Psychodynamic Theory Individual Psychology Analytical Psychology Object-Relations theory Psychoanalytic Social Theory Humanistic Psychoanalysis Interpersonal Theory
ocial Theory Humanistic Psychoanalysis Interpersonal Theory Post-Freudian Theory
(Sigmund Freud)
Utilizes sex and aggression as the
twin cornerstones of
Main concept
psychodynamic theory.
People are motivated primarily by People are motivated mostly by
drives of which they have little or social influences and by their
no awareness. People are
Motivation
motivated to seek pleasure and to
reduce tension and anxiety.
Motivation – Freud also called
“dynamic”
PersonalityDevelopment of
First years of life.
Healthy IndividualPyschologically
Balance between the Id, ego, and
superego.
Freud also called “instincts”
-operate as a constant
Drives (instincts)
motivational force.
Sex – “Eros”
Aggression – distraction/
“thanatos”
---- Each has different forms of
Provinces of the mind:
Id/Ego/Superego
Id – pleasure principle
Ego – reality principle (grows out personality.
of Id during infancy. Partly
conscious, partly preconscious,
and partly unconscious. Takes
decision on three levels)
Superego – moralistic and
Punishment/suppression creates
anxiety, which then stimulates
Anxiety
repression (forcing of unwanted
memories/thoughts into
unconscious) in order to lessen
that anxiety.
(Alfred Adler)
Presents an optimistic view of
people while resting heavily on the
notion of social interest ( oneness
with all human kind. Rooted from
mother-child relationship)
People are born with physical
deficiencies, if one acquires
inferiority complex – he then
striving for superiority or success.
If exaggerated deficiency, low
social interest.
Began with aggression, to
masculine protest, to striving
First 4 to 5 years.
Does not have an underdeveloped
social interest.
Striving for success.
The striving for success or
superiority (final goal)
Final goal is determined at 4 or 5.
During this age, creative power is
established, thus final goal can be
determined.
Ego as the entire self or
Public Disgrace. When people
frighten themselves out of doing
things. A symptom of the strong
feeling of fear. He described fear as
being related to all living creatures
in response to perceived danger.
(Carl Jung)
Occult phenomena can and do
influence the lives of everyone.
Self-realization is being whole.
Self as the core of personality.
Each of us is motivated not only
by repressed experiences but
also by certain emotionally toned
experiences inherited from our
ancestors.
Both causal and teleological.
Ages 35-40 (second half of life)
(middle life)
Balances between opposing forces After Oedipus complex:
(ex: introversion and
extraversion)
Self-realization (uses the four
functions of attitudes)
an unconscious physical impulse
toward action.
archetype as the psychic
counterpart to an instinct.
both archetypes and instincts are
unconsciously determined, and
Ego:
More restrictive than Freud’s. Ego Core of object relations theory.
as the center of the
consciousness, but not the core of Ego begins during the first
personality.
Not the whole personality, but
(Melanie Klein)
Freud: Biological
Klein: Interpersonal
Freud: less emphasis on mother
Klein: More maternal
Freud: Sexual pleasure
Klein: Human contact and
Human contact and relatedness.
Infants innately strive for
integration. To avoid
disintegration, the ego must split
itself to good and bad.
First 4-6 months.
- If the process runs
smoothly, the child
develops positive feelings
towards both parents.
Where object relations theory was
taken from.
Must always have an object.
First object – mother’s breast.
Child:
Ego:
breastfeeding experience of the
child. (before 3-4 years for freud)
- Result of the conflict
produced between life
instinct and death instinct.
(Karen Horney)
Has an assumption that social
and cultural conditions,
especially childhood
experiences, are largely
responsible for shaping
personality.
(agreed with Freud in this
To actualize self realization.
Social/Cultural influences
rather than biological
(instinct)
Did not overlook the
importance of genetic
factors, but emphasized more
the social.
Given needs for love and
affection during childhood.
Horney opposed the instinct
concept; rather she proposed
that culture is paramount in
shaping personality.
Neglect, pamper kids.
Basic Hostility – when parents
don’t satisfy the child’s needs
for safety and satisfaction.
This results to basic anxiety.
(Erich Fromm)
Individual personality can only
be understood in the light of
human history.
Human dilemma – the facility
of reason humans acquired.
People have acquired this
because they have become
Humans are motivated by
physiological needs (hunger,
sex, safety)
only distinct human/existential
needs can reunite people with
natural world.
Called “Character
Orientations”
- Person’s relatively
permanent way of
relating to people and
things
- Personality: totality of
Healthy individuals: better able
to find ways of reuniting to the
world by productively solving
the human needs.
Neurotics / insane are not.
Reuniting with the nature.
-----
Resulted from burden of
freedom.
The feeling of being alone in the
world.
(Harry Sullivan) (Erik Erikson)
-people develop their personality extended Freud’s infantile
within a social context. developmental stages into
-Sullivan is first American to adolescence, adulthood, and
create a comprehensive old age.
personality theory.
Erikson suggested that at each
Human personality can be stage a specific psychosocial
understood through struggle contributes to the
-energy system:
1. Tensions
-potentiality for action
2. Energy transformations
-transform tensions to either
overt or covert behaviour.
Tensions:
Dynamisms
– organized as typical behaviour
patterns that characterize a
person throughout lifetime (same
as trait/habit)
1. related to specific zones
2. related to tensions
-Disjuntive (malevolence)
-Isolating (lust)
Depends on the person’s ability Resolve identity crisis on
to establish intimacy with psychosocial stages.
another person.
To experience both intimacy and
lust toward the same other
person.
Successful interpersonal -------
relationships
Levels of cognition: (not
certainly id, ego, superego) Ego – a positive force that
creates a self-identity, a sense
1. Prototaxic level – experiences of “I”. Center of personality, it
cannot be communicated. helps us adapt to the various
2. Parataxic level – prelogical. conflicts and crises of life and
Cause and effect relationship keeps us from losing our
between two events. Parataxic individuality to the levelling
distortion – illogical belief that forces of society.
Anxiety (non productive)
-tension in opposition to the
tensions of needs and to action
appropriate to their relief.
-Self-system protects people
against anxiety

Plays minor role in Thoughts that are understood and
psychodynamic therapy. Contains regarded by the individual as
Conscious
mental elements that are in helpful in striving for success.
awareness at any given point in
time. Sources:
1. Perceptual conscious system
2. Elements from preconscious
Two types:
Unconscious
1. Unconscious proper
---contains all drives, urges, or
instincts, that are beyond our
awareness but motivates our
actions and behaviors.
---Phylogenetic endowment
Rich source of unconscious
material.
Dreams
Stages of Development Defense Mechanisms
- Largely unconscious
- Common to everyone
Repression
Reaction Formation
Regression
Fixation
Sublimation
Denial
1. Infantile Period
-Oral Phase (1 year)
-- Oral receptive (weaning)
-- Oral sadistic (biting)
-Anal Phase (2 years)
-- Early anal period (toilet
training)
-- Late anal period (friendly to
feces)
Complete Oedipus Complex:
Before a young boy enters the
Oedipus stage, he develops some
amount of a feminine
disposition.
1. feminine nature - lead him to
display affection toward his
father and express hostility
2. Latency Period
- 4th or 5th year until puberty
- a period of dormant
psychosexual development.
- parents’ attempts to punish or
discourage sexual activity in their
young children.
3. Genital Period
MaladjustmentsDisorders/
to uncover repressed memories
(unresolved sexual and
aggressive memories) through
free association and dream
analysis.
Thoughts that are not understood
and not helpful to a person’s
striving for success.
Guide in solving future problems. Main source of archetypal
material.
“Safeguarding Tendencies”
- To hide inflated self-image
and maintain their current
style of life.
- Largely conscious
- Only with reference to
neurotic symptoms
1. Excuses (yes, but) (if, only)
1. Oldest Child – Nurturing,
Protective of others, Organized
2. Second Child – Motivated,
Cooperative, Competitive
3. Youngest Child – Realistically
Ambitious
4. Only Child – Socially mature
Underdeveloped social interest.
1. set their goals too high
2. private worlds
3. rigid and dogmatic style of life
External factors:
Elements that are sensed by the
ego.
Have no relationship with the ego. Highly unconscious. Since most
Personal Unconscious
-embraces all repressed, forgotten,
subliminally memories and
impulses, forgotten events, and
experiences originally perceived
below the threshold of
1. Childhood
- Anarchic (shattered
consciousness)
- Monarchic (see selves as 3rd
person)
- Dualistic (subjective and
objective, sees self as first person)
2. Youth (Puberty to middle
Not being able to balance
between two opposing forces.
-------
of the concepts occur during
infancy stage
--------
Projection:
The child projects destructive
urges towards the breast, now
seeing the breast as having the
bad instinct (bad breast.)
Child can project both good and
bad objects.
POSITIONS:
1. Paranoid-schizoid position (3-
4)
- child has an innate tendency to
control and destructive urges
towards the breast.
- child’s ego splits itself.
Oedipus Complex:
1. First month – seeing breast as
good and bad
2. 6 months – breast more positive
3. see mom as good and wonder
how babies are made
4. fantize father’s penis feed the
mother with babies
5. develop positive relationship,
Inflexible splitting of the ego.
-----------
People combat basic anxiety
by adopting one of three
fundamental styles of relating
to others:
1. Moving toward people
2. Moving against people
3. Moving away from people
Horney recognized the
existence of Oedipus complex.
Emphasized that it is through
environment conditions and
not biology. Result of neurotic
need for love.
“Womb envy”
Big factor to neuroses is
cultural influences
Desperate need for love
provides a fertile ground for
the development of neuroses.
Neurotics strive in
-----
------
Fromm called “Mechanisms of
Escape:
-due to isolation/aloneness,
people flee from freedom
through this.
1. Authoritatianism
1. Necrophilia
-love of death
2. Malignant Narcissism
- everything belonging to them
is highly valued, not are not
valued.
3. Incestious Symbiosis
-extreme dependence towards
-----
------------
------
Partially unconscious.
Personifications: (not stages) Erikson called “Psychosocial
-through dev stages, people Development”
acquire certain images of
themselves and others. -7 basic points
-epigenetic principle
Bad mother – infant’s -interaction of opposites
experience with the bad nipple. (syntonic and dystonic)
Doesn’t satisfy hunger needs -interaction results to basic
Good mother – may come after strength
2 classes of schizophrenia:
1. Organic caused - beyond
study of interpersonal psychiatry
2. Grounded on situational
factors - amenable to change
through interperso psychi
 1. Free Association Technique
2. Dream Analysis (wish
fulfilments and repetition
Therapy
compulsion)
-Manifest content
-Latent content
-- condensation and
displacement
3. Transference
1. Theory mainly focused on
men.
2. Determinism
3. Pessimism
Critique and Concept of Humanity
4. Causality
5. Unconscious
6. Biological rather than social
7. Moderate in similarities vs
uniqueness
Other terms/Definitions:
Primary Narcissism - Infants are
primarily self-centered, with their
libido invested almost exclusively
on their own ego. (universal)
As the ego develops, children
usually give up much of their
primary narcissism and develop a
greater interest in other people. In
Freud’s language, narcissistic
libido is then transformed into
object libido.
Secondary Narcissism - During
puberty, however, adolescents
often redirect their libido back to
the ego and become preoccupied
with personal appearance and
other self-interests. (not
universal) has an amount of self-
love.
Once his Oedipus complex is
dissolved or repressed, the boy
surrenders his incestuous desires,
changes them into feelings of
tender love, and begins to
develop a primitive superego. He
may identify with either the
father or the mother, depending
on the strength of his feminine
disposition.
-------------------------
1. Freudian Slips - Parapraxes
Addresses people with lack of
courage, exaggerated feelings of
inferiority, and underdeveloped
social interest.
1. High in generating research
2. Low falsifiability
3. High organization of
knowledge
4. High on practical guide to
action
5. Low internal consistency
6. Average parsimony
1. Free choice
2. Optimistic
3. teleological
4. Conscious
5. Social
6. Uniqueness
1. The one dynamic force behind
people’s behavior is the striving for
success or superiority.
2. People’s subjective perceptions
shape their behavior and
personality.
-Fictionalism
-Masculine Protest
3. Personality is unified and self-
consistent.
- Organ Dialect
- Conscious and Unconscious
4. The value of all human activity
must be seen from the viewpoint of
social interest.
- Relatedness to Society
- Roots from mother-child
relationship (occurs after age 5)
- Father – child relationship (1:
emotional detachment, 2: paternal
authoritarianism)
- Social interest (sole criterion of
human values)
5. The self-consistent personality
structure develops into a person’s
style of life.
- self consistent personality
structures becomes style of life.
- a product of heredity,
environment and person’s
creative power.
- style of life develops with the
final goal. (4 or 5)
- rigid style of life
(psychologically unhealthy
individuals)
- flexible (psychologically
healthy). Makes actions
Major problems of life:
1. Confession of pathogenic
secret (similar to catharsis)
2. Interpretation, Explanation,
Elucidation (similar to freug
giving insights of their neurosis)
3. Education of patients as social
beings (Adler’s)
4. Transformation (the therapist
must be transformed himself to be
1. Difficult to falsify
2. Low in practical guide to
action, internal consistency,
parsimony
3. Moderate in generating
research and organize
knowledge
1. Neither pessimistic nor
optimistic, deterministic nor
purposive.
2. Motivated partly by conscious,
personal unconscious, and
collective unconscious
3. Both causal and teleological
4. Strongly biological
5. High similarities
Play therapy instead of dream
analysis and free association.
Aim: reduce depressive anxieties
and persecutory fears and mitigate
harshness of internalized objects
Technique: re experience early
emotions and fantasies, therapist
pointing the difference between
1. Determinism
2. Either pessimistic or
optimistic
3. Causal
4. Unconscious
5. Social influence
6. Similarities
1. Margaret Mahler’s view
Psychological birth (first 3
years)
-child becomes an individual
separate from caregiver, leading
to sense of identity.
-Normal Autism (3 or 4 weeks)
-Normal Symbiosis (4/5)
-Separation-Individuation (4/5
month)
Overlapping substages:
1. Differentiation
2. Practicing
3. Reapproachment
4. Libidinal object constancy
2. Heinz Kohut’s view
-self evolves from a vague and
undiferrentiated image to precise
sense of individual identity.
Early narcissistic needs:
-Grandiose exhibitionistic self
- Idealized parent image
3. John Bowlby’s Attachment
theory
-Protest stage
-Despair
-Detachment stage
4. Mary Ainsworth Strange
Situation
- Secure attachment
-Anxious-resistant attachment
-Anxious-avoidant
Neuroses grow out of basic
conflict during childhood.
Aim: have patients give up
their idealized self image,
neurotic search for glory, and
self hatred to an acceptance of
the real self.
1. Low on generate research
and falsifiability
2. High on ability to organize
knowledge of neurotics.
3. Low on capacity to explain
what is known in general
people
4. Low in guide to action
5. Internally consistent
6. High parsimony
1. Deterministic
2. slightly free choice
3. Middle causal and teleology
4. Middle conscious and
unconscious
5. Social influences
6. Similaritites
Neurotic Needs:
1. Towards people (to protect
themselves against feelings of
helplessness). They
desperately strive for affection
and approval, or a powerful
partner who will take
responsibility for their loves
(horney called: Morbid
dependence/co-dependency)
- Affection and approval
- Powerful partner
- Restrict one’s life in narrow
borders
2. Against people
- Power
-Exploit others
-social recognition/prestige
-personal admiration
-ambition and personal
achievement
3. Away from people (to solve
the basic conflict of isolation )
-self-sufficiency and
independence
-perfection
NEUROTIC TRENDS:
1. Toward
2. Against
3. Away
Intrapsychic Conflicts
(originate from interpersonal
experiences/conflict, but as
they become part of a person’s
belief system, they develop a
life of their own.
-once a Freudian in his To improve patient’s
approach relationship with others.
-Humanistic Psychoanalysis Client: disorders out of
interperso difficulties
Client: seek sarisfaction of Aim: uncover difficulties. Retore
human needs their ability to participate in
Aim: know themselves consensually validated
RelationshiP: person to person experiences. Give up some
(not see client as ill) security operations
1. Low internal consistency 1. low falsifiability, parsimony 1. High generate research
and parsimony 2. moderate org knowledge 2. average falsifiability
2. Nearly sterile in generating 3. fair to moderate guide to 3. high internal consistency
research action 4. high guide to action
5. low parsimony
1. Both pessimistic and opti 1. Similarities
2. Balance free choice and 2. Interpersonal relations 1. middle (free choice vs
determinism 3. Social influence determinism)
3. Teleology 4. Neither opti nor pessi 2. anatomy, history,
4. Conscious personality
5. Social 3. optimistic
6. Similarities, also has little 4. causality
uniquesness 5. mixed conscious and
unconscious
6. social
7. uniqueness
Burden of Freedom:
-people are freaks of the
universe
- reason is both a curse and
blessing
-more economic/political
freedom=more isolation
-results in basic anxiety
Positive Freedom:
-way towards self-realization
- to be free and not alone
-full expression of both rational
and emotional potentialities
-successful solution to human
dilemma (being part and
separated from the world)
-overcomes terror of loneliness
Twin components:
LOVE and WORK
Called “Character
Orientations”
- Person’s relatively
permanent way of
relating to people and
things
- Personality: totality of
qualities that makes a
person unique
- Character: most
important quality
- Substitute to instincts
- 2 ways of relating to the
world:
1. assimilation
2. Socialization
Non productive orientations:
 1. neighbourly love 1. Receptive character
2. sexual love 1. Idealized self-image (passively receive)
3. occupation (negative influences result to 2. Exploitative character
people alienating from (harshly getting things)
- psychologically healthy people themselves, thus desperation to 3. Hoarding character (keeping
are active in solving these. acquire a stable sense of things)
identity occurs. This dilemma 4. Marketing character (selling
6. Style of life is molded by can then be solved by creating themselves)
people’s creative power. and idealized self image ---
positive view of themselves Productive Orientation:
- It molds the style of life. that only lie with their personal - where people can resolve basic
- Freedom to create our own belief system) Through: human dilemma
style of life. -Compliant (good and saintly)
- Makes each person a free -Aggressive (strong, heroic, 1. Working (creative self-
individual. omnipotent) expression)
-Detached (wise, self 2. loving (care, responsibility,
Evolution: sufficient, independent). respect, knowledge)
1. Aggression to Masculine Protest Rather than growing for self -Biophilia (passionate love of
to Superiority, then success. realization, they more toward life)
Final goal - personal superiority or actualizing idealized self 3. reasoning/thincking (cant be
the goal of success. unifies image. separated from work and love)
personality and renders all behavior ELEMENTS:
comprehensible. a. The neurotic search for glory
Creative Power – determines the - Need for perfection
final goal. people’s ability to freely -Neurotic ambition
shape their behavior and create - vindictive triumph
their own personality. b. Neurotic claims
c. Neurotic pride
Age 4-5, people already have their 2. Self hatred
creative power and can set their -result from conflict between
final goal. real self and idealized self
6 ways to express:
Striving Force as Compensation a. Relentless demands on the
Striving For Personal Superiority self
---- inferiority complex b. Merciless self-accusation
Striving for Success c. Self-contempt
---- Psychologically healthy d. Self-frustration
individuals e. Self-torment
f. Self-torture
Subjective Perceptions: (the g. Self destructive actions and
manner in which they strive impuses
depends on their subjective
perceptions of reality) similar to FEMININE PSYCHOLOGY
Kelly’s Constructive - Opposed adler’s
Alternativism. masculine protest.
- Fictionalism (Fictions) - For horney, psychic
(perceptions of differences between
reality/expectations of the men and women are
future.) Ex: masculine result of cultural and
protest social expectations.
Methods of Investigation

1. Word Association test

- to demonstrate the validity of
Freud’s concept that unconscious
operates as an autonomous
process.

-Jung’s purpose of the test is to

uncover feeling-toned complexes.

2. Dream Analysis
- Jung agreed to Freud in his
concept of latent contents,
believing that deeper meaning for
these contents lie in unconscious.
- purpose is to uncover elements
in the unconscious (personal and
collective) and associate them to
consciousness to facilitate the
process of self-realization.
-what we cannot express during
wake life will reveal itself in
dreams.

Include:
(1) Big Dreams – different
meaning of dreams for
everyone.
(2) Typical dreams – similar
meanings (archetypes)
(3) Earliest dream remembered
– experiences/memories from
age 3-4 years.

3. Active Imagination
- requires a person to begin with
any impression, then concentrate
on such impression until it starts
to move. They will be asked to
follow these images until they can
be freely communicated by the
patients..

-purpose is to reveal archetypal

images emerging from
unconscious

-more advantageous than dream

analysis because this method is
highly in the conscious state.