An Overview: Psychoanalytic Theory
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Transcript of An Overview: Psychoanalytic Theory
Form A -‐ Peter ‘Max’ Quinn Critical Evaluation Format CN528 Counseling & Development Professor Ciri -‐ October 3, 2011 Theory: Psychoanalytic Theory -‐ MOST Important concepts:
§ View of Human Nature o Libido -‐ Energy of the Sexual & Life instincts of individuals & human race o Death Instincts -‐ Account for the aggressive drive
§ Structure of Personality o Id-‐ Primary source of psychic energy -‐ Seat of the instincts
§ Lacks organization and is blind, demanding and insistent § Pleasure Principle-‐ Reduce Tension, Avoid Pain, and Gain Pleasure § Driven to satisfy instinctual needs (immoral & amoral)
o Ego-‐ Governs, controls, and regulates the personality (traffic cop) -‐Seat of the intelligence § Mediates between the instincts and surrounding environment § Reality Principle-‐ Realistic & logical thinking § Formulates plans of action for satisfying needs § Checks and controls the blind impulses of the Id (rational governing body)
o Superego-‐ Judicial Branch of Personality -‐ Moral Code § Determines what is good, bad, right, wrong § Represents the ideal rather than the real § Strives not for pleasure but for perfection § Traditional views of society as handed down from parents to children § Inhibits the Id impulses, to persuade the Ego to substitute moralistic goals for realistic ones & strives for
perfection § Rewards are feelings of pride and self-‐love § Punishments are feelings of guilty and inferiority
§ Consciousness o Thin slice of the total mind
§ The Unconsciousness o Larger part of the mind -‐ Exists below the surface of awareness o Stores: experiences, memories, and repressed material,
Needs & motivations that are inaccessible (out of the awareness) § Anxiety
o A feeling of dread that results from repressed feelings, memories, desires, and experience that emerge to the surface of awareness
o Develops out of conflict among the Id, Ego, & Superego o ‘To warn of impending danger’ o Reality Anxiety -‐ Fear of danger from the external world
§ Level of anxiety if proportionate to the degree of real threat § A signal to the Ego that appropriate measures must be taken or danger may increase until the Ego is overthrown
o Neurotic Anxiety -‐ Fear that the instincts will get out of hand and cause one to do something for which one will be punished o Moral Anxiety -‐ Fear of one’s own conscience
§ Ego-‐Defense Mechanisms (pg. 64 -‐ Table 4.1) o Help the individual cope with anxiety o Prevent Ego from being overwhelmed o Moral behaviors that can have adaptive value, provided they do not become a style of life that enables the individual to
avoid facing reality o Characteristics:
§ Deny or Distort Reality § Operate on an Unconscious level
§ Aim of the Psychoanalytic Theory o Make the Unconscious motives Conscious -‐ Only then can the individual exercise choice
Increase awareness -‐ Foster insights into the student’s behavior -‐ Understand meanings of symptoms
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Application: Techniques and procedures of the Psychoanalytic Theory -‐Techniques and methods of the Psychoanalytic Theory in Student Affairs practice-‐
§ Students Experience Where are they at developmentally?
§ Relationship between Professional & Student § Remains within the relationship, comments on it, and offers insight producing interpretations § Hopes to have an impact on the student and on the here-‐and-‐now interactions that occur
§ Free Association (without the couch)
Allow students to say what comes to their mind without self-‐censorship § When having private 1:1 conversations § Allow for experiences, feelings, associations, memories, and fantasies to emerge § (Carefully monitor facial queue’s as no couch would be used)
§ Interpretation
Pointing out, explaining, and teaching the student the meanings of their behavior manifested in dreams, free association, resistances, and the professional-‐student relationship
§ Assessment of the students personality and the factors in the students past the contributed to heirs difficulties § Identifying, clarifying, and translating the students ‘material’
§ Analysis and Interpretation of Resistance
Anything that works against the progress of growth and development and prevents the student from producing previously unconscious material
§ Resistance is the students reluctance to bring to the surface of awareness unconscious material that has been repressed § Any idea, attitude, feeling, or action (conscious or unconscious) that fosters the status quo and gets int eh way of change
§ Analysis and Interpretation of Transference
Students’ unconscious shifting to the analyst of feelings and fantasies that are reactions to significant others in the students past (1:1 or group settings (provided the environment is suitable))
§ Unconscious repletion of the past in the present § Resurrection of early conflicts relating to love, sexuality, hostility, anxiety, and resentment; bring into the present; re-‐
experience; attach them to analyst § Angry feelings = negative transference § Always remain aware of Countertransference
o Key avenue for helping to gain self-‐understanding o Objectivity -‐ Do not react defensively and subjectively in the face of anger, love, adulation, criticism, and
other intense feelings of students § Allows student to achieve here-‐and-‐now insight onto the influence of the past on their present functioning § Aimed to increase awareness and personality change
§ Supportive Interventions
§ Reassurance, expressions of empathy and support, and suggestions o (More self-‐disclosure of professional)
§ Application to Group Counseling
Understand the history of the group (Greek Life, Student Clubs or Teams, etc…) and a way of thinking about how their past is affecting them now in the group
§ Remain aware of own individual bias -‐Psychoanalytic theory from a diversity perspective -‐
§ Emphasis on critical issues in stages of development § Review environmental situations at various critical turning points in students lives to determine how much certain vents have
affected them either positively or negatively § Recognize and confront own potential sources of bias & how countertransference could be unintentionally
-‐Evaluation of the approach to use Psychoanalytic Theory in Student Affairs practice -‐ Psychoanalytic theory can only be used to a certain extent within the realm of Student Affairs. Practitioners do counsel students, but rarely could they include many of the key characteristics of this theory. The couch in free association, and the inability, and unwillingness, to be anonymous seems to be the major outliers. Psychoanalytic theory has many useful tools for student affairs educators, such and its supportive interventions and analysis of the transference. Countertransference plays a unique role, and truly provides insight into self-‐understanding for both the professional and the students they encounter.
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-‐Significant contributions Psychoanalytic Theory to Student Affairs -‐ § The use of methods, in collaboration, to bring out the unconscious material that can be worked through § Induce the capacity to move toward wholeness and self-‐realizations -‐ AKA the Whole-‐Student § To help students become what they are capable of becoming § Helping students to explore the unconscious aspects of their personality (Both the personal and collective unconscious) § Help students tap into their inner wisdom § Transformation of personality § Emphasize the striving of the Ego (of the student) for mastery and competence throughout life § Understanding of how current behavior is largely a repetition of patterns set during one of the early stages of development § Provides a framework when working with symptoms of: separation, individualization, intimacy, dependence vs. interdependence,
and identity -‐Limitations of Psychoanalytic Theory in Student Affairs practice -‐
§ Availability of time to ‘counsel’ each student -‐ Periods of long interactions may be limited o Especially with free association (lack of a couch), dream analysis, and extensive analysis of the transference
§ Students may lack ‘Ego strength’ § “Anonymous Role” is not assumed
o Blanked-‐screen aloofness can be hard to maintain § Professionalism is enacted, but not anonymous
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