Lecture# 30
Psychotherapy (Part I)
Can we change our defining characteristic, and the answer to that is yes
As a whole or a group after a certain amount of time, you will naturally gain or lose characteristics,
naturally become more conscious, more emotionally stable, etc. (as we age)
People want to know if they can change if they make a deliberate effort to change, and the answer is yes,
psychotherapy does work, by reading psychology books, meeting a therapists, they will succeed, cope
better with their problems and stress, etc.
As part of psychotherapist studies, they must have a theory of personality, of how people work, fi your
going to have an idea of how and what depresses them
Series of personality change are based on a more basic theory of personality
One very prominent theory of change mechanisms is Freudian psychoanalysis
Freud changed how we saw ourselves, prior to Freud we though of ourselves of masters of our own
experiences, that consciousness is primary, but Freud said that we may be captains of our own ship but
only a fool goes on board of a ship and does not take into account the ocean, the unconscious ocean
that we sit on is really what tells us where we go as people
Early childhood is important, the ideas of conflict, anxiety, all of Freud’s ideas
Core concepts is the idea of conflict, one of the things that Freud captured in his thinking is the idea that
humans are conflicted, we are often ambivalent about things, our choices are not often clear cut,
competing motives that determine how and what we do
Conflict to Freud was anxiety, being that the egos inability to keep control of things, when the ego starts to
think I cant control the id and superego, there is experience of anxiety, and persistent inability to
manage the anxiety leads to symptoms what Freud calls neurosis=persistent anxiety and manifestation
in daily life
Wide range of defence mechanisms to protect ourselves from anxiety, but they don’t always work, cannot
withstand magnitude of anxiety
Freud also had theories of development, at the heart of Freudian thinking was a developmental theory, how
personality was built over infancy and childhood, sequence of stages how personality was put together,
we all moved through the oral, the anal and the fallic stages
And how at each stage, particu
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