1. Discuss the theoretical foundations Freud's psychodynamic theory. Many of our current assumptions are based on Freud. We encourage people to let their emotions out, and he thought that a person should talk about their problems because they could not possibly know themselves. He saw negative emotions as negative energy that needed to be released. He also compared this belief to the analogy to a steaming teapot. Freud wrote 39 volumes in small print with no pictures over a 46 year period after his 40th birthday. His sublimation theory said that sex was involved in everything. His psychoanalytic theory grew over the 46 years, so a person would have to discuss his theory relative to a particular year or timeframe.

According to his structural theory, a person had three components - the id, ego, and superego. The ID drove the urges in a person, and those urges centered around the forces of sex (life enhancing) and aggressiveness (death enhancing). The EGO struggled to control those forces, and SUPEREGO provided unconscious rules. Freud thought that each person went through a series of stages - the libido at oral, anal, and phallic stages. During the phallic stage, the young boy would be sexually drawn to his mother (the Oedipal conflict), and the father would resent him. If this stage passed, then the person would continue through the latency and the mature genital stage. Freud did not write much about girls.

His dynamic theory examined the struggles within the psyche (unconscious urges and conflicts motivate a person's behavior). The ID impulses are a threat to the person and leads to dread and anxiety (angst). The person sets up defenses to fight the angst. Some defenses are healthy, and some are not. Denial is one defense that can actually be good. Projection, which is blaming others, is not usually a good defense. The person can defend with dreams or by acting out their problems. When the defenses fail, the symptoms appear. Freud said that emotions never lie, and emotions never lie still. He not only believed this, but he gave preference to emotional responses over verbal statements.

2. Discuss the approach to psychodynamic therapy. Freud developed his theory over a lot of years. Early into his work, he said that the goal of therapy was to provide insight by bringing unconscious thoughts (UCS) into the conscious (CS) part of the mind. Later, he decided that more was needed, so he said, "Where ID was, let EGO be." Once this was done, the client would then have to work on restraining the EGO. Freud thought that the CS could be repressed into the UCS, resurface, fight off the defenses put up by the EGO, and then cause problems.

Supportive psychoanalysis tries to keep the client from understanding the UCS in order to keep tensions within, out of conscious sight of the patient. This type of therapy works best on people who are psychotic. Undercovering psychoanalysis is for those who are neurotic, not psychotic. This type of therapy tries to bring the UCS out, helps the client understand them, and then lets the EGO exert conscious control over the ID impulses.

For uncovering psychoanalysis, there are nine key concepts. First is verbal discussion of experience, where the therapist uses hypnosis, free association, dream analysis, and confrontational focused talk (later in Freud's career). Second is working alliance (Bordin, 1979), which is an emotional bonding, agreement on goals, and agreement on tasks. Third is resistance, where the therapist actually tries to get a reaction from the client. This is how progress can be made, but the therapist needs to strive for moderate anxiety to get resistances that can be interpreted. Some types of resistances are defenses against the therapist, symptoms being acted out, and transference neurosis (applying the same symptom to the therapist as to the other parts of the others, therapist, current events triangle.

Fourth is to find the I-A-D (impulse, anxiety, defense) triangles. The key to the therapist is emotion. If he or she confronts and the client responds with defenses, then the outcomes are not good. If the client responds with emotions, then the outcomes are good. An abreaction is experiencing conflicts in an emotion near way. Fifth is the therapist's style, which is to observe triangles, label by questioning, notice other instances, and get the client to notice patterns. Ideally, the client will learn to see when they are acting out the patterns. Sixth is interpreting triangles for the client, which might require questions and lead to deeper understanding.

Seventh is a generalization of the therapist-others-current events triangle. When the therapist can get the client to recognize the pattern and then exercise EGO control over the ID impulses, then this is called first in, last out and leads to what has been called the theory of the hour. Eighth are the types of interpretations. Uncovering interpretations are simply pointing out the I-A-D triangles. Connective interpretations are showing the connections between the I-A-D triangles and the therapist-others-current events triangle. Integrative interpretations are pulling in all the interpretations into one big interpretation. Ninth is working through, which is helping the client understand and exert EGO control over the ID impulses and conflicts in all situations. The points to this are abreaction (emotion near experiences - person must feel the emotional experience), ABC (affect before content - therapist should get the experience and then interpret), reparenting (the therapist represents an authority figure), and repetition, clarification, and elaboration (the therapist should magnify the situation again and again and again).

				Tom of Bethany

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