The Handy Psychology Answer Book. Lisa J. Cohen
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its own mistakes through further research.
What influence did Emil Kraepelin and Eugen Bleuler have on views of mental illness?
Even though both Kraepelin and Bleuler were psychiatrists rather than psychologists, their contributions to psychiatric diagnosis have profoundly impacted the entire mental health field. Psychiatry came into its own as a distinct medical field in the early nineteenth century. Concerned with severe mental illness, early psychiatry had little overlap with early psychology, which focused more on normal mental processes. With the later development of clinical psychology, however, psychiatry and psychology became more closely connected.
The German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) first distinguished between manic depressive illness and dementia praecox, or what was later called schizophrenia. He saw manic depression as a milder form of the illness with a more optimistic prognosis. In contrast, dementia praecox was seen as a progressively deteriorating illness with little hope of cure. Of course, there were no medicines available in the nineteenth century to effectively treat these conditions.
The Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler (1857–1939) was the director of the renowned Burghölzli psychiatric hospital. Bleuler coined the term schizophrenia from the Greek words for “split mind.” He believed schizophrenia encompassed a group of diseases, which he divided into hebephrenic, catatonic, and paranoid subtypes. He also introduced the term autism to describe the schizophrenic’s withdrawal from the outer world.
SIGMUND FREUD
Who was Sigmund Freud?
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was a Viennese neurologist who became one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. As the inventor of psychoanalysis, he introduced concepts of the unconscious, the impact of childhood, repressed emotions, and even the entire field of psychotherapy to the wider world. While aspects of his theories remain controversial, much of his work has become such an integral part of our culture that it is taken for granted.
What are the major tenets of his theory of psychoanalysis?
Unlike the other pioneers of psychology, Freud was more interested in the abnormal than the normal. As a physician, he tended to the sick; thus, he developed his theories of the mind through investigations of psychopathology. Although it is difficult to neatly summarize his ideas because they changed and evolved over more than four decades of work, there are several key concepts. These include the dynamic unconscious, the instincts of libido and aggression (or Thanatos), and the importance of childhood conflicts on adult psychopathology and even personality.
What was Freud’s view of the unconscious?
Unlike the early psychologists, who were almost entirely concerned with conscious thought, Freud was fascinated by the idea that our emotions, wishes, and thoughts could operate wholly outside of consciousness. Moreover, unacceptable wishes and impulses would be pushed back into the unconscious to protect the person from anxiety. However, these repressed desires would rarely sit calmly out of awareness, but rather come back to do mischief, generally in disguised form. These partially expressed impulses formed the symptoms that psychoanalysis was designed to cure.
What was Freud’s theory of the instincts?
Freud believed in two primary drives or motivations in life: libido and aggression. Libido, defined as sexuality although more accurately thought of as broad sensual pleasure, was his primary focus. He added the death instinct, Thanatos, after living through the carnage of World War I. In later years, Thanatos was frequently interpreted as the aggressive drive. Freud asserted that an instinct functions like an electrical charge that needs to be expressed through behavior. However, he felt society forbids the free expression of sexuality and aggression. Psychopathology, or what he termed neurosis, involves the conflict between our instinctual drives and our need to inhibit them. Because the instinct still presses for expression, much like water rushing downhill, it will be displaced into another channel of expression, resulting in a symptom, such as an obsession, compulsion, or a hysterical complaint (a physical symptom without any true physical cause). His fluid-like conception of the instincts was later referred to as the hydraulic model. While this theory may appear odd from today’s point of view, it is easy to see that Freud was attempting to fit his observations of his patients’ behavior into the scientific models of his day.
Sigmund Freud is considered the father of psychoanalysis. He was concerned with how the unconscious mind affected people’s conscious thoughts, behavior, and emotions.
Where does childhood come in with Freud?
Freud believed that the primary areas of instinctual gratification, the erogenous zones, moved across childhood in predictable stages. His theory of the psychosexual stages included the oral, anal, phallic, and genital stages. Each psychosexual stage had specific psychological characteristics to it. For example, the anal stage was characterized by stinginess, concern with money, and/or wish for control. If the child was either undergratified or overgratified in any stage, the child could fixate at that stage, becoming, in effect, psychologically stuck.
How did Sigmund Freud’s theories influence a classic Alfred Hitchcock film?
Alfred Hitchcock’s classic suspense film Psycho, which came out in 1960, provides an excellent example of how Sigmund Freud’s theories have permeated popular culture. In the famous shower scene, Marion Crane (played by Janet Leigh) is stabbed to death by a knife-wielding Norman Bates (played by Tony Perkins). At the end of the movie we learn that Bates’s excessive attachment to his mother has led him to murder her in a fit of jealous rage, following his discovery of her romantic involvement with another man. Attempting to keep his mother alive, however, he preserves her body in the basement. At the same time, he takes on her identity as his own alter ego. Finally, while dressed up as his dead mother, he murders Marion Crane to eliminate any possible rival for Norman’s attentions. Such unmistakably Oedipal themes are clearly indebted to Sigmund Freud and psychoanalytic theory.
Neurotic symptoms would reflect the person’s characteristic psychosexual stage. For example, obsessions and compulsions reflected regression to the anal stage. While Freud’s instinctual theory has been much criticized, the notion that developmental problems at any point in childhood can hinder later development and result in adult psychopathology must be seen as one of Freud’s greatest contributions.
What was revolutionary about Freud?
Freud was revolutionary for several reasons. For one, he brought to light the way unconscious passions can rule our lives—the battle between animalistic passions and the constraints of civilization. His particular emphasis on sexuality opened discussion on a formerly taboo subject. Secondly, he drew attention to the effect of childhood experiences and trauma on adult emotional adjustment. Thirdly, his invention of the method of psychoanalysis spearheaded the entire discipline of psychotherapy.
While psychoanalysis per se is no longer the preferred method of psychotherapy, many forms of psychotherapy can be seen as the direct descendants of Freud’s couch. Finally, he brought the emotional and the irrational into the realm of science. While poets, artists, and philosophers had addressed the concerns of psychoanalysis before, few people had considered these questions in scientific terms.
How original were Freud’s ideas?
Freud did not operate in a vacuum. Many of his ideas came out of earlier philosophical works. For example, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) wrote about the primacy of unconscious sexual instincts as early as 1819. Moreover, Freud was not the first clinician to practice psychotherapy. By 1909, Freud’s approach to psychotherapy was just one among many competing forms of psychotherapy. Contemporary psychotherapy in