Archive for November, 2013

Anna Freud is a fascinating woman in history, heir to her father’s thoughts, life and work. With a high intelligence and high curiosity, Freud pursued psychoanalysis after her time as a teacher. She studied fantasies and dreams, listened to her father, and worked at applying her knowledge to analyzing children and developing new ways to educate them.

According to Michael Shapiro in one article, “Anna Freud is widely regarded as the cofounder of psychoanalytic child psychology,” drawing on “the experiences of her childhood to develop her psychoanalytic theories.” I want to look at how Anna Freud and her theories claim a renewing tone towards humanity. First of all, Anna’s life is spent working. Her superb work ethic lets her progress far in the field of psychoanalysis, lets her discover new theories and add to old ones. She creates a way for patients, especially children, to be healed, restored to functioning level, renewed. She sees that things can be done to help people, she sees that by continued research, progress can be made that will benefit society.

One incredible and intriguing thing about Anna Freud is her complete dedication towards her father. Their relationship is one I wish I could observe. Anna is a faithful constant. She stays by her father’s side, learns what he teaches, becomes one of his patients, collaborates with him, expands his theories, carries on his life’s work, and cares for him. She even becomes his primary caregiver when he contracts cancer, not his wife. Anna Freud seems to be the dedicated, persevering type. She sees potential in humanity and works tirelessly to draw that out of people, of children, of her father.

I feel like we could learn a bit from Anna Freud. We, as ACU students, take so much for granted, and yet we sit. We procrastinate. We apply ourselves, many times only because we have to. We should work a little more like Anna Freud. We should think a little more about how we can help others more.

After listening in class about Lovass, I decided to write my post about his theory. Behaviorism is something that seems to be easy to attach to because of the success that comes from these techniques. Putting aside the controversial idea that humans are more than the sum of their behaviors, I think behaviorism can explain a lot about humanity. Behaviorism does not care where the disorder or behavior came from, but they care about changing it. Lovass’ study of applied behavior analysis with autistic children changed the field of psychology. Autistic children have poor social skills and Lovass used simple behavior techniques to train them out of it. His success rate was surprising to most.

Behaviorism doesn’t care about the past, or necessarily the present, but knows that the future can be different. I think that Lovass could be put in the category of New Hope. I know this seems pretty far out there, but his thinking is very futuristically oriented. Lovass knows there are flaws within the human system, but he also knows that he can fix them. Redemption is about fixing the problems and creating a new world. Lovass believed he could do just that with behavioral techniques.

Edwin Ray Guthrie developed several theories, including that of breaking habits. In Guthrie’s theory, he believed that a habit is an act that has become associated with a large number of stimuli. Therefore when there are more stimuli available when the act is present, the habit is stronger. The example he gave was smoking. Guthrie stated that this habit could be strong because of the amount of stimuli present. The way in which he proposed this habit should be broken is through performing another act rather than eliciting the desirable act. For Guthrie, he replaced smoking with eating an apple, and therefore the new, desirable act is elicited by the stimuli rather than the old, undesirable act.

            I believe that concepts of this theory can be similar to that of the redemption process. As one becomes a believer in Jesus Christ, their old self is in the process of being transformed. Often times, old habits or old ways of doing things must be broken. I believe that one of the primary ways of doing this is through prayer. Rather than acting on the “old habit,” one replaces that with prayer for strength or courage or whatever the need may be to get through the situation. While I believe that prayer is more than a means by which to break habits, it seems to make sense viewing this theory through a purely scientific approach.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov is well known for his research on animal digestion and responses. His likely most famous work included the discovery of the conditioned reflex, or the “Pavlov’s dog” experiment. The way he performed the experiment was to measure amounts of gastric juices excreted by a dog, paired with the stimuli associated with food powder. This experiment in animal instincts is easily paralleled to explain human behavior studies.

I would classify Ivan Pavlov in the Fall category. He has attempted to explain “quirks” of animal behavior, and what temptations we might give in to. By understanding simple reflexes or responses that can be induced within us, we can then begin to interpret how we respond. This is pertinent to the Fall because these principles are currently used in many forms of advertising research today in order to tempt people effectively. The Fall deals with innate human instincts that we have trouble controlling, I think Pavlov does a good job of delving into this. Conditioned reflexes even today are considered a cornerstone in the field of psychology.

Arguably, Creationism could embody Pavlov as well. I could see how someone might think that he is grasping how we were created and attempting to learn about humanity from the perspective of what makes us tick, rather than what breaks us.

J.B. Watson and his study of Little Albert was not the most ethical way of psychological study in any way. However, he teaches us a lot about the creation. He believes that all humans inherit the emotions of fear, rage, and love. Further, he believes that those emotions change into more specific emotions such as pride, hate, and jealousy. When we experience certain stimuli in association with these, often negative, emotions, it changes our response to them. The way we experience situations influences how we will react to them in the future regardless of the situation. In the study with Little Albert, Watson placed a rat in front of the baby. At first Little Albert was friendly toward the rat and reached out to interact with it. However, through making loud frightening noises to the baby, when reaching out, Little Albert slowly became afraid of the harmless rat. This shows how negative experiences can influence our attitudes toward stimuli. When presented, in the future, with a rat and without the noise, he was still afraid of the rat and would avoid it at all costs. Also, when presented with other furry stimuli, he still showed a fearful response. This shows how even though we may experience some negatively a few times, it can influence how we react in the future regardless of the circumstances. Little Albert was not presented with any kind of loud noises or anything that would elicit fear in him other than the rat that he was conditioned to be afraid of or the furry objects he associated with that fear as well. Watson is associated with creation because he was able to further explain, through less than ideal methods, that what we experience and what stimuli we associate with each other can create who we are and how we react to the world around us.

Clark Hull was a renowned American psychologist that lived during the 20th century and studied many subjects while receiving his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Michigan and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin. His most important contributions were drive theory and his extensive study on how motivation and learning influence how we behave. His field of study is very interesting to me because I too have often wondered what causes us to do the things we do and what factors go into our decisions. Hull found that when we are deprived of things, it creates desires and a drive that fuels us to pursue a goal that helps us survive. This seems very logical to me. My main criticism would be neglecting the spiritual aspect of our motivation and how our beliefs move us to things that are even counter to our nature. I think often times our natural impulses and the things that push us toward being desperate, Christ calls us to do things very differently than the world around us. Certainly we are called to survive and to take the steps necessary to do that but we are also called from Scripture to fight contrary to what seems natural. While most of his most notable is noted as obsolete now, he laid the ground work for many things, such as behaviorism and the practice of hypnosis.

C.S. Lewis says in his popular Mere Christianity, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

While Lewis was not referring to the same idea as Clark Leonard Hull, to me, his idea of an innate desire resonated similarly to Hull’s theory of reinforcement. For Hull, “a biological need creates a drive in the organism” (p. 437). The individual lives in a state of tension with unsatisfied desires. As they seek to relieve the tension, behaviors and motivations are reinforced.

I think that Hull’s Drive Reduction Theory aligns with both the Fall and Redemption. In the Fall, there is like Lewis describes, a desire that cannot be satisfied. We live in a state of tension. For Hull, the individual is perpetually in need (cold, thirsty, lonely), wanting to satisfy desires. Thankfully, because of Redemption we not only get a glimpse of “another world” but we actually are restored with God. Considering the Hull’s theory, an individual alleviates the tension as they engage in behaviors that restore them to balance (dressing warmer, getting a drink, making a friend). Motivation or the behaviors that relieve tension fuel humanity to seek restoration, Another World.

Melanie Klein is fascinating to me because of her emphasis on children.  As we saw on the study guide, Klein believed that “a child’s free, undirected play reveals unconscious conflicts” (516).  She believed that as early as age two, children could be analyzed.  Although many of Klein’s views did not prevail, she did contribute to the development of child analysis and play therapy.  As I think about which category to place her under – Creation, Fall, Redemption, New Creation – I can see where she may have contributed to each of these.  I think she touches on creation when she emphasizes the mother-child relationship and the mother’s breast.  I think she touches on the fall because she is talking about 2 year old conflicted children here!  I would also argue that she touches on redemption and new creation because analyzing a very young child is hopefully for the purposes of helping them overcome whatever “unconscious conflicts” they are experiencing.  However, I am going to say that Melanie Klein mostly informs us of the fall.

Klein informs us of the fall for a number of reasons in my mind.  First of all, she placed more emphasis on interpersonal relationships than she did on biological drives.  I think she takes a good step here, widening her perspective beyond solely the biological.  But, I think it’s peculiar that she places the earliest and most interpersonal relationship with the mother and breast-feeding child.  I definitely agree with her, that  a mother and child’s relationship is critical.  We know that through history, as undernourished and under nurtured babies experience failure to thrive and death.  Where Klein is different though is that she believes that an infant views the mother’s breast as either good and satisfying or as frustrating and bad.  If the baby associates the breast as good, then he/she experiences feelings of love and of creativity.  Contrastingly, the baby that views the mother’s breast as frustrating experiences feelings of hate and destruction.  Klein continues on to say that “the emotions caused by the interaction of the infant’s experiences with the mother’s breast and with life and death instincts provide the prototype used to evaluate all subsequent experiences.”

Why does this inform us of the fall?  Well, Klein’s emphasis on the infant’s view of the mother’s breast is a fault in itself.  What determines whether the baby’s experience is a positive or negative?  The baby?  Also, Klein is suggesting that based on that interpretation, at the oral stage of life, the infant will then grow up using those life or death instincts for every following experience.  I believe that thinking also speaks to the fall.  That is a very pessimistic way to view a person’s life experiences I think.  Additionally, I know that young children really can have psychological problems.  Again, I think that speaks to the fall.  A two year old that needs to be analyzed for unconscious conflicts speaks on behalf of the human weaknesses, human dependencies, and human faults.  I do believe Klein’s views are helpful and got the ball rolling on some child analysis and therapy, however she mostly informs us of the fall of children and human development.

Williams James reversing the traditional belief that emotion results from the perception of an event, should be placed under the fall category. As humans we go through different emotions a thousand times a day. Whether it be happy, sad, angry, depressed, or frightened we cannot stop ourselves from feeling some type of way. As James said the emotions we feel depends on what we do. Besides the beat example, when some people are in a relationship and they are cheating on their significant other, they just might be as happy as they are with the person they are cheating on their spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend, but once they get caught they are sad, angry, maybe depressed. The emotions we feel depend on what we do. We necessarily do not act the way we feel. I think that if we did a lot of things out of emotion everything would be different. Especially if others actually expressed their anger to the max. We are tricled in ways to make ourselves feel the opposite of how we actually feel, even if we are happy, somehow we end up being sad with the snap of a finger. Our emotions can either make us or break us, we can either learn for our mistakes or just let it kills us, but in the end our emotions will have some type of effect on our lives.

I hate being unoriginal, and Freud is about the most uncreative and overdone topic in the history of psychology writing assignments. Nevertheless, I can’t resist the urge this evening to defend Freud from a bit of the undue hate he gets.

I would suggest that Freud can be associated not with creation or fall, as his theories on the nature of man were mostly unsubstantiated, but with redemption. Psychoanalytic therapy laid the foundations for a healing process in which people could sew up old wounds. Though it has been suggested by critics that past traumas were often fabricated during the therapy, the psychological issues with which these experiences became associated were far from imaginary. The fact that this could even work says a lot about therapy in general: We go there not to cut the tree from which a problem hangs, but rather to find a boat (any boat) onto which it can sail away. This same idea is seen in virtually every modern therapy. Problems are addressed in the present, not through the past.

Though Freud would say psychoanalytic therapy worked because it dealt with problems in the past, its immediate effect was one of redemptive value in the present. It created a pathway through which neuroses and “hysteria” could escape and let a person feel free. It’s easy to claim that, because therapy doesn’t always “stick,” that the method is useless, but, if you’re a Christian, I would urge you to consider this: Is it so much difference from the “redemptive” experiences seen at a Church camp or other emotionally charged religious event? Both (usually) involve initial feelings of regret over some kind of “brokenness” followed by an epiphany (described by many religious devotees as the experienced love of God) and then feelings of restoration and freedom from psychosis (sin). The psychological events taking place in both scenarios are unproven and not falsifiable.

It’s because of this kind of comparison that I wonder if Freud would have many more surviving followers if he had, like many thinkers before him, spent time kissing the collective butt of mainstream Christianity and adapted his theory to support, rather than attack, religion. He didn’t do this, fortunately, so the only dogma standing in the way of his critics was that of his own followers. Even if you reject everything else Freud did and said, you have to give him brownie points for not selling out. He wasn’t a con-artist; he genuinely believed in his work. And I believe that the patients of psychoanalytic therapy do see genuine healing, even though it may be scientific hogwash.