Basic Philosophy
Key Concepts
Therapeutic Goals
Therapist’s Function and Role
Therapeutic Techniques and Procedures
Psychoanalytic
Human beings are basically determined by psychic energy and by early experiences.
Unconscious motives and conflicts are central in present behavior.
Early development is of critical importance.
View of human nature: Deterministic
Life instincts – sexual drive
Death instincts – aggressive drive
Structure of personality – id, ego, superego
The unconscious stores all experiences, memories, and repressed materials.
Anxiety – feeling of dread that results from repressed feelings, memories, desires, and experience that emerge to the surface of awareness. (reality [from external world, proportionate to the threat; ego], neurotic [fear that instincts will get out of hand; id], moral [fear of one’s own conscience; superego])
Ego-defense Mechanisms – coping with anxiety and prevent the ego from being overwhelmed; either deny or distort reality; operate on an unconscious level (e.g. repression, denial, reaction formation, projection, displacement, rationalization, sublimation, regression, introjections, identification, compensation)
Ultimate goal: to increase adaptive functioning
Reduction of symptoms
Resolution of conflicts
Freudian: to make the unconscious conscious and to strengthen the ego
Oriented toward achieving insight
Classical psychoanalysis: anonymous stance (blank-screen approach)
Transference relationship – cornerstone of psychoanalysis, transfer of feelings originally experienced in an early relationship to other important people
Engage in very little self-disclosure and maintain a sense of neutrality
To help clients acquire the freedom to love, work, and play
Help in achieving self-awareness, honesty, and more effective personal relationships; dealing with anxiety in a realistic way; and in gaining control over impulsive and irrational behavior
Must establish a working relationship and do a