21. Summarize Freud's conception of the unconscious.
Freud's theory of the unconscious comes from his psychoanalytic theory if personality. The unconscious mind is made up of things outside of conscious awareness, such as feelings, urges, thoughts, or other memories. Most aspects that are held in the unconscious mind are uncomfortable and not pleasant to experience, like pain, anxiety, or conflict. Freud infers that the mind is unknowingly effected by the unconscious through behavior and experience. Several feelings, desires, and emotions are kept out of conscious awareness because they are too threatening to handle. In some cases, hidden desires and wishes may show themselves through dreams or an accidental slip of words, believed Freud. He experimented with making unconscious feelings come to the surface through association. Patients were asked to relax and were asked to speak whatever came through their train of thought. He said to state the thought no matter how irrelevant or embarrassing it may be. By studying the stated thoughts, Freud believed he was able to construct memories, feelings, or hidden desires of the unconscious mind.
Artifact #2
This image represents the unconscious mind. Above the water is our conscious awaresness and below is everything held in our unconscious awareness. The top of the iceberg is what can be seen and understood, or in other terms, the conscious awareness. Below the water is the rest of the iceberg, hidden and not understood. This relates to the unconscious awareness.
22. Describe the structure of personality as Freud views it (id, ego, superego), his
concept of defense, and his theory of development.
Personality is made up of three factors, the ID, eco, and super ego. The ID is the only part of the personality that is present at birth. The ID is caused by the pleasurable principle. This principle attempts to achieve immediate fulfillment of desires, wants, and needs. If these factors are not reached to the point of fulfillment quickly, a state of stress and strain is the result. It is not a realistic possibility of this ever happening, however. The type of behavior would be interruptive and not socially accepted. Freud's idea is that the ID tries to resolve the strains caused by the pleasure principle through the primary process. This process is carried out by a mental image of the desired item being formed, then creating a sensible way of satisfying that need. The second part of personality, the ego, is responsible for controlling the aspects of reality. The ego is produced from the ID and makes sure that inclinations from the ID can be carried out in a manner fit for the real world. The ego is run by the reality principle. This principle weighs the cost and benefits of impulses before they are acted upon or abandoned. The third part of personality is the super ego. This part of personality is the very last to develop because is comes from experiences. It is meant to civilize behavior. Two parts make up the super ego.
- The ego idea, which consists of rules and measures for positive or good behavior. These behaviors are those that are approved by authority figures. Following these rules will produce feelings of pride, value, and accomplishment.
- The conscience, which includes things that are viewed as wrong or incorrect by authority figures and society. Behaviors that are seen as wrong are usually not allowed to take place and when they occur, a punishment is soon to follow. Carrying out wrong or incorrect behaviors followed by punishment, produce feelings or remorse and guilt.
Artifact #1
This chart shows the six defense mechanisms Freud believes to exist besides the most common mechanism, of repression.
- Regression- retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage where a but of physic energy remains stationary.
- Reaction Formation- switches unacceptable impulses to there opposites.
- Projection- disguises someone's own threatening imposes by attributing them to others.
- Rationalization- offers self-justifying explanations instead of the real and more threatening unconscious reasons for actions.
- Displacement- shifts sexual or agressive impulses toward more acceptable or less threatening objects or people.
- Denial- refuses to believe or perceive painful and uncomfortable realities.
Artifact #2
This graphic shows Freud's psychosexual stages of development.
23. Define Rogers' actualizing tendency.
Carl Rogers' actualizing tendency is the process of reaching a fulfilling a person's full potential. He believed that people are good and endowed with self-acutualizing tendencies, unless they are obstructed by an environment that hinders growth. Rogers' theorizes that a growth promoting environment requires three conditions.
- Genuineness: When people are genuine, they are out with their own feelings and beliefs, levying facades behind, and are completely open.
- Acceptance: When people are accepting, they an attitude of grace that values them even knowing defeats or failings.
- Empathy: When people are empathetic, they share and portray others' feelings and reflect their meanings.
This article describes Carl Rogers and his beliefs. Central to Rogers' personality theory is the notion of self or self concept. This is defined as "the organized, consistent set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself"
This video describes self actualization, or actualizing tendency. To become a fully functioning person, one must move away from facades and "oughts." They must get past expectations and constantly trying to please other people. Then they must move towards self direction by taking responsibility for their own life. They must produce a "being process" by being open to change day to day and then a "bring complexity" by accepting their complexity and contradictions.
24. Describe the development of congruence and incongruence.
Congruence takes place when an individual's self-image and ideal-self are one in the same, they overlap or combine and are very similar to one another. Incongruence takes place when an individual's self-image is different then their ideal-self, or the way they imagine themselves to be. Self-worth is the highest when the self-image and the ideal-self are very similar and closely related. Most individuals go through stages of incongruence and many never become completely congruent. As adolescence mature and grow into adulthood, congruence becomes prominent over incongruence. This happens because theses individuals become more open and understanding of what they are capable or incapable of accomplishing.
Artifact #1
In this graphic, an individual's perceived self/ or self-image, is different and not overlapped with their ideal-self. This separation is the product of incongruence.
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In this graphic, the opposite is happening. An individual's percieved-self, or self-image, is close and overlapped with their ideal-self. This overlapping is the product of congruence.
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This article describes incongruence and congruence. When people's ideal-self and actual experiences are consistent and congruence exists. When a person's ideal-self is not consistent with what actually takes place in life, a difference then exists between the ideal-self and actual experiences, creating incongruence.
25. Describe the therapeutic concepts of therapeutic neutrality, free association, interpretation, and transference.
Therapeutic neutrality is when a therapist is focused on the clinical process of healing. It is not the therapist's job to be a friend or nanny, but rather to practice active listening and act with therapeutic distance. The therapist never act form their personal desires and keep all responses and actions within the therapeutic relationship, never pushing past this boundary. Free association is a mental process of exploring the unconscious mind and revealing whatever thoughts that my come about without censoring oneself from the therapist. These thoughts may help to uncover psychological defenses that are present. Interpretation takes place during psychoanalysis when the analyst's observations produced possible dream meanings, resistances, or other important actions and events in order to advocate insights. Transference also occurs during psychoanalysis, when a patient transfers emotions connected or caused by other relationships to the analyst.
Artifact #1
This slide describes two of the psychoanalytic techniques that the objective asks for, free association and interpretation. Free association is when clients speak exactly what comes to might right away, without feeling embarrassed or ashamed about any of their feelings or thoughts
This link takes you to a website that talks about free association and psychoanalytic therapy. It goes into depth and gives the sites reason why free association is a good therapy.