Download - Introducing Psychoanalysis I
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INTRODUCING PSYCHOANALYSIS
Society
Mind/The
Unconscious
Society
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What is Psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalysis is many things. It can be characterized as:
1) A Theory of how the mind works
2) A therapeutic method to deal with certain mental disorders
3) A Theory of the relationship between biology, mind and society
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INTRODUCING PSYCHOANALYSIS
What is Psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalysis is many things. It can be characterized as:
1) A Theory of how the mind works
3) A Theory of the relationship between biology, mind and society
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Psychoanalysis was invented by Sigmund Freud as a therapeutic technique to treat
his patients.
It was later expanded into a full blown theory of how the mind works.
The reason why psychoanalysis is important is because it provides a link between
society and the individual.
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y In other words, psychoanalysis:
y Allows us to get a handle on the question of how social norms and values come
to acquire a presence inside of our minds.
y It helps us explain why that presence is felt as an external and constraining
force.
y As Talcott Parsons (1964) noted there is a convergence between Freud and the
work of sociologist Emile Durkheim in this respect
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y Psychoanalysis also helps to explain:
y When there is a conflict between certain natural human impulses and the social
arrangements of private and public life
y How that conflict then shows up in psychological outcomes like anxiety,
depression, unhappiness, and anger.
y Psychoanalysis is also important:
y Because it shows how even the most intimate of our experiences (desires,emotions, hang-ups, obsessive behaviors) are always already about something
social and external to the individual.
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This means that every single one of your most intimate psychological experiences
has some non-trivial connection to the social order.
There are many textbook introductions to psychoanalysis.
For this class, we will concentrate on a particular version of psychoanalysis which
ignores a lot of what other summaries think is important.
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We will begin with some definitions of basic concepts.
The key to understanding psychoanalysis is to learn how to use certain common
words in different ways.
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The basic conceptual division in psychoanalysis is between two kinds of mental
functioning (or processes): Conscious and Unconscious.
Most psychology (at the time that Freud was writing) and cotemporary
sociology focuses on conscious mental phenomena.
Freud thought that the notion of the unconscious was the main innovation inpsychoanalytic theory.
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In psychoanalysis, conscious mental processes are of three kinds: perceptions,
feelings (emotions) and thoughts.
Psychoanalysis can be understood mainly as a theory of why we feel certain
emotions when confronted (in our consciousness) with certain thoughts and certain
perceptions.
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From the point of view of consciousness or the self(which Freud called the ego), all mental processesare experienced as a form of stimulation. The ego
then sorts stimuli according to their source. The source can external (light, sound, touch, taste
and smell) or internal.
Perceptions are unique in that they are the only
kind of mental stimuli that come from the outside.
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Memories, Mental Images, Fantasy, etc. can all be
thought as the internal analogues to the external
perception of visual stimuli. Freud thought of them
as a second-hand version of originally perceived(seen) stuff.
In the same way emotions, and thoughts are a type
of internal perception. After all you hear your
thoughts and you feel your emotions.
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One important class of internal stimuli are physiological stimuli, such as hunger,
internal pains, sexual arousal, etc.
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stimuli:
ego
Internal
Stimuli:
Thoughts,
Fantasy,Emotions,
Hunger
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Dreams are important because during them the mind is completely absorbed by
internally produced images that come to be treated (by the dreaming ego) as if they
were real perceptions.
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This brings up an important question: How do you know that you are not dreaming
right now?
Or in other words, how can you tell that your current perception of reality is
coming from the outside and not the inside?
Or in yet another set of words, how do you know that you are not hallucinatingyour current experience?
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hallucination n.
Perception of visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory experiences
without an external stimulus and with a compelling sense of their reality,
usually resulting from a mental disorder or as a response to a drug.
(From www.dictionary.com)
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Here comes Freud s first brilliant insight: stimuli that hit the ego have to be
constantly classified by the ego into real and not real.
The ego does this by connecting each experience to its source.
If it is external then it is real. If it is internal then it is not real.
This classificatory function Freud called the reality testing function of the ego.
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The ego of normal humans if pretty good at reality testing (in fact we have to do ithundred of times a day).
Freud (as a good Darwinian) gave an evolutionary explanation for it. If the egowasn t good at reality testing then we (as a species) would have died long ago.
Imagine how much energy we would have wasted running away from imaginary
bears and having sex with imaginary people!
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However noted Freud (remember he was trained as a medical doctor and
concentrated on psychiatry) we can find examples of times when the ego s reality
testing function breaks-down: dreams and psychosis.
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During dreams we do run away from imaginary bears, eat imaginary food and have
sex with imaginary people!
Not only that, but when we dream we really feel and think as if the stuff that we are
hallucinating is real (we cry, get scared, upset, etc.).
In other words, when we dream the ego s reality testing capacity breaks down.
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During dreams the ego acts as if internal stimuli are in fact external stimuli; as if
mental images were real visual images, as if hallucinated sounds were in fact real
sounds.
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There is another set of (not normal) people that have a chronic incapacity to tell
what is real (external) from what is not (internal):
in 19th century psychiatric lingo they were called psychotic. Today we call
them schizophrenic.
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Schizophrenia is characterized by hallucinations on all five modalities:
1) visual hallucinations
2) auditory hallucinations
3) gustatory hallucinations
4) tactile hallucinations
5) olfactory hallucinations
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Freud thought that you could think of dreaming and hallucinating as similar
conditions.
In fact he thought that we are all psychotic when dream, and that psychotics were
simply waking dreamers.
In both cases the common thing was that the reality testing capacity of the egois turned off.
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The reason why we don t go about doing crazy
things we dream is that another capacity of the ego
is turned off:
motor control over the musculoskeletal system (i.e. the body).
What would happen if the ego had control over
moving the body while dreaming? We would act like psychotics! (Running from imaginary things, drinking
imaginary water, etc.)
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That is exactly what people that have RBD or REM SleepBehavior disorder do.
RBD is the abbreviation of rapid eye movement sleepbehavior disorder. This sleep disorder is characterized by the
mentally or physically affected person acting out theirdreams. These dreams would usually be violent in nature andthis violent nature of the dreams would be distinctivelydifferent form the person s personality during the time theyare awake. In the light of this, RBD is accepted not only as a
motor control disorder by also a dream disorder. (from courses.brown.edu/ Mary_Carskadon-
PY0055_F03/sassigadd16.ppt)
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In other words, when we dream the only part of the ego that is turned on is
consciousness (awareness of certain stimuli), that is when we sleep we are only
unconscious for those parts of the sleep cycle that don t involve Rapid Eye
Movement.
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The important thing for Freud was that dreaming (and psychosis) allowed us to see
that the ego had different functions or capacities, some of which could be turned on
while others remained off.
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For Freud the most important of these capacities
are the ones that we already mentioned:
1) Consciousness: the ego is characterized by its
capacity to be conscious (i.e. perceive external and
internal stimuli.
Remember that internal stimuli include all of the things
associated with mental life: feelings (including gut
feelings), thoughts, images, emotions, etc.)
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For Freud the most important of these capacities are the ones that we already
mentioned:
2) Motor control over the body.
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For Freud the most important of these capacities are the ones that we already
mentioned:
3) Internal control over the main cognitive functions (i.e. thinking, imagining, etc.).
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For Freud the most important of these capacities are the ones that we already
mentioned:
4) Rational Thinking (reality testing).
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For Freud the most important of these capacities are the ones that we already
mentioned:
5) Short Term Memory formation and long term memory storage: that is the
capacity to take external and internal stimulation and store (or decided not to)
them in a mental file cabinet for later retrieval.
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However, Freud saw a lot of people that seemed to show symptoms which showedthat these capacities were damaged or incomplete:
1) Fugue or disassociative states (blacking out) are episodes in which a personloses all capacity to perceive reality. They do things but don t remember everhaving done them!
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However, Freud saw a lot of people that seemed to show symptoms which showedthat these capacities were damaged or incomplete:
2) Ticks, slips of the tongue, etc., are episodes in which motor control is lost(speaking is just fancy motor control), the person s body does something withoutthe ego ordering the body to do it.
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However, Freud saw a lot of people that seemed to show symptoms which showedthat these capacities were damaged or incomplete:
3) Compulsions are acts that some people (who suffer from OCD) feel like they mustdo (wash their hands, check for germs, check the stove, etc.). They have no controlover whether to do the acts or not.
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However, Freud saw a lot of people that seemed to show symptoms which showed
that these capacities were damaged or incomplete:
4) Obsessions are thoughts that some people (who suffer from OCD) cannot stop
themselves from thinking about.
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However, Freud saw a lot of people that seemed to show symptoms which showed
that these capacities were damaged or incomplete:
5) we already talked about dreaming and psychotic states as episodes in which
reality testing breaks down.
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However, Freud saw a lot of people that seemed to show symptoms which showed
that these capacities were damaged or incomplete:
6) Amnesia is a state in which the person perceives external stimuli but is unable to
form memories of the events.
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Freud noticed that in all of these cases it appears as if the ego has lost one of its
functions but some other mental agency has taken over for it.
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In slips of the tongue, compulsions or ticks who makes the body do those things,
who wants to wash their hands all the time? Who called Mr. Snodgrass Mr.
Snobgrass?
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In slips of the tongue, compulsions or ticks who wills or makes the body do those
things? Who wants to wash their hands all the time? Who called Mr. Snodgrass
Mr. Snobgrass by mistake?
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In obsession, what mental agency wants to think about dead pigs all the time?
When an amnesiac remembers a lost memory who gave the order to forget it inthe first place?
When a person is in fugue state who s talking and behaving like nothing s happenedif the ego s conscious function is turned off?
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Freud reasoned that the ego could not be the only control center of the mind, that
some other mental agency, which he called the unconscious sometimes did a lot of
the things that the ego normally does (think, fantasize, make the body move,
remember or forgets things, etc.).
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INTRODUCING PSYCHOANALYSISExternal
perceptual
stimuli:
ego
Internal
Stimuli:
Thoughts,
Fantasy,Emotions
Conscious
Unconscious
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from Peace.saumag.edu)
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from
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/freud.htm
l