Studying for tonight's test

Freud’s psychosexual stages of development, including the “developmental tasks”

Oral Stage
Tasks - get basic nuturing.

Anal Stage
Tasks - learning independence, accepting personal power, and learning to express negative feelings such as rage and aggression.

Phallic Stage
Tasks - gaining love and approval of the opposite gender parent.

Latency Stage
Tasks - socialization and making friendships.

Genital Stage
Tasks - investing sexual energy into more acceptable outlets, such as forming friendships, engaging in art or sports or preparing for a career. Later, the move to adulthood and caring for others.

For the record, I agree with the author of my textbook. Freud's stages do have some value, but Erikson's psychosocial stages give a more complete picture. Together, they work well.




Defense mechanisms

Repression - the involuntary removal of something from consciousness.
Denial - closing one's eyes to reality.
Reactive formation - defending against an impulse by actively expressing the opposite impulse.
Projection - attributing to others one's own unacceptable desires and impulses.
Displacement - discharging an impulse by shifting it to a "safe" target.
Rationalization - manufacturing a reason to explain away bruises to the ego.
Sublimation - diverting the energies from an impulse into an acceptable outlet.
Regression - reverting to an immature stage when there were fewer demands.
Introjection - "swallowing" the standards of others.
Identification - identifying with a cause or larger group to have feelings of self-worth.
Compensation - focusing on certain strengths to call attention away from weaknesses.


Evidence for postulating the concept of the unconscious
Dreams, slips of the tongue, posthypnotic suggestions, free-association material, projective material and the symbolic content of psychotic symptoms.

Therapeutic techniques
(I'm not posting the answers here because I don't have the time to write them out.)

· Object-relations theory

· Ego psychology

· Brief psychodynamic therapy (BPT)


The “fundamental rule” for the client in psychoanalysis

To say whatever comes to mind without self-censorship.


The basic aim of psychoanalytic therapy

To make the unconscious, conscious, and to strengthen the ego, so that behavior is based more on reality and less on instinctual cravings or irrational guilt.