What's the big deal about Freud???

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What's the big deal about Freud???
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Term Test 4

• mean 73.6
• SD 12.6
• range 39-100
• one Q discarded
• optional exam viewing to follow once everyone has
  written test

• Final exam
• Thurs April 15, 2 pm
• Winter semester only
• 30 of course grade, mult choice, up to 100 Qs
• 60 last third, 20 middle third, 20 first third
• optional review session, last day of classes

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Three Minute Review

• SOCIAL INFLUENCE OBEDIENCE
• Why do people obey to an extreme degree?
• Cult followers
• Jonestown, Waco
• bureaucrats in genocides
• Nazi Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, etc.
• Milgrams Obedience Experiments
• The majority of people will follow orders to an
  extreme degree
• Results surprised many people, esp. psychologists
• Affected by proximity to victim, proximity to
  authority, and reactions of others in same
  situation
• Not affected by personality traits
• Stanford Prison Experiment
• Ordinary people get caught up in roles

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• Banality of evil (Hannah Arendt)
• Perhaps Adolf Eichmann was no different than the
  rest of us
• Psychology of genocide
• difficult living conditions, fierce competition
  for resources
• strong in- vs. out-groups
• violence, blaming the victim
• violence justifies itself
• cant stop because of cognitive dissonance

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Take a Personality Test

• Take the test
• Put your ID but NOT your name
• Check the web site for results
• Read instructions on the web carefully

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Its a Small World After All

• Stanley Milgram also did other cool, more
  optimistic experiments
• Milgram (1967) -- If you pick any two people at
  random, how many intermediate acquaintances does
  it take to establish a link between them?

Timothy Kuhn Boston, Mass.
Joe Smith Omaha, Neb.
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Six Degrees of Separation

• Stanley Milgram (1967)
• sent 300 letters to randomly-selected people in
  Omaha Nebraska
• asked them to have the letters relayed to a
  specific person in Boston whose name, age,
  location (but not their specific address) and
  occupation was specified
• the original person was asked to send the letter
  to someone they thought would be closer to the
  target and then to get that someone to follow the
  same instructions
• If you do not know the target-person on a
  first-name basis, then pass the document folder
  on to one friend that you feel is most likely to
  know the target. That friend must be someone you
  know on a first-name basis."

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Six Degrees of Separation

• Milgram followed the sequence of transmissions
• On average, it took 5.5 (rounded up to 6)
  intermediate people
• Conclusion Any two people are connected by six
  degrees of separation

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Six Degrees of Separation

• But
• Milgram recruited only particularly sociable
  people
• only 30 of the letters arrived
• success rate was much lower for low income
  participants
• sociologists suggest than, on average, most
  people know about 300 people on a first-name
  basis, but there is likely wide variability in
  this number
• some argue that Milgrams number was too large
  because there were probably other shorter routes
  unknown to the participants

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Links
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Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
In Hollywood, there are 3 degrees
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Hubs
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Hubs
10 most connected actors in Hollywood
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Hubs
Internet nodes in 1998 800 million Average
degrees of separation 19
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Sex Degrees of Copulation
Matthew Perry

• HIV/AIDS hub
• Patient Zero Gaetan Dugas
• Canadian flight attendant
• 250 partners/year
• 40 of 248 people diagnosed with AIDS in 1982 had
  had sex with him or someone who had

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9-11 Terrorist Links
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Brain Connections

• amygdala appears to be a hub

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Looking back at Freud Genius or BS?
Sigmund Freud 1896 - 1939
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Freud and Pop Culture

• Freud is the name most associated with Psychology
• Freud has had the greatest impact on literature
  and pop culture of any psychologist
• psychoanalysis
• anal retentive
• id, ego, superego
• penis envy
• Freudian slip

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Three Revolutions in Human Thought( according
to Freud himself)

• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
• the earth is not the centre of the universe

• Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
• humans are not special, they are just a species
  like any other animals

• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
• humans are not motivated only by their conscious
  thoughts but largely by unconscious (and often
  unpleasant) motives

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The Essence of Freud

• Every man has reminiscences which he would not
  tell to everyone but only to his friends. He has
  other matters in his mind which he would not
  reveal even to his friends, but only to himself,
  and that in secret. But there are other things,
  which a man is afraid to yell even to himself,
  and every decent man has a number of such things
  stored away in his mind.
• Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Notes from the Underground

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Freuds Insights

• Much of human thought is unconscious
• Humans can have conflicting motivations
• Bridging of thoughts and urges
• Early developmental events can have a large
  effect on adult behavior

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Historical Context

• Victorian era
• 19th century
• Freud spent most of his life in Vienna, Austria
• trained as a physiologist and neurologist
• interesting to see how ideas are framed by
  historical context

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Hysteria

• psychogenic due to an unknown psychological
  cause rather than a physiological cause
• originally thought to be only females (hystera
  womb)
• symptoms
• paralysis of some body part or loss of one of the
  senses with no apparent physiological cause
• could be treated with hypnosis
• suggests psychological cause
• Freud and Josef Breuer studied hysteria and wrote
  Studies of Hysteria together
• now known as conversion disorder

glove anesthesia
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Hysteria Treatment

• they thought it came from repressed memories
  (usually of sexual abuse)
• repression unacceptable thoughts are pushed out
  of memory
• and that it could be cured through catharsis
• catharsis explosive release of dammed up
  emotions
• hypnosis
• free association
• psychoanalysis
• talking cure

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Case Study Anna O.(In case youre ever a
contestant on Jeopardy her real name was Bertha
Pappenheim)

• many symptoms
• loss of speech
• disturbances in vision
• headaches
• paralysis and loss of feeling in right arm
• she said symptoms started when she was unable to
  express a strong emotion
• under hypnosis, she experienced emotions and
  gained relief from hysterical symptoms
  (catharsis)
• supposedly cured

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Desires not Memories

• the idea that hysteria was caused by repressed
  sexual memories was very unpopular!
• Freud also realized that many of his patients
  seduction experiences had never occurred
• so Freud changed his theory
• The Interpretation of Dreams
• remember manifest content and latent content?
• hysteria caused not by repressed memories but by
  repressed sexual desires

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Structures of the Mind

• conscious
• preconscious
• unconscious

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Id

• source of psychic energy
• fully unconscious
• contains the libido
• libido sexual drive
• pleasure principle obtain immediate
  gratification of desires
• ignores reality
• the dark, inaccessible part of our personality
  We approach the id with analogies we call it a
  chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations.
  It is filled with energy reaching it from the
  instincts, but it has no organization, produces
  no collective will, but only a striving to bring
  about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs
  subject to the observance of the pleasure
  principle
• -- Sigmund Freud, 1933

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Superego

• conscience
• internalization of rules and restrictions of
  society
• makes us feel guilty for doing or thinking the
  wrong things
• ego-ideal
• internalization of what a person would like to be
• makes us feel good for doing or thinking the
  right things

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Ego

• gets energy from the id
• thinking, planning, protective self
• reality principle tendency to satisfy the ids
  demands realistically by compromising between the
  demands of the id and superego
• these compromises can have psychological effects

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Could there be a brain-based interpretation?

• hierarchical functions

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Defense Mechanisms 1

• mental systems that become active when id and
  superego conflict
• denial
• unacceptable thoughts are ignored
• e.g., alcoholics ignore their problems
• repression
• unacceptable thoughts are kept away from
  consciousness
• e.g., forgetting an upsetting childhood event
  such as a death
• reaction formation
• behaving in the opposite way to how you really
  feel because the true feelings produce anxiety
• e.g., pretending you like somebody that you cant
  stand
• projection
• denying your faults but finding them in others
• e.g., an unemployed father yells at his son for
  being lazy

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Defense Mechanisms 2

• displacement
• redirection of an impulse away from the person
  who caused it and towards another
• e.g., a boy who is angry with his father beats on
  his little brother
• sublimation
• channeling psychic energy from an unacceptable
  drive to an acceptable outlet
• e.g., directing ones sex drive into creative
  efforts
• rationalization
• creating an acceptable justification for an
  unacceptable behavior
• e.g., a gambler says he lost a lot of money
  because he was trying to win some for his family
• conversion
• manifestation of a psychic conflict as a physical
  symptom
• e.g., hysteria, Anna O.

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Windows to the Unconscious

• The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
• Freudian slips
• suppressed intentions
• dreams
• manifest and latent content
• release of suppressed wishes
• BUT sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

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Psychosexual Stages of Development

• psycho the mind
• sexual physical pleasure more generally
• five stages of development
• oral stage
• anal stage
• phallic stage
• latent stage
• genital stage
• people may become fixated at a particular stage
  of development

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Oral Stage

• first two years
• baby must get food by suckling
• toddlers learn to chew and bite
• oral fixation
• can occur with improper weaning
• can lead to excessive mouth behaviors
• e.g., chewing on pens, smoking, overeating

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Anal Stage

• ages 2-4
• anal expressive stage
• child enjoys expelling feces
• fixation
• messy, wasteful
• anal retentive stage
• child enjoys retaining feces
• fixation
• obsessively clean and organized, stingy

• You might be anal retentive if
• you eat the MMs in color order.
• you fold your dirty clothes before putting them
  in the hamper.
• all your books, CDs, and movies have to be
  alphabetical order.
• you alphabetize your spices.
• you organize your closet by color, season, and
  fabric.
• you remove the tires to wash inside the
  wheel-wells of your vehicle.
• you wonder if anal retentive has a hyphen

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Phallic Stage Males

• ages 4-6
• Oedipus complex
• Greek myth of Oedipus
• little boys attachment to his mother
• usually repressed around age 5 but can affect
  personality throughout life
• unconscious wish to take fathers place
• worry of punishment by father (castration
  anxiety)
• fixation ? preoccupation with manhood, acting
  macho

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Phallic Stage Females

• Electra complex
• Greek myth of Electra
• little girls attachment to her father
• fewer conflicts than boys have
• penis envy
• girls realize boys have something they dont
• girls see this as a weakness
• girls gravitate toward their fathers
• fixation ? feelings of inferiority to men,
  flirting, seeking father figures to overpower
• if you cant have a penis, have a baby

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Latent and Genital Stages

• latent stage
• middle childhood
• sexual instincts are submerged
• genital stage
• adolescence through adulthood
• adult sexual attachments

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Carl Jung

• one of several neo-Freudians
• Swiss psychiatrist
• initially Freud called Jung his adopted eldest
  son, his crown prince and successor
• Jung challenged Freuds ideas
• Freud got peeved and they never talked again
  after 1913
• collective unconscious memories and ideas
  inherited from our ancestors
• archetypes universal thought forms and patterns
  that reside in the collective unconscious
• e.g., archetype of the hero

Carl Jung (1875-1961)
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Psychoanalytic (Over-)Interpretations
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Criticisms of Freudian theory

• experimenters cannot be objective
• confirmation bias
• Freud only took notes after the interview
• no verification of accuracy of patients reports
• case studies may not be representative
• anxious, wealthy Austrians
• psychoanalytic theory is not a theory
• concepts are too vague
• does not allow prediction
• What will happen to a boy with a harsh, rejecting
  mother and a weak, alcoholic father?
• developmental theories were based on studying
  adults not children
• experiments do not support theories
• no evidence for developmental fixations
• no correlation between toilet training and
  personality
• dream theory doesnt hold up well
• thirsty people dont dream of drinking
• some say Freud was male-centred or even
  misogynistic