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Theory
and Practice of Counseling -
PSY632
VU
LESSON
27
NEO-FREUDIANS
Link
to Previous Lecture: Evaluation of
Jungian Analytical
Psychology
Strengths
·
His
interest in Eastern philosophy,
mystical religions, and
mythology brought him in
contact
with
many great thinkers of the
20th century. He was a great
opponent of the
connection
between
mind, body and
soul.
·
Significant
contributions to the fields of
sand play therapy, and
art therapy
Limitations
·
Suitable
for those who can
spend money, time and
effort
·
The
process is nonreplicable, confidential,
and based on individual and
archetypal process
Karen
Horney (1885-1952)
Karen
Horney was Born in a village
near Hamburg, Germany, and
excelled in her medical
studies
and
got a degree from the
University of Berlin in 1913.
She was second born child
and from an early
age
envied her older brother.
She thought that her
parents loved him more
than they loved her. As
a
way
of retaining her mother's
love, she acted as the
adoring daughter and until
the age of 8 she
was
the
model child but she
did not get what
she desired. Her good
behavior was not working so
she
changed
tactics and became rebellious
and ambitious. However, her
quest for love
continued
throughout
her life. As an adult she
realized how much hostility
she had developed as a
child. Roots
of
Horney's personality theory
lie in her childhood experiences.
Her personality theory
states how a
lack
of love in childhood fosters
anxiety and
hostility.
View
of Human Nature
Horney
parted with Freud over
his deterministic mechanistic
approach and his emphasis
on
instinctual
drives. She emphasized,
instead, the concept of
anxiety, which she felt
grew out of the
child's
feeling of isolation and
insecurities in the parent-child
relationship, with anxiety
being
produced
by anything that disturbs
the child's fundamental
security. To Horney the
insecure
children
handle their feelings by
developing irrational (neurotic)
solutions to the problem?
These
solutions
compensate in some way for
the emotional and
psychological losses they have
experienced
and
may become permanent personality
characteristics. The ten neurotic
needs are listed
below:
section.
Ten
Neurotic Needs:
1.
The
neurotic need for affection
and approval.
2.
The
neurotic need for a partner
who will take over
one's life.
3.
The
neurotic need to restrict one's life
within narrow
borders.
4.
The
neurotic need for
power.
5.
The
neurotic need to exploit
others.
6.
The
neurotic need for prestige.
7.
The
neurotic need for personal
admiration.
8.
The
neurotic need for personal
achievement.
9.
The
neurotic need for self-sufficiency
and independence
The
neurotic need for protection
and unassailability.
10.
It
is important to understand that,
for the neurotic, these
needs are not easily met. In
most cases, the
need
simply cannot be satisfied because of
the deep inner conflict
that lies at its source. After
defining
the
ten neurotic needs, Horney
classified them into three basic
orientations:
·
Moving
toward people (need for
love)
·
Moving
away from people (need
for independence)
·
Moving
against people (need for
power}
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Theory
and Practice of Counseling -
PSY632
VU
She
distinguishes between normal individuals
and neurotics by stating
that normal individuals
resolve
their
conflicts by integrating the
thre e orientations, while
neurotics rely exclusively on one of
the
orientations.
Horney feels that all
conflicts are avoidable if
the child is reared in a
loving, accepting
home
in which warmth, trust, and
affection characterize the parent-child
relationships.
Horney
parted significantly from
Freud in her view that
conflict is developmental and
arises out of the
individual's
social surroundings. Possibly her
greatest contributions were
this awareness of the impact
of
environment
in the role of psychological dysfunction,
and her identification of
neurotic needs and
the
psychological
dynamics involved in neuroses.
During
her self-analysis, Horney
was strongly influenced by
Adler's notion of compensation
for
inferiority.
Adler. She concluded that
she also needed to feel
superior because of the lack
of beauty and
sense
of inferiority as a woman, which
led her to masculine protest by
excelling in a male-dominant
profession,
such as medicine at that
time.
Harry
Stack Sullivan
(1892-1949)
Harry
Stack Sullivan differs
greatly from Adler and
Horney both in his
background and training
and
in
his theoretical views. Sullivan
was born and trained in
America and never had
direct contact with
Freud.
His unique approach in
psychiatry was the first to
emphasize the role of
interpersonal
relationships.
He describes his approach and
theory in The
Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry
(Sullivan,
3953).
His
views of the importance both of
interpersonal relationships and of the role of
the therapist as an
involved
participant in the interview
have significantly influenced present
counseling theory and
practice.
View
of Human Nature
According
to Sullivan, personality exists
only through the
individual's interactions with
others.
Processes
such as thinking, perceiving,
and even dreaming are
considered to the
interpersonal.
The
self system develops out of
the anxiety experienced in
interpersonal relationships, which
originally
stems
from the mother- infant
relationship. Individuals learn
that if they please their
parents, they
will
be praised (the good-me
self), and that if they
misbehave, they will be punished
(the bad-me
self).
The self protects from
anxiety and guards
security.
The
self-system will avoid information
that is not consistent with
its organization, and thus
it is
protected
from criticism. The self-system
may lose its ability to be
objective and may prevent
the
individual
from accurately assessing
his behavior.
If
the individual experiences much
anxiety, the self-system will
become inflated and will
prevent the
individual
from growing and interacting
with others in healthy
relationships. Here we see
some possible
antecedents
of Rogers' self theory and
note the link between
Freud's view that while
anxiety stems from
different
sources, the ego (self)
deals with it by distorting
reality through use of the
defense
mechanisms.
Modes
of Experiencing
Some
people believe that
Sullivan's most unique
contributions were in the
area of cognitive
processes.
He delineated the following three
modes of experiencing: prototaxic,
parataxic and
syntaxic.
·
Prototaxic
Involves
experiences that have no
connection or meaning for the
experiencing
individual.
Infants undergo this kind of
experiencing.
·
Parataxic
involves
seeing a relationship between
events that occur
simultaneously, but
that
have
no actual relationship. Superstitions
are examples of parataxic thought
processes.
·
Syntaxic
involves
the use of language in which
commonly agreed-upon verbal
symbols
enable
communication.
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Theory
and Practice of Counseling -
PSY632
VU
Stages
of Development of Personality
Sullivan's
theory of personality emphasized
stages of development but
differed from Freudian
thinking
with
regard to the role of
sexuality. His views are somewhat
similar to those of Erickson in
their
emphasis
on interpersonal influences. His view of
development emphasized social factors
and
consisted
of the following six
stages:
·
Infancy
·
Childhood
·
Juvenile
era: The children's experience
with friends and teachers
begins to rival the influence
of
parents.
Social influence becomes
important and child's
"reputation" with others
becomes an
important
source of self-esteem or
anxiety.
·
Preadolescence:
During preadolescence, a relationship to
a closer friend or chum
becomes
particularly
important. This relationship
provides basis for the
development of a love
relationship
with the opposite
sex.
·
Early
adolescence
·
Late
adolescence
Role
of the Counselor/ Therapeutic
interview
One
of Sullivan's major contributions
was his view of the
therapeutic interview. He made a
significant
departure
from Freud and the
so-called neo-analysts in viewing
the interview as a highly personal
and
interpersonal
experience in which the therapist
functions as a "participant observer."
The role of the
therapist
as conceptualized by Sullivan emphasizes
the therapist as a person,
with a focus on the
communication
between the therapist and
patient. In other words,
Sullivan acknowledged that
the
therapist's
attitudes, feelings, doubts, or
personal difficulties influence
the interaction in
the
interview.
Obviously, then, the
therapist cannot assume a
strictly observational
stance.
The
psychiatric interview consists of four
stages:
·
The
formal inception
·
Reconnaissance
·
Detailed
inquiry
·
The
termination
These
stages are briefly
summarized as follows:
·
The
Formal Inception
o
The
therapist is viewed as an interpersonal relations
expert. In the initial phase
of
therapy,
the primary task is to determine
the nature of the patient's
problem and to
begin
a communication process in which
the therapist is sensitive to
nonverbal
behavior,
including voice tone, speech
rate, and changes in volume.
Sullivan
emphasized
that the patient has a
right to expect to benefit
from the experience,
even
from the initial session.
Emphasis is placed on relationship
building.
·
Reconnaissance
o
During
this phase the therapist
structures sessions to gather factual
information about
the
past, present, and future of
the patient. The goal is to
develop some
hypotheses
regarding
the patient's
problems,
·
The
Detailed Inquiry
o
Both
questioning and listening
are techniques that assist
the therapist in sorting
through
tentative
hypotheses and selecting the one
that is most accurate.
Information
regarding
the patient's functioning in
all areas is
collected.
·
The
Termination
o
A
summary of the therapist's
learning's about and
observations of the
patient
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Theory
and Practice of Counseling -
PSY632
VU
characterizes
this last stage. The
therapist may also prescribe some
guidelines for the
patient
following termination.
As
previously stated, Sullivan's influence
on contemporary counseling theory
and practice is most
obvious
in his humanistic view of
the psychiatric interview. He
was a very creative thinker
and was
among
the first to change the role
of the therapist from a
removed observer and
interpreter of the
patient's
experience, to an active, involved
participant in an interpersonal
relationship. His
emphasis
on
the therapist as a person
and on the power of the
relationship in facilitating client
change was
probably
an antecedent of humanistic thinking,
which resulted in the
development of client-centered
therapy.
Evaluation
·
He
was a very creative thinker
and was among the first to
change the role of the
therapist from a
remote
observer
and interpreter of the
patient's experience, to an active,
involved participant in an
interpersonal
relationship.
·
His
emphasis on the therapist as a
person and on the power of
the relationship in facilitating
client
change
was probably an antecedent of humanistic
thinking, which resulted in
the development of
client-
centered
therapy.
Summary:
Traditional Psychoanalysis and
Neo-Freudians
The
current and previous few
lectures aimed to explore Freudian
theory, the contributions of
Adler,
Jung,
Horney, and Sullivan, who
are important links to present
counseling practice.
In
the section on Freud, we
discussed his view that
personality is a complex energy
system
consisting
of the driving forces of the
id and the restraining
forces of the ego and superego.
The
reservoir
of psychic energy is housed in the id,
which functions by the pleasure
principle. The
instinctual
impulses of the id are
mediated by the ego and
the superego, as well as by
the external
world.
Personality, then, is a highly
mechanistic and deterministic
system, and behavior is
largely a
result
of instinctual drives and
unconscious processes. When
the ego can no longer
satisfy the
demands
of the ego and is flooded
with anxiety, it employs defense
mechanisms to enable it to cope.
Repression,
projection, reaction formation,
fixation, and regression were
discussed, along with
several
other
commonly used defense
mechanisms. Freud believed
that personality developed in
five
psychosexual
stages: oral, anal, phallic,
latency, and genital, He
utilized techniques such
as
interpretation,
dream analysis, transference,
and free association.
Each
of the other theorists
discussed in later lectures departed in
some important way from
Freudian
thinking.
Alfred Adler, Karen Horney,
and Harry Stack Sullivan
developed social-psychological
views
which rejected Freud's view of
sexuality, placed greater emphasis on
environmental and
interpersonal
factors. Jungian analysis is
much more philosophical in
nature and focuses on not
only
individual
unconscious but collective unconscious
consisting on archetypes. While Freudian
theory
differs
in many ways from the
contemporary affective approaches to
counseling (which will be
taught
in
the next few lectures),
there are some interesting
linkages between Freud and
Rogers, the
counseling
theorist who most
significantly departed from
Freudian thought.
The
importance placed on feelings is the most
obvious similarity between
Freud and Rogers.
Freud
used
techniques with both
cognitive components (recall of
early memories, interpretation,
and
making
the unconscious conscious)
and affective ones (transference
and the corrective
emotional
experience)
to facilitate client insight. It is
important to note, however,
that insight involved
more
than
cognitive understanding.
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