HD 3700 1st Edition Lecture 8 Outline of Last Lecture I Hamlet and his step father II Signal anxiety and compromise formation III Compromise formation in the formulation of Fat Lady Outline of Current Lecture I Freud and the dynamic mind II Case Study Joe III Compromise formation in the formulation of Fat Lady IV The Oedipal struggle of The Laughing Man Current Lecture I Freud and the dynamic mind The dynamic mind is the notion that the mind is complex Everything is mental associations o Attention associating to what you re perceiving o Creativity love etc We have associations we are aware of and associations we are not aware of thoughts that are taboo culturally unacceptable We build neural networks of memories that we associate to o Our early experiences are always part of our associations The anticipated life history o Narrative describing the course of their future life from now to death not an idealized life but the life you plausibly expect to live o Coded early memory of mother and father on negative and positive aspects o The more negative the early memory of your mother was the more likely your future life narrative was on depressive dimension o Follow up five years later give a new life narrative same exact stats When people use their imagination they are implicitly using their early memories When you are imagining something in your future part of your brain is associating to your path Model of a dynamic mind o Early memories are part of it early trauma feelings wishes thoughts o Hysterics minds associating in a certain way that was causing symptoms that is a model of the dynamic mind o Prof is asking us to consider the dynamic mind not all of Freud s ideas Asking us to recognize that the mind is complex with forces underneath that are affecting mood thoughts etc Signal anxiety and the mobilization of defenses o Children become anxious when their parents are angry with them they can anticipate when their parents might get angry with them o This anxiety mobilizes the mind to defend against this thought a defense is the way that the mind alters mental associations o In the case of Sarah the ego mobilizes the defense reaction formation II Case Study Joe Joe is a first year student at Cornell He comes from a middle class family living in a small city in Pennsylvania His dad is a pharmaceuticals salesman his mom is a teacher and his little sister is fourteen and beginning high school Joe s father is doing well financially but always thought he should have done better and been more successful Since Joe was one of the best students in his class and the first from his school to attend Cornell his dad was especially proud Joe s mother always thought the world of him and was sometimes impatient with her husband They had a good marriage but Joe was always somehow aware of the tension between them They drive Joe to Ithaca drop him off at his dorm and though a bit surprised by how sad he is to see them go he jumps feet first into campus life He joins clubs makes friends chooses good courses and finds he can t get himself to study He falls asleep or feels too antsy to study and by the fourth week he s really concerned By the sixth week having done poorly on several prelims arrives at CAPS the university counseling for help Even with therapy they are making no progress o One day he looks at the therapist and asks if the therapist is feeling bad about himself Joe says you ve been trying to help me but I m not getting better maybe do you think you re a bad therapist o Therapist immediately recognizes Joe s problem Joe does not want to surpass his father by being more successful than him o Joe is trying to protect his dad from his mom s criticism once he realizes this it frees up Joe so that he can succeed Joe s Compromise Formation o I want to succeed but I can t seem to get to work o Conscious Wish To Succeed at Cornell o Unconscious Wishes To Protect Father To Surpass Father To Be Mom s Favorite o Guilt about being more successful than his father o Conflict between conscious and unconscious wishes and fears o SIGNAL ANXIETY COMPROMISE FORMATION o He comes to college tries to work but finds he can t do it The Conscious Unconscious Wishes are Partially Gratified o We are less aware of our fear of success Take away from Freud o When you re in conflict that is what causes symptoms What will cause problems for you are things that you are not able to resolve because you re in conflict III Concepts from Fat Lady Transference o Betty has transference towards therapist speaks of wanting to be a therapist too Counter transference o Therapist had a need to idealize women hated obese women Defenses within the hour o Therapist realized that Betty was trying to entertain him in an attempt to distract him and herself from her real feelings o This distraction kept her out of touch of processing the grief of her father s death which she never really faced o Betty admits that she is never genuine with anyone o Once the therapist stops her from distracting the grief comes out and she is honest and engaging Interpreting the defenses o Betty s memories as she loses weight Betty gained weight after her father died from cancer steadily gained for 20 years Working through Carlos dying of cancer allows her to work through her father s death from cancer Goes on diet starts to lost weight As she loses weight she beings to remember emotionally where she was in her life at these lower weights Re experienced the traumatic unresolved events of her life when she was at the certain weight Betty s body remembered what her consciousness had forgot Memories of her father permeated these flashbacks More she approached the weight she was when her father died the more memories she had of him It was her own life not her father s that was unfulfilled Part of the reason she gained weight was a magical way of not dying of being like her father before he got sick o Associated weight loss with dying Compromise formation o I want to lose weight and be close to a man but o Conscious wish To live her life fully o Unconscious wishes To marry her father to surpass her mother o Unconscious fear To be thin is to waste away and die To live is to risk terrible loss o Signal anxiety Compromise formation o Betty is obese jolly and totally alone o The conscious and unconscious wishes are partially gratified o As she loses the weight she is able to be genuine with someone Betty and therapist o Points out that the therapist never touched
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