of the value of things" although there are ‘exploratory ventures from which there is no return’ he refuses to recognize any "criterion of value outside of the human experience of satisfaction." (Blackham, p 41)
    Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) Probably the most famous of the 20th century academic existentialists, a student of Husserl, Dasein is the mode of being of a human being (Blackham, p 88) preoccupations of the world define the manner of existence, one can give up some, but not all; Dassein is the source of possibilities; meanings of anything are defined by their relation to proposed or possibilities of Dassein in realizing projects. (p 93). One can anticipate possibilities, even death. There are negatives with conscience, or das Man, the impersonal ruler, This give one guilt based on resolving to live authentically, rather than on the experience independent of anticipation.

    Others such as Sartre, and Camus (both of which were creative writers as well as philosophical essayists) have popular and academic followers. Merleau-Ponty was more of a phenomenologist than a pure existentialist, and has some influence among certain cognitive scientists.

    Blackham, H. J. (1952). Six existentialist thinkers. New York: Harper.     The Third force: Humanistic Psychology
    Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) Usually identified as the leader of the third force in psychology, next to behaviorism and psychoanalysis. (In this course, you realize that there are many currents and forces which identify modern psychology, and there are more to come.) Maslow studied with Harlow. He is most famous for his needs hierarchy (physiological needs such as food and water, safety, belongingness and love, self esteem and achievement, and then self-actualization.Wanted to develop a positive humanistic psychology. There are deficiency needs based on the requirements of biology and social needs. If they are satisfied, then a person can respond to more positive needs, and ultimately become self-actualized, where he or she functions under the control of growth needs. If people run into difficulties satisfying needs, the development of needs stops at a lower level, and most people stop there. For Maslow, only self actualized people were truly healthy.

    Carl Rogers (1902-1987) Developed client-centered (person-centered) therapy. He worked to get people to become self-actualized, treating each person as a valued individual. His goal was the opposite of Skinner’s, believing that people can become free by not having to respond directly to environmental press, but can have the freedom of will to follow his or her own predilections.

    Changes in clinical psychology can be seen to be represented in part by David Shakow. He received an experimental PhD from Harvard with essentially no clinical training. His committee developed the Boulder model of clinical training in 1949, clinical psychologists are trained as scientist-practitioners. In 1973 a conference proposed the acceptance of a professional clinical psychology degree the PsyD.

    Current clinical psychology finds less individual psychotherapy than before. Cultural and pharmacological considerations are important. Evaluations are done clinically, medically, and psychometrically. APA has become by far dominated by clinical psychology. There are major political disagreements between the clinical psychologists and primarily the academic and research psychologists. Many academic psychologists withdrew from APA and joined first the Psychonomic Society which formed about 35 years ago and later the American Psychological Society. I used to know pretty much what position all of the presidents of the APA had toward conceptual ideas and what their approach to the major psychological issues was; but now I’ve never heard of most of the recent APA presidents.

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