CAS PS 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Conversion Disorder, Edward Thorndike, Empiricism

• School: Boston University
• Department: Psychological & Brain Sciences
• Course: CAS PS 101
• Professor: Tracy Dunne

Document Summary

Adult personality is largely determined by childhood experiences. Defense mechanisms help us cope with anxiety and trauma; distort/deny reality so we feel better. Repression - keeping bad memories away; very common. Conversion disorder - mental symptom turns into physical problem to alleviate mental stress. Behavior - reflects unconscious, inevitable conflict between impulses and defenses. Struggle between these conflicting energies is ever-moving/changing in nature, hence the term psychodynamic. Knowledge is gained empirically - through experience(s) Psychology should study only observable responses, not unobservable mental processes. At birth, the mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate) upon which experience is written. Environment shapes behavior through association of events with one another. Classical conditioning - learning based on association between events (conditioning = learning); classical meaning original; anticipating . Observed that dogs salivate at events associated with food (bag opening, bowl hitting floor, foot steps) Paired neutral objects with food = neutral object triggers salivating. Stimulus = food = salivating; all becomes involuntary.