CF501, CF 502
Psychodynamic
Psychology I and II
Distance Learning
Instructor: R. Dennis
Shelby, PhD
rdshelby@icsw.edu
Overview
This class
explores the series of lectures Freud gave at the
University
of Vienna from
1915-1917. And the New
Introductory Lectures published in 1933. The
Introductory Lectures form a summary
statement of the state of psychoanalytic theory by the time of the
First World
War. The New Introductory Lectures
address the revisions and extensions of Freud’s Theory in intervening
years. Combined, the two sets of lectures
give us an
excellent introduction to the central concepts of Freudian theory. The lectures also give us an indication of
what ideas Freud felt were essential to understanding his view of the
human
mind and clinical treatment.
Texts
Freud, S.
(1916-1917),
Introductory lectures on
psychoanalysis. Standard Edition, Volumes 15 and 16
Freud, S.
(1933), The
new introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. Standard Edition
Volume 22.
I suggest your
purchase copies through Amazon or other
source. The lectures are also available
in the PEP archive of our digital library.
Class Goals
1) To provide
an introduction to the major concepts of
psychoanalytic theory
2)
To provide an introduction to the ‘logic’ of
psychoanalytic theory
3)
To explore the implications of psychoanalytic theory for
psychodynamic treatment
A
short summary of each lecture, case or theoretical paper
can be found in the Freud Abstracts.
They are available online at http://nyfreudian.org/abstracts/
Class Format
A
seminar/lecture format will be used. I
will present a short summary of each
lecture. Each group of readings is accompanied by a quote that we will
unpack
as a group. Use the quote for the class
and the summaries in the Abstracts as a guide to your readings for each
class
session. We will attempt the material
for “two classes” per meeting for the Introductory Lectures. For the New Introductory Lectures and the
Case Studies we will use one class session.
Evaluation
Evaluation
with be based 30% on class participation and 70%
on an open book essay final exam at the end of each semester. The
questions
will be distributed towards the last class meeting and will cover
central concepts
addressed in the readings. Attendance
is mandatory for both online and onsite classes except in emergencies.
The
Introductory
Lectures
Class 1 Introductions
Reading: Lecture I
Unpack:
The talk of
which psychoanalytic treatment consists brooks
no listener; it cannot be demonstrated.
A neurasthenic or hysterical patient can of course, like
any other, be
introduced to students in a psychiatric lecture, he will give an
account of his
complaints and symptoms but of nothing else.
The information required by analysis will be given by him
only on
condition of his having a special emotional attachment to the doctor;
he would
become silent as soon as he observed a single witness to whom he felt
indifferent, For this information concerns what is most intimate in his
mental
life, everything that, as a socially independent person he must conceal
from
other people, and, beyond that, every-thing that, as a homogenous
personality,
he will not admit to himself.
Lecture
I, 17-18, Standard
Edition, V.15
Class 2 Parapraxes
Have A Sense
Readings: Lectures II-IV
Unpack:
The question
will then be whether the particular mental
phenomenon has arisen immediately from somatic, organic and material
influence—in which case its investigation will not be part of
psychology—or
whether it is derived in the first instance from other mental
processes,
somewhere behind which the series of organic influence begins. It is
this
latter situation that we have in view when we describe a phenomenon as
a mental
process, and for that reason it is more expedient to clothe our
assertion in
the form; ‘the phenomenon has a sense.’ By ‘sense’ we understand
‘meaning’,
‘intention.’ ‘purpose’ and ‘position in a continuous psychical context.’
Lecture
IV, 60-61
Standard Edition, V.15
Class 3 Dreams
Have A Sense
Readings:
Lectures V-IX
Unpack:
Even if dreams
are superfluous, however, they do exist, and
we can try to account for their existence.
Why does mental life fail to go to sleep?
Probably because there is something that will
not allow the mind any peace. Stimuli
impinge upon it in the state of sleep.
And here we see a way of access to an understanding of
dreams. We can take various dreams and try
to
discover what the stimulus was which was seeking to disturb sleep and
to which
the reaction was a dream.
Lecture
V, 89,
Standard Edition, V.15
Class 4
Dreams
Have A Sense cont.
Readings:
Lectures X-IV
Unpack:
But you must
not blame the dream itself on account of its
evil content. Do not forget that is
performs the innocent and indeed useful function of preserving sleep
from
disturbance. This wickedness is not part
of the essential nature of dreams.
Indeed you know too that there are dreams which can be
recognized as the
satisfaction of justified wishes and of pressing bodily needs. These, it is true, have no dream-distortion;
but they have no need of it, for they can fulfill their function
without
insulting the ethical and aesthetic purpose of the ego. Bear in mind,
too, that
dream-distortion is proportionate to two factors, on the one hand it
becomes
greater the worse the wish that has to be censored; but on the other
hand it
also become greater the more severe the demands of censorship at the
moment.
Lecture
IX, 143,
Standard Edition, V.15
Class 5 The
Timelessness and History of Dreams
Readings: Lecture XIII
Unpack:
First, the
regression of the dream-work is not only a formal
but also a material one. It not only
translates our thoughts into a primitive form of expression; but it
also revives
the characteristics of our primitive mental life—the old dominance of
the ego,
the initial impulses of our sexual life, and even, indeed, our old
intellectual
endowment, if symbolic connection may be regarded as such. And
secondly, all
this, which is old and infantile and was once dominate and alone
dominant, must
to-day be ascribed to the unconscious, our ideas of which are now
becoming
altered and extended, ‘Unconscious’ is no longer the name of what is
latent at
the moment; the unconscious is a particular realm of the mind with its
own
wishful impulses, its own mode of express and its peculiar mental
mechanisms
which are not in force elsewhere. But
the latent dream thoughts which we have discovered by interpreting
dreams do
not belong to this realm; they are on the contrary thoughts just as we
might
have thought them in waking life.
Lecture
XIII, 211-212,
Standard Edition, V.15
Class 6 Symptoms
Have A Sense
Readings: Lectures
XVI-XVII
Unpack:
It may perhaps
be due to the fact that, as a doctor, one usually
makes so little contact with neurotic patients and pays so little
attention to
what they say that one cannot imagine the possibility that anything
valuable
could be derived from their communications—the possibility, that is, of
carrying out any thorough observations upon them.
Lecture
XVI, 244
Standard Edition, V.16
Class
7 Trauma,
Fixation and Repression
Readings: Lectures XVIII –IX
Unpack
Traumatic
neurosis are not in their essence the same things
as the spontaneous neuroses which we are in the habit of investigating
and repeating
by analysis…But in one respect we may insist that there is a complete
agreement
between them. The traumatic neurosis
give a clear indication that a fixation to the moment of the traumatic
accident
lies at their roots. These patients
regularly
repeat the traumatic situation in the dreams; where hysteriform attacks
occur
that admit of an analysis, we find that the attack corresponds to at
complete
transplanting of the patient into the traumatic situation.
It is as though the patient had not finished
with the traumatic situation, as though they were still faced with it
as an
immediate task which has not been dealt with…
Lecture
XVIII,
274-275, Standard Edition, V.16
Class 8
Sexual
Life and Psychological Life
Readings: Lectures XX-XXI
Unpack:
The claim made
by homosexuals or inverts to being exceptions
collapses at once when we learn that homosexual impulses are invariably
discovered in evy single neurotic, and that a fair number of symptoms
give
expression to this latent inversion.
These who call themselves homosexual are only the
conscious and manifest
inverts, whose number is nothing compared to that of latent homosexuals.
Lecture
XX, 307,
Standard Edition, V.16
Class 9
Development, Regression and Symptom Formation
Readings: Lectures XXII and XXIII
Unpack:
The importance
of the part played by phantasy in the
formation of symptoms will be made clear to you be what I have to tell
you. I have explained how in the case of
frustration the libido cathects regressively the positions which it had
given
up but to which some quotas of it have remained adhering.
I shall not with draw this or correct it, but
I have to insert a connecting link, how
does the libido find its way to these points of fixation?
All the objects and trends which the libido
had given up have not yet been given up in every sense.
They or their derivatives are still retained
with a certain intensity in phanstasies.
Thus the libido need only withdraw onto phantasies in
order to find the
path open to every repressed fixation.
These phantasies have enjoyed a certain amount of
toleration: they have
not come into conflict with the ego, however sharp the contrasts
between them
nay have been, so long as a particular condition is observed.
Lecture
XIII, 373,
Standard Edition, V.16
Class
10 Neurosis
of Everyday Life
Reading: Lecture XXIV
Unpack:
As we know the
generation of anxiety is the ego’s reaction
to danger and the signal for taking flight.
If so, is seems plausible to supposed that in neurotic
anxiety the ego
is making a similar attempt at flight from the demand by its libido,
that it is
treating this internal danger as though it were and external one, this would therefore fulfill our expectation
that where anxiety is has shown there is something one is afraid of. Just as the attempts at flight from an
external danger is replaced by standing firm and the adoption of
expedient
measures of defence, so too the generation of neurotic anxiety gives
place to
the formation of symptoms, which results in the anxiety being bound.
Lecture
XXV, 405,
Standard Edition, V.16
Class 11
Libido,
Narcissism and Transference
Reading: Lecture XXVI-XXVII
Unpack:
This new fact,
which we thus recognize so unwillingly, is
known by us as transference. We
mean a transference of feelings on to
the person of the doctor, since we do not believe that the situation in
the
treatment could justify the development of such feelings
We suspect, on the contrary, that the whole
readiness of the feelings is derived from elsewhere, that they were
already
prepared in the patient and, upon the opportunity offered by the
analytic
treatment, are transferred on to the person of the doctor,
Transference can appear as a passionate demand
for love or in more moderate forms; in
place of a wish to be loved, a wish can emerge between a girl and an
old man to
be received as a favorite daughter; the libidinal desire can be toned
down into
a proposal for an inseparable , but ideally nonsexual friendship.
Lecture
XXVII, 443,
Standard Edition, V.16
Class 12 The Process of Psychoanalytic Treatment
Reading:
Lecture XXVIII
Unpack:
Thus our
therapeutic work falls into two phases. In
the first, all the libido is forced from
the symptoms into the transference and concentrated there; in the
second, the
struggle is waged around its new object and the libido is liberated
from
it, The change which is decisive for a
favorable outcome is the elimination of repression in the renewed
conflict, so
that the libido cannot withdraw one more from the ego by flight into
the
unconscious… by means of the work of
interpretation which transform what is unconscious into what in
conscious the
ego in enlarged at the cost of the unconscious; by means of
instruction, it is
made conciliatory toward the libido and inclined to grant it some
satisfaction
and it repugnance to the claims of the libido is diminished by the
possibility
of disposing of a portion of it by
sublimation.
Lecture
XXVIII, 454,
Standard Edition, V.16
New
Introductory
Lectures
Class 13 Dreams
Revisited
Readings Lectures XXVIX and XXX
Unpack: Let there be
no misunderstand, however. The
associations to the dream are not yet the latent dream thoughts. The latter are contained in the associations
like an alkali in the mother-liquor, but not quite completely contained
in
therm. On the one hand, the association
give us far more than we need for formulating the latent
dream-thoughts-namely
all the explanations, transitions and connections which the patient’s
intellect
is bound to produce in the course of his approach to the dream-thoughts. On the other hand, an association often comes
to a stop precisely before the genuine dream-thought:
it has only to come near to it and has only
had contact with it through allusions.
At that point we intervene on our own; we fill in the
hints, drawn
undeniable conclusion, and give explicit utterance to what the patient
has only
touched on in this associations.
Lecture
XXVIV, 12,
Standard Edition, V.22
Class 14 The Tri-Partite
Model and Anxiety
Readings
Lecture XXXI and XXXII
Unpack: You
yourselves have no doubt assumed that what is known as ‘character’ is
to be
ascribed entirely to the ego. We have
already made out a little of what it is that creates character. First and foremost there is the incorporation
of the former parental agency as a super-ego, which is no doubt its
most
important and decisive portion, and, further, identifications formed as
precipitate of abandoned object-relations.
And we may now add as contributions to the construction of
character
acquires—to being with in making its repression and later, by a more
normal
method, when it rejects unwished-for instinctual impulses.
Lecture
XXXII,91,
Standard Edition, V.22
Class 15 The
Theory of Femininity
Readings
Lecture XXXIII
Unpack: A woman’s
identification with her mother allows us to distinguish two strata: the pre-Oedipus one which rests on her
affectionate attachment to her mother and takes her as a model, and the
later
on from the Oedipus complex which seeks to get rid of her mother and
taker her
placed with her father. We are no doubt
justified in saying that much of both of them is left over for the
future and
that neither of them is adequately surmounted in the course of
development. But the phase of the
affectionate
pre-Oedipal attachment is the decisive one for a woman’s future: during
it
preparations are made for the acquisition of the characteristics with
which she
will later fulfill her role in the sexual function and perform her
invaluable
social tasks. It is in the
identification too that she acquires her attractiveness to a man, whose
Oedipus
attachment to his mother is kindles into passion. How
often it happens, however, that is only
his son who obtains who what he himself aspired to!
One gets an impression that a man’s love and
a woman’s are a phase apart psychologically.
Lecture XXXIII, 134, Standard Edition, V.22
Class
16 Summary and Looking Forward
Readings
Lectures XXXIV and XXXV
Unpack: The
expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect,
be
derived from the layman’s belief that the neurosis are something quite
un-necessary which have no right whatever to exist.
Whereas in fact they are severe,
constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to
only a
few attach but persist as a rule over long periods or throughout life, Our analytic experience that they can be
extensively influenced, if the historical precipitating causes and
accidental
auxiliary factors of the illness can be dealt with has led us to
neglect the
constitutional factors in our therapeutic practice, and in any case we
can do
nothing about it; but in theory we ought always to bear it in mind.
Lecture
XXXIV, 153,
Standard Edition, V.22
Case Histories
Class 17 Frauline Elisabeth von R.
Freud,
S. (1893-95). Frauline
Elisabeth von R.. Standard Edition, Volume 2, 135-182. (pep)
Class 18 Little Hans
Freud,
S. (1909) . Analysis of a
phobia in a five-year-old boy.
Standard Edition, Volume 10, 1-148. (pep)
Class 19 The Rat Man
Freud,
S. (1909). Notes on a case of
obsessional neurosis. Standard
Edition, Volume 10, 151-251. (pep)
Class 20
Selected Papers
Freud, S.
(1912).
The
dynamics of transference.
In The standard edition (Vol. XII)
Freud, S. (1914).
Remembering,
repetition and working through. In The standard edition
(Vol. XII)
Freud, S. (1915).
Observations
on transference-love.
In The standard edition (Vol. XII)
Class 21 Contemporary Perspectives
Ornstein, Anna.
(1993). Little
Hans: His phobia and his Oedipus Complex. In B. Magid (Ed.), Freud’s
case studies: Self-psychological perspectives (pp. 87-106).
Hillsdale, NJ:
The Analytic Press, Inc.
Carveth, D. (2001). The unconscious
need for punishment: Expression or evasion of the sense of guilt? Psychoanalytic
Studies, 3 (2) http://www.yorku.ca/dcarveth/guilt.html
Class 22
Contemporary Perspectives Continued
Brenner, C.
(2002). The mind as conflict and compromise formation. http://users.rcn.com/brill/egoid.html
Laub,
D. and Lee
S.(2003). Thanatos
and massive psychic trauma. Journal of the American
Psychoanalytic
Association, 51 (2)
Klein, G. ( 1976)
Freuds two theories of sexuality.
In M.Gill and L. Goldberger, (Eds.)
Psychoanlytic theory: An Exploration of essentials. NY:
International Universities Press
Contents
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for Clinical Social Work
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