PsychNut: Non-Credit Psychology Courses » Dr. Ken Tangen

Great Minds, Great Ideas

Dr. Ken Tangen — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 08:45:21 +0000

ALPHABETICAL LIST.

Theories come out of people’s lives. You can’t separate the theory from the person. To understand the theories of psychology, you have to look closely at the those who generated those theories, and the people who infludenced them. The more you know about the person behind the theory, the better you’ll understand the theory.

Similarly, your theory will come from your background. You may never formalize your theory but since you have ideas and make assumptions about why people act the way they do, I believe everyone has an internal theory.

If you decide to formalize your theory, you’ll need to take a closer look at youself. Your theory will be better, the more you know your beliefs, your assumptions, and yourself.

Don’t worry. Other people have thought about the major issues you’ll want to address. You don’t have to start from nothing. You can, and should, steal from others (giving complete credit where due, of course). In generating a theory, it’s not stealing to agree with great thinkers who have gone before. It’s building on the shoulders of giants. Highly recommended.

Psychology Is Like Law

Dr. Ken Tangen — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:15:07 +0000

Psychology is like law: it uses names to organize information. When your prof says “Don’t worry about the names,” she’s lying. She means it when she says it but she means something different from what you mean.

Psychology uses people as icons. So your prof means don’t worry about all of the names of the researchers that don’t matter but do know the names of the people who represent major theories. You don’t have to know all of the people who worked to develop the principles of operant conditioning. You just need to know Skinner.

It’s like case law. In law school, you don’t need to know all of the cases that don’t matter. But you do need to know major decisions. Psychology works the same way. Skinner, Freud, Piaget, and Rogers all represent different areas of research and different approaches to psychology. Skinner represents all of the rat, pigeon and animal training. Freud is the icon for psychodynamic thought. Piaget is the representative of developmental stages, and Rogers is the figurehead of counseling.

The trick is knowing which are the big names you need to remember. It will come with time. The more time you spend in psychology, the easier it will be to make distinctions. As a head start, check out the people listed in Great Minds.

The Simple Life

Dr. Ken Tangen — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:14:40 +0000

Are you the kind of person who loves the fast pace of city life? Or would you prefer to a quiet, simple life?

How do people decide what to do with their lives? What is thinking? And how does emotion actually work?

General Psychology is an overview of psychology’s answers to these questions. You’ll learn about the brain, development, learning, thinking, emotion and memory. You’ll also learn about personality, social psych, abnormal psych and perception.

Think of it as a 10-day tour of psychology. Each “day” is a different area of psych. This is a survey course: you get an overview of the whole field.

Everything you’d find in a university-level course is there. You’ll find lectures, illustrations, notes and vocabulary. The only thing you won’t find is university credit. We give no college credit because we don’t charge anything.

One Page Summaries Of Psychology

Dr. Ken Tangen — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 02:30:38 +0000

Sometimes a picture captures summarizes an entire sequence of events. It can act as a quick reminder of a setting, those present, and feelings you experienced.

Similarly, with a subject as broad and complex as psychology, it’s nice to take a quick look at it’s subfields. Each nutshell is a one-page description of a major area of psychology. The idea is to give you a head start. Think of it a quick guide to the who, what and why of each major area of psychology.

Julian Rotter

Dr. Ken Tangen — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:05:47 +0000

Like other social learning theorists, Julian Rotter (1916-present) combines behaviorism plus cognition. What we know about the environment impacts what we do. And the best way to predict what people will do is to understand how they think.

Rotter maintains that the likelihood of a particular behavior is influenced by our cognition of rewards. Skinner was essentially right: we do respond to rewards but his system was to simple. We don’t turn off our brains when we’re rewarded. We use our brain power to make calculations about ourselves, the environment and rewards themselves.

There are three component parts to Rotter’s system. First, as Skinner would predict, we look at the size of the reward. We prefer big rewards over small rewards. Given a choice, we prefer to make more versus less money, bigger versus smaller houses, and faster versus slower cars. If we’re going to receive compliments, we want lots of people to give them. If we’re going to lose weight, we want everyone to notice. In general, we want the biggest reward we can get.

Second, there is the expectancy of the reward. We like rewards but we really like rewards we know we can get. We’ll turn down a bigger reward if a smaller reward is closer, faster or more of a sure thing. We do risk assessment and determine the likelihood of a receiving a reward. The reason we choose immediacy of rewards is they have a higher expectancy of coming true.

Rotter’s main point is that we combine our calculations of expectancy (likelihood) and reinforcement value (reward size). I don’t usually play the lottery but I know the likelihood of winning is very low. I don’t expect to win. But when the jackpot is over $20 million, I’ll buy a ticket…just one. I still don’t expect to win but I figure it’s worth the shot for a large prize. We will take a risk on a situation with low expectation if the reward it high. Similarly, we tend to settle for less reward if expectation is high. This explains why people stay is safe low-paying jobs, and why people stay in predictable unhappy marriages.

According to this model, if you believe your chances of getting a job paying $200,000 a year is 20%, the job is worth $40,000 to you. Consequently, you might well choose to apply for $50,000 jobs that you are 90% sure you can get. In your mental calculations, you’d be $5,000 ahead by going for the lower paying job.

Our experience isn’t that we’re making mathematical calculations. But we are aware of wrestling with security versus reward. We realize that there are many more jobs available at mid-management than upper-management. More available jobs means more likely. We know that actors who set out to be multi-billionaires probably won’t reach that goal. A few megastars make huge salaries but most actors make very little money. Rotter is suggesting that we are more rational than we realize. We use value and expectancy to make major life decisions.

We don’t behave randomly. We not only responders to Pavlovian stimuli or solely influenced by rewards. As our environment changes, we use rules to determine what to do. Even in novel situations, we apply our knowledge of the past to the current conditions. Rotter suggest that we have two basic, relatively stable rules: (a) the bigger the reward the better, and (b) safer is better.

Rotter’s approach is optimistic, goal-driven, and adaptive (interactive with the environment). You will notice that the likelihood of a particular behavior in a specific situation is based on subjective probabilities. We calculate what we think the odds of an event occurring. We don’t know what will happen; we make subjective guesses. Our inconsistencies in action show that from time to time we interpret the same situation differently.

Rotter expanded his concept of expectancy to a broader, more generalized expectation: locus on control. Although we calculate the likelihood of specific events, our general tendencies of calculation can be described. Life’s situations aren’t independent. We actually use a relatively stable set of potentials for responding to situations. Overall, we can be described as primarily relying on internal or external expectations (locus of control).

Our locus of control is our view of the contingency between what we do and what we get. If we have an internal locus of control, we tend to believe that what we do helps us get rewards. An “internal” tends to be more political, proactive, and optimistic. They assume they will be successful because expect their behavior to produce rewards. Consequently, internals try to gather more information, change their environment, and influence others. They are also more likely to be anxious. Since they believe what they do matters, they take responsibility for everything…whether it’s their fault or not.

In contrast, “externals” tend to conform, and don’t expect much of life. They believe life is a matter of chance, fate or luck. Externals tend not to take responsibility for anything. Since they believe that what they do doesn’t impact what they get, there is little reason to work too hard at changing the inevitable. They are more susceptible to what Selligman called “learned helplessness.”

Rotter put his theory into a formula:

BP = f(E & RV)

The formula summarizes Rotter’s belief that behavior is a function of likelihood and reward size. Behavioral potential (BP) is the probability of a behavior occurring. And it is a function of expectations (E) and reinforcement value (RV). This formula predicts behavior, and consequently is a guide of how to conduct therapy. For Rotter, symptoms are learned, so therapy should be a learning situation. The focus of therapy can be on any component in Rotter’s model.

The first source of trouble might be a client’s behavior (BP). Neurotic behavior might simply be maladaptive itself and need to be changed. Neurotic behavior also can be caused by unrealistic expectations (E). The cure for this condition is to explore why the client sets expectations so high or so low. People tend to have a minimal goal: a hallmark of success and failure. Achieving less than the minimal goal would be considered failing, even if the minimal goal had been set unrealistically high. RV is reinforcement value. Here is the recognition that systematically over- or under-valuing rewards can lead to trouble. Corrective therapy might focus on the nature and size of desired rewards. Clients might examine why it is not enough for them when people say that they look good.

Therapy could also revolve around one’s locus of control. Our cross-situational expectations about how life works impacts much of what we do. If we believe “life isn’t fair,” how does that affect what we do? Do we use our external locus of control as an excuse for not taking responsibility for our actions? Does our internal locus of control cause us to be overanxious about things we can’t control?

Check out my video on Julian Rotter.

Carl Rogers

Dr. Ken Tangen — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 05:09:17 +0000

More than anyone else, Carl Rogers (1902-1987) invented counseling. The vast numbers of counseling psychologists, marriage-family therapist and other mental health professionals are the product of his humanistic approach to therapy.

Like Freud, Rogers believed that actual experiences become symbolized. These symbolized experiences reflect all the characteristics of the actual experiences without all of the detail. It’s not so much what you experienced in the past as it is how you interpreted or feel about it.

In contrast to Freud’s distant, impersonal psychoanalysis, Rogers created an atmosphere of connection, warmth and acceptance. The emphasis was turned treating abnormal conditions to helping normal people with everyday problems. It went from impersonal medical terminology to less intimidating language. Patients became clients. Analysis became therapy or counseling. Rogers made counseling accessible.

And he changed the emphasis from analyzing defense systems to focusing on the client. Originally, Rogers called his approach “nondirective” therapy. The assumption was that clients were given no direction at all; they had complete control over the sessions. But, of course, Rogers did give subtle direction, so he later changed to a more accurate description of “client centered” therapy. Therapy should focus on the needs and goals of the client, not a pre-determined goal of the therapist. Consequently, a client-centered therapist is relatively weak (doesn’t give advice or homework) but guides the client toward self discovery.

Rogers stressed the importance of client-therapist relationship. The therapist should actively develop a strong relationship with the client through active listening, clarification and paraphrasing. This friendly attitude was in direct contrast to psychoanalysis, behaviorism and most other approaches. For Rogers, setting a warm, friendly environment was key to counseling success. Relationship allows clients to open up, put down their defenses, and feel safe. In the safety of a confidential relationship, clients could, many for the first time, experience unconditional positive regard.

Rogers differentiates between conditional positive regard and unconditional positive regard (total acceptance). In conditional positive regard, love is contingent on meeting a standard. “I will love you if…” Or often, “If you loved me, you’d….” When people make love contingent on your doing something for them (meeting their needs, acting according to their standards, etc.) their love is not fully free. In unconditional positive regard, you are accepted for you are; just the way you are.

Rogers assumed that people are basically good and mentally healthy. Although there are anomalies (mental illness, criminality, etc.), the natural tendency is toward growth and normalcy. The primary tendency is to maintain, enhance and grow. Growth is not automatic or effortless but it is the most likely outcome.

The key to understanding people is to understand the individual’s phenomenological field. Each person has their own perception of reality. So reality must be interpreted on an individual basis. An event is not as important as the individual’s interpretation of it.

It’s a relatively simple theory but can be widely applied. The short version is that reality isn’t as important as experience. Or, in reverse, what you see is more important that what exists. Your view-your unique take on the world-is important to understanding who you are.

Think of phenomenology as a house surrounded by miles of land. The house has several windows, each with its own unique view. How you experience reality depends on which window you use. Your view is restricted to size and shape of the window frame. Your “frame of reference” determines what you actually see. Reality may be objective (the collection of all the possible views) but each view is a limited and subjective interpretation of that reality.

In phenomenology, the events that occur in reality are not as important as how they are perceived by an individual viewer. The emphasis is not on what the various views share but on the individuality of each person’s perception. According to this view, it doesn’t matter if people are trying to harm you. What matters is what you think people are trying to do.

For Rogers, behavior is the result of people trying to reach goals. People try to meet their needs (as they perceive them), so how you feel about your needs, your life and yourself matters. Fortunately, there is an unconscious process (the organismic valuing process) that leads us toward productive growth. Although not well defined, this growth process provides intrinsically growth-producing experiences.

It’s not clear how this valuing process works or where it comes from. Presumably is a natural, innate process that doesn’t need to be activated or controlled. It does, however, need to be protected. According to Rogers, the organismic valuing process works very well, as long as it is not incapacitated by too many external rules and social values.

Emotions play a large role in Roger’s theory. The summary is: “Emotions facilitate behavior. ” That is, we act because we feel. So if we want to change how we act, we have to experience how we feel. In therapy, clients are encouraged to get in touch with their feelings and to express them. For many Rogerians, therapy is not a success unless the client feels deeply enough to cry.

In contrast to Freud’s id, ego and superego, Rogers is a self theorist. He believes that self gradually emerges, particularly from interactions with our significant others. We learn to become ourselves by interacting with others. We learn to love by experiencing love. We learn accept ourselves by being accepted by others.

Although others may only see our perceived self, we develop our own view of who we are: our “actual self”. The actual self is what we actually do; how we act from day to day. The perceived self (as perceived by others) may be that at night we read French literature by a roaring fire. But we know that our actual self eats chips and watches TV. The more our perceived self and actual self match, the more “congruent” our sense of self. In this context, congruence is the synthesis of self. Growth is combining the ideal self (who you want to be), the actual self (how you see yourself) and the real self (what you actually do) into a congruent whole.

Congruence also is the absence of inner tension. A congruent person is consistent and psychological well adjusted. When the perceived and real self differ, our experiences and emotions are ignored, distorted, and symbolized. This distortion process is subconscious, not unconscious. Subconscious suggests out of consciousness. In contrast, Freud’s unconscious suggests unresolved guilt and biological urges.

Parents should accept a child’s feelings, and shouldn’t threaten their self-concept. Self concept is a small but differentiated part of a person’s phenomological field. Although it comes, in part, through interacting with others, self concept is an object of perception: how we view ourselves. It is what we think our values are, which can be quite different from what our values actually are.

The disconnect between our real values and our self concept results in our experiencing anxiety. To avoid that anxiety, we often distort our view of reality (tell ourselves that society is not trying to influence us) or use denial (we are a rock that is uninfluenced by society).

Roger’s treatment for anxiety was to give unconditional positive regard. Unlike the conditioning love often given by parents (“You’re great if you do what you should do”), the therapist should give unconditional positive regard (“You’re great, no matter who you are”).

People have two basic needs: (a) positive regard by others, and (b) positive regard by self. Positive regard means being loved and accepted. Self-regard is loving yourself. For Rogers, positive self-regard is a natural consequence of receiving unconditional positive regard. To love you, someone else has to love you first.

When you have love (from others and of yourself), you have the foundation for becoming a fully functioning person. Rogers sees five aspects that characterize being “fully functioning.” First, you should be open to experience. Willing to try new things but also maximally enjoying the things you encounter. You don’t have to try every new cookie that comes your way but you should open yourself to experiencing the goodness of those you do sample.

Second, a fully functional person has experiential freedom. Instead of restricting your reactions or filtering your thoughts, you should experience live as it is. Don’t over think. Don’t restrict your emotions. Refuse to be uptight, overburdened and encumbered. Be free.

Third, live now. Live existentially. Existential living puts the focus on “here and now.” If you’re happy, be happy; don’t destroy your happiness by worrying about the way things could have been. Enjoy life as it is and as it comes.

Fourth, learn to trust yourself. This “organismic trust” unfolds over time. As you discover your competence, you learn to rely more on your judgment. No one knows your life as well as you do, so trust your instincts. Trust your real self, the inner you.

Fifth, a fully functioning person is creative. For Rogers, everyone is creative. You don’t have to draw, sculpt or paint. Creativity can be seen in your attitudes toward work, sports, politics, and virtually any activity. Being willing to look at life from different viewpoints. Try different options. Think outside the triangle (I wanted to be creative).

To help people become “fully functional,” Rogers developed a therapy that gives the client the freedom and responsibility of directing therapy. Originally entitled “nondirective therapy,” the idea is that the therapist should not impose on the growth tendencies and directionalness of the client.

Notice that it is “client,” not “patient.” Rogers believed that therapy should be as approachable as possible. Anyone and everyone should feel free to come to “counseling” because they aren’t sick (patients) but simply seeking help (clients).

For Rogers, behavior is learned, consequently symptoms (pathological behaviors) are learned. But Rogers doesn’t offer a learning theory to explain how to divert behaviors are originally learned, nor does he specify how learning new behaviors occurs. His theory operates on a higher level.

Rogers focuses on the macro aspects of education than the mirco processes of learning. The therapist-client relationship is like that of teacher-student. And therapy is a learning situation. But the key to personal growth is emotional, not rational. Growth will automatically occur when a client feels unconditional positive regard, expresses their emotions, and clarifies their feelings. It is the clients’ responsibility to direct the progress of therapy, to reach their own conclusions, and solve their own problems. It is the responsibility of therapists to provide a warm, accepting environment, and intervene only as much as is necessary to keep the client focused on their emotions.

Here’s a lecture introducing the theory of Carl Rogers.

Abraham Maslow

Dr. Ken Tangen — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 05:08:47 +0000

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) helped shift psychology from behaviorism to humanism. He is the “father” of the Third Force of Psychology. The first force was Freud’s psychoanalytic approach. The second force or wave was Pavlov’s behaviorism. And the third major force in American psychology was humanism.

Maslow is best known for his hierarchy of needs. Building on the ideas of Henry Murray, Maslow theorized that needs are not all the same. Some needs must be met before others. Like Harlow’s monkeys, people their biological and safety needs met first. After the essentials are met, people can then pursue their psychological and spiritual needs.

D motives (deficit needs) push people to get food, water, shelter and safety. Once these deficits are met, progress can be made on other fronts. Motivation is the push toward satisfying deficits (d needs).

Meta-motivation, on the other hand, is the push toward being (b needs). Our psychological needs push us to seek love, belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization. According to Maslow, people are inherently good and moving toward growth. We are not the slaves of Freudian drives. We are headed toward the goal of reaching our full potential. This push toward growth is innate. Just as plants grow toward light, people grow to be more integrated, more mature and wiser. We are in the process of “being,” not just existing.

Deficit needs are seeking to establish a more orderly, stable environment. We need food and water to sustain life, and maintain equilibrium. Similarly, we need to satisfy safety needs for our long-term success. If these needs are not met, we will continually try to become safe. We might hoard or over-structure your life. If we don’t fill the deficit, we can’t move on.

When originally presented in 1954, Maslow’s pyramid of needs had five levels: physiological, safety, love-belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. Only self-actualization represented B-needs; the first four levels of the pyramid were D-needs. In his revised pyramid (1970), three more B-need levels are included. He wanted to include the need to acquire and understand knowledge (cognitive needs), and the need to create and experience beauty, balance and structure (aesthetic needs). So cognitive needs and aesthetic needs were inserted above esteem needs but below self-actualization. Finally, a new level (transcendence) was added to the pyramid’s top. If self-actualization is reaching your own potential, transcendence is helping other reach their full potential. It transcends beyond the person and beyond ego. It’s helping others become more enlightened and empowered. It is striving for the fullest potential of the human race.

Maslow assumed that the higher needs could only be met after the basic ones had been satisfied. An extension of his philosophy into social policy might be to solve world hunger before world peace. Hunger would take precedence over safety, and safety would take precedence over love and belonging. According to this view, people cannot find love and belonging until their physical and safety needs are met.

Although Maslow didn’t invent the idea of self-actualization, he certainly popularized the term. For him, self-actualization was people at their best. It was the ultimate in human development, the best one could possibly be. It was both a process and the ultimate goal. Self-actualization wasn’t simply what one did once in their life. It was how people should best live their lives.

To help define it, Maslow selected people he thought represented this ideal. The list included: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, and William James. Eleanor Roosevelt made the list but FDR didn’t. It wasn’t an exhaustive list, more of a sampling of personal favorites.

To understand self-actualization, Maslow read the biographies and writings of those he thought modeled it. From his investigation, he developed a list of qualities that would define one as self-actualized. Self-actualized people are reality-centered (genuine, not fake), problem-centered (solution seekers, not blamers or quitters), and process-centered (means oriented, not using ends to justify the means). Self-actualized people relate to others authentically. They resist social pressure, rely on their own judgment, and set their own direction. Although the self-actualized have intimate personal relationships with family and a few close friends, they enjoy their own company and don’t mind being alone. They are open to diversity, compassionate for others, and hold democratic values. They accept you as you are, and don’t try to change you into what they think you should be. They are able to laugh at themselves, and are not pretentious or moody.

Maslow would not want you to think that self-actualizers are perfect. They’re not. Often they have considerable guilt and anxiety…but it’s realistic guilt and anxiety, not neurotic guilt and anxiety. And they can have moments of ruthlessness and bad humor…but it doesn’t last long. And they can be absentminded or overly kind.

All right, so maybe that does sounds like perfection.

But for Maslow, striving for perfection is okay. People are self-perfecting systems. The self is intrinsically good and gradually getting better. It grows toward perfection as its needs are met. These needs are organized in a hierarchy where lower needs must be met before higher needs. As people growth, they must satisfy the strong needs caused by biological and psychological deficits before they work on the weaker but more growth oriented needs of self-esteem and self-actualization.

Everyone has those mystical moments in life when you feel both infinitely small and eternally connected. You go to the ocean or mountains, and feel both more alone and more connected. Self-actualized people have more of “peak experiences” than the rest of us.

Like Freud, Maslow based his conclusions on logical arguments, not empirical data. His “armchair philosopher” approach was theoretical and deductive. He offered no proof for his assertions; no experiments, no naturalistic observations, and no clinical data. So it’s not surprising that there are inconsistencies in his model. Many examples can be given of situations that don’t fit Maslow’s model. People who are poor or hungry do show love and affection. Happiness does not seem to be confined to rich countries. Maslow’s theory doesn’t explain why police, fire fighters, military, missionaries, and Peace Corp workers regularly give up safety and physiological needs in order to help others.

Also like Freud, an inconsistent theory doesn’t make Maslow’s approach unhelpful or unpopular. Maslow highlights what behaviorist ignored. He emphasizes the importance of love, self-esteem and personal fulfillment. Instead of stimuli eliciting reflexes, Maslow suggests that people can think, have goals, and strive to reach their full potential. Instead of external rewards and punishments, people have an internal need to be creative, social and productive. None of these ideas were included in behaviorism.

Maslow is also in sharp contrast to Freud. Instead of an unconscious id making self-pleasuring wishes, people are active processors. They respect themselves and others. They seek intimate relationships and enjoy being part of a group. And instead of reacting to neurotic needs, people seek growth, health and self-actualization. Maslow is much more optimistic than Freud.

Maslow’s approach is not without problems. The theory does not specify how or when to declare someone as self-actualized, nor does it indicate which famous, powerful, successful people should be categorized as non-actualized. Also, why does it take time to acquire self-actualization? Wouldn’t Maslow’s description of a self-actualized person describe any infant? Is there anyone more authentic than a baby?

The basic problem with Maslow’s hierarchy is that there are many people who regularly give up safety needs to meet higher needs. Poets and artists starve for beauty. Police officers, fire fighters and the military regularly put their lives at risk. And don’t doctors, parents and teachers put the welfare of others before their own needs? As a predictor of behavior, Maslow’s hierarchy doesn’t seem hold up.

According to Maslow, people overcome loneliness because they have a need for love, affection and belongingness. But that’s a circular argument: people can only satisfy higher needs if they meet lower needs first; you know they’ve met lower needs because they are working on higher needs. Giving love and affection are normal human activities because they satisfy the need to connect with others; we know there is a need to connect to others because people give love and affection.

Finally, the theory isn’t clear on how people move from level to level. He believes the reason we don’t all reach self-actualization is that society hinders our growth. He recommends children should be taught how to be authentic. He also maintains that we fear self-knowledge (the Jonah complex). So is moving up the hierarchy the result of training, removing societal influences, overcoming personal hindrances, or somehow stimulating natural growth? Maslow doesn’t specify the mechanisms of change.

Maslow’s theory does infer principles of social policy. If people need air before water, and water before food, there is an implied proper order to helping others. If Maslow’s theory is applied to the solving world problems, it would suggest that people must be fed before they are helped with growth needs. This might suggest that democracy could not occur in poor countries, or at least not until people’s basic needs were met. Some might argue that the maxim would be food before art. But others might hold that it would not necessarily mean food before dignity. The great advantage of an ambiguous theory is that it can be interpreted in many ways.

Here’s a lecture I did on Maslow.

Melanie Klein

Dr. Ken Tangen — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 05:08:19 +0000

Melanie Klein (1892-1960) was one of the founders of object relations theory. Although she believed aggression is an important and common force in children, Klein modified Freud’s drive theory. She maintained that drives are psychological forces (not biological) that seek people as their objects. That is, we are driven to interact with people, and to use those interactions to fulfill our needs.

According to this view, children construct an internal representation of people. These representations are rough estimates of reality. A young child doesn’t have to capacity to understand complex relationships, so they create simple images of the people in their world. Then, they apply these rules to real people (she’s like Mom; he’s like Uncle Fred).

This approach works well when you’re young but these early stereotypes make it hard to relate to people as they actually are. Because of these images, children are slow development realistic relationships with the world. They find it difficult to give up their unconscious fantasies; they prefer the fantasy that Mom is all good and Dad is a superhero. The truth is more difficult to accept. It’s harder to understand that Mom is good and sometimes mean, or that Dad can be dependable and strong yet not able to jump over tall buildings in a single bound.

Klein also believed that the superego developed before the Oedipal complex. Consequently, even young children can experience guilt, shame and complex emotions. To avoid the anxiety over mixed feelings (or aggressive impulses), children learn to separate their emotions from the target person (object). Objects tend to be good and feelings bad. This disconnect causes problems in later life.

In addition to traditional techniques (free association, analysis of defenses, etc.), she introduced innovative therapeutic interventions that are now considered standard practices. For example, Klein was the first to use play therapy. She had children play with toys, and used those sessions to get a better understanding of their drives and emotions.

Klein was strongly opinionated and a forceful advocate for her point of view. She was part of an on-going battle of words that threatened to destroy the British Psychoanalytical Society. Some of the conflict was over how to discover and interpret a child’s ego defenses. But much of the drama was not about the use of fantasy, projection and regression. It was a battle of personalities. It was the battle of giants: Melanie Klein vs. Anna Freud.

In this corner, was Melanie Klein: the first to apply psychoanalysis to children (beating out Anna Freud by four years). Klein was a radical, daring to challenge the ideas of Sigmund Freud. And in this corner, there was Anna Freud: youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud and heir to the Freud legacy and upholder of classical psychoanalysis. Joining Anna Freud group was Melitta Schmideberg, Melanie Klein’s daughter (with whom she never reconciled).

Each camp offered a training program, and held that their approach alone should be the official training program of the organization. More than that, each wanted the other expelled from the society.

The winner? Actually, the winner was a third group: the independents, whose primary concern was compromise. In the end, the Society did what all organization do: they solved the issue politically. Each side was asked to make formal presentations of their theories. A panel listened to all concerned and decided the Society would offer both training programs. A simple solution that only took 5 years to reach

For more on Anna Freud, check out this video on the NeoFreudians.

Anna Freud

Dr. Ken Tangen — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 05:06:35 +0000

Anna Freud (1895-1982) was the youngest of Sigmund’s six children, and the only one to show an interest in his work. She began reading his books when she was 15 but didn’t decide to become an analyst until later. In her early twenties, Anna wanted to be analyzed but who could you go to when there’s no one better than your Dad? So, when she was 23, Sigmund (then in his early sixties) psychoanalyzed Anna.

After Sigmund’s death, Anna was the defender of the faith. She continued to promote his ideas but tended to emphasize ego more than her father had. Anna believed that repression was the main defense mechanism because acting on impulse can hurt you. But more than defending and modifying her father’s work, Anna Freud extended psychoanalytic ideas to children. She maintained that play time was normal, and showed children’s ability to adapt to reality. Children aren’t simply bundled of unconscious conflicts. They are adaptive and creative beings.

In a study she coauthored with Dorothy Burlingham, Anna showed that children look to their parents for cues on how to reaction to situations. During WWII bombing raids, British families were observed in air raid shelters. The children didn’t have instinctive reactions but looked to their mothers to see how she was reacting.

Anna Freud created a classification system to organize evaluations of children’s symptoms. Development was seen as a series of id-ego interactions, where children gain increased control of themselves. Her “diagnostic profile” was a formal assessment procedure that tracked developmental progress on six dimensions of change:

1. dependency to emotional self-reliance
2. sucking to rational eating
3. wetting and soiling to bladder and bowel control
4. irresponsibility to responsibility
5. play to work
6. egocentricity to companionship

For more on Anna Freud, check out this video on the NeoFreudians.

Karen Horney

Dr. Ken Tangen — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 05:04:23 +0000

Karen Horney (1885-1952) was born in Hamburg, Germany on September 18, 1885. She did not study directly with Freud but was greatly influenced by his work. She received her MD from the University of Berlin in 1913, and moved to the US in 1932.

Horney’s writings do not form a systematic theory of psychology but show how Freud’s concepts were manipulated and expanded by his followers. Horney’s concept of basic anxiety embraces Freudian thought but extends its interpretive usefulness. For Horney, basic anxiety is feeling helpless and is a product of culturalization. Basic anxiety produces a drive for safety (security).

Horney emphasized needs, including the need for affection, approval, power, ambition and perfection. She divided these needs into 3 types of personality: toward people, against people, and away from people.

For more on Anna Freud, check out this video on the NeoFreudians.