Tell Me About Your Childhood Psychology 4006 Introduction

Tell Me About Your Childhood Psychology 4006

Introduction • Look, this stuff is all bullshit, but, it had an effect on psychology • We don’t have to like it • Yes it is misogynistic for today • I think the best place to cover this crap is actually in this course, rather than say intro, or personality • That said, it is just awful and wrong and awfully wrong

Early treatment of the mentally ill • “Enlightened” reform • • • Phillipe Pinel (1745 -1826) in France Reduced level of restraint Introduced “moral treatment” Improved nutrition and care Behavior management • Benjamin Rush (1745 -1813) • Medical model • bloodletting • Jean Itard (1775 -1838) • “wild boy” of Aveyron (Victor) • Trying to overcome severe environmental impoverishment

Early treatment of the mentally ill • Reforming asylums • Dorothea Dix (1802 -1887) • Method : toured places where mentally were housed and exposed poor care, neglect, and abuse • Over time, resulted in creation of 47 mental hospitals • Clifford Beers (1876 -1943) • Wrote of asylum conditions after experiencing them • The Mind That Found Itself (1908) • Started mental hygiene movement

Mesmerism and Hypnosis • Jean Charcot (1825 -1893) • hypnosis and hysteria : same underlying pathology • Thus using hypnosis on nonhysterics could be dangerous • Hypnosis could be used to diagnose hysteria • And rule out malingering • Elaborate demonstrations • e. g. , Blanche Wittman (“queen of the hysterics”)

Sigmund Freud (1856 -1939): Founding Psychoanalysis • Freudian myth – two elements • Completely at odds with everyone else • Absolute originality • Maintained by • Destroying papers twice (1885, 1907) • Picking loyal follower as biographer (Jones) • Early career • • • M. D. Vienna (1883) Desired a career in research Influenced by materialistic Zeitgeist Mentor Ernst Brücke (colleague of Helmholtz) Six months with Charcot

Psychoanalysis – The Origin Story § 1895, with Breuer Studies on Hysteria § Included Anna O. and other cases § Darwinian influence § Irrationality; Sex § Methods for accessing the unconscious § Tried but rejected hypnosis § Free association, dream analysis § Seduction hypothesis § Hysteria result of sexual abuse § Abandoned, after self analysis, in favor of “imagined seduction” § Led to Oedipal complex and focus on sexual motivation

Psychoanalysis: The American Tour! • First decade of 20 th century • Highly productive • • Interpretation of Dreams (1900) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) Three Essays on Sexuality (1905) Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious (1905) • Invited by Hall to Clark’s 20 th anniversary celebration • Series of lectures (1909) • For Freud : international recognition • For American psychologists : not sure what to make of Freud (Hall a big fan though)

The theory changes Influence of his daughter, and of WW 1 The Ego and the Id (1923) Id, ego, superego structure introduced Anxiety and defense Objective, neurotic, and moral anxiety Anna Freud’s influence on theory of defense mechanisms • Repression and others • Sublimation • • The only “successful” defense

Others pick up the baton • Freud’s followers : loyalty then dissent • Tended to break with Freud over the issue of the universality of sexual motivation • Carl Jung (1875 -1961) • Word association task (to access the unconscious) • Presented at Clark conference (1909) • Analytical psychology • Collective unconscious • Accepting of experimental methods as well as case studies • Less structured psychotherapy • More eclectic thinker I don’t care about your childhood….

Freud put the Psycho in Psychoanalysis • Karen Horney (1885 -1952) • One of Freud’s most active critics • emphasized the sociocultural aspects of personality and neurosis • hugely critical of Freudian view of sexuality and of women • the first to systematically study feminist psychology • Horney assumed gender differences were more a result of environmental contexts than biological deficiency • she promoted a more flexible view of people • Multiple selves • maintained that many psychology problems stem from basic anxiety from childhood experience Finally, someone sensible

Conclusions • Freud can be given some credit, not seeing kids as mini adults • The idea of the unconscious • Talked about sex • But you know what, others did too, he just had good PR.