Erik Erikson - Ego Psychology

Erik Erikson

[Brief Biography of Erik Erikson]

• The post Freudian who focused on Ego Psychology
• The son of Karla Abraham (mother)
• Born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1902, died in 1994 (91 years old)
• First stepfather : Valdemar Isidor Salomonsen
• Second stepfather : Erik Homberger
• Biological father : Unknown Danish Man
• Coined the term "Identity Crisis"

             - Erikson = A chosen name

• Finished in a gymnasium (~high school)

             - Never obtained a Bachelor's Degree

             - Become a professor in Harvard and Yale

• Wandering artist and poet

             - In search of his biological father; in search of his identity

• Met Anna Freud

             - Anna Freud was pioneering Ego Psychology

[Ego Psychology]

• Freudian Ego

             - Id is the strongest (Sex & aggression)

• Ego Psychology's Ego

             - Ego is a positive force that creates identity

             - Organized experiences into a unified personality

                    - Person's experiences with Society

[Ego]

• 8 Storage Framework

             - Infancy, Early childhood, play age, school age, Adolescence, Young adulthood, old age

• Epigenetic Principle

             - Step by step growth of the ego

             - Sensitive periods

• Stage

             - Syntonic (harmonious) element  VS  Dystonic (disruptive) element

             - Basic strength

             - Core pathology

[Infancy]

• Roughly 1st years of life
• Corresponds with Freud's oral stage

             - A time of incorporation

• Oral Sensory Mode

             - Infant receiving and accepting

             - Someone giving to the infant

• Basic Trust  VS  Basic Mistrust

             - If the baby's need are met, basic trust develops; if not, the baby develops basic mistrust

             - Both are inevitable experiences

             - Basic trust is syntonic; Basic mistrust is dystonic : A healthy mix of both is necessary

• Basic strength : Hope
• Core Pathology : Withdrawal

[Early childhood]

• 2nd & 3rd years of life
• Corresponds with Freud's Anal stage

             - A time of mastering body function

• Anal-Urethral-Muscular mode

             - Toilet training, walking, running

             - Impulsive self expression

             - Compulsive deviance : children like to say 'No'

• Autonomy  VS  Shame & Doubt

             - Whether the child is praised for exploring or they are scolded for doing something

             - Autonomy is syntonic; Shame & Doubt are dystonic : A healthy mix of both is necessary

             - Basic trust helps facilitate autonomy

• Basic Strength : Will
• Core pathology : Compulsion

[Play age]

• Ages 3-5
• Corresponds with Freud's phallic stage

             - Oedipus complex  VS  Pretend play

• Genital-Locomotor Mode

             - Mastery of body functions

             - Activities with a purpose

             - Fantasies of growing up - I want to be @@!

• Initiative  VS  Guilt

             - Children who successfully pursue goals develop initiative but these with taboo goals

                develop guilt

             - Initiative is syntonic; Guilt is dystonic : A healthy mix of both is necessary

             - Anatomy helps facilitate initiative

• Basic strength : Purpose
• Core pathology : Inhibition

[School age]

• Age 6-12/13
• Corresponds with Freud's Latency stage

             - Children are educated in the ways of society

• Latency

             - School's reading, writing, and arithmetic

             - Preliterate society's hunting, fishing, farming

             - Tremendous social growth

• Industry  VS  Inferiority

             - Children who do well in society develop industry but those who don't develop inferiority

             - Industry is syntonic; Inferiority is dystonic : A healthy mix of both is necessary

             - Initiative helps facilitate industry

• Basic strength : Competence
• Core pathology : Inerita

[Adolescence]

• Between puberty(12) to young adulthood(18)
• Social Latency

             - No expectation to commit to anything

• Identity

             - Who am I  VS  Who am I not : Many faceted

             - Culminates in an identity crisis

• Identity Crisis (Negative)

             - A crucial period of increased vulnerability and heightened potential

             - Childhood identifications and socio-historical context help shape identity

             - Values of parent and of peers

• Identity  VS  Identity Confusion

             - Identity is syntonic; Identity confusion is dystonic : A healthy mix of both is necessary

             - All the previous syntonic qualities help achieve identity

• Basic strength : Fidelity
• Core pathology : Role Repudiation

             - Diffidence

             - Defiance - tend do reveal

[Young adulthood]

• Age 19 to 30
• Corresponds with Freud's Genital stage

             - True Genitality is not mere sex

• Intimacy  VS  Isolation

             - Intimacy is the fusion of identities without the fear of losing it

             - Intimacy is only possible after attaining identity

• Basic strength : Love
• Core pathology : Exclusivity

[Middle adulthood]

• Age 31 to 60
• Procreativity

             - Both physical and psychological

• Generativity  VS  Stagnation & Self-absorption

             - Generating children, ideas, projects, teaching Etc.

• Basic Strength : Care

             - Productive member of society

             - Love needs to be achieved before one can care

• Core pathology : Rejectivity - Destructive member of society

[Old Adulthood]

• Ages 61 to Death
• Integrity  VS  Despair

             - Wholeness  VS  Hopelessness

• Basic Strength : Wisdom - Achieved if all ego strengths are achieved
• Core pathology : Disdain



Karen Danielsen Horney - Nerotic Trends

Neurotic Trends

[Neurotic Trends]

• 10 Neurotic Needs could be grouped into 3 general categories, each relating to a person's basic attitude toward self and others

NORMAL PEOPLE	NEUROTICS
Completely conscious of their strategy toward other people	Are unaware of their basic attitude
Free to choose their actions	Forced to act
Experience mild conflict	Experience severe and insoluble conflict
Variety of strategies	Limited to a single trend

• Feelings of isolation and helplessness (basic anxiety) drive some children to act compulsively : Limiting their repertoire to a single neurotic trend
• Children attempt to solve this basic conflict (contradictory attitude toward others) by making on of the 3 neurotic consistently dominant

             1) Move toward people : By behaving in a compliant manner as a protection against feelings

                                                      of helplessness

             2) Move against people : With acts of aggression in order to circumvent the hostility of others

             3) Move away from people : By adopting a detached manner, thus alleviating feelings

                                                            of isolation

[Moving toward people] # 1-2

• Neurotic need to protect oneself against feelings of helplessness
• Compliant people employ either or both of the first 2 neurotic needs :

             1) Desperately strive for affection and approval of others

             2) Seeks a powerful partner who will take responsibility for their lives

[Moving against people] # 3-7

• Aggressive people take for granted that everyone is hostile
• Move against others by appearing tough or ruthless
• Motivated by a string need to exploit others and to use them for their own benefit
• Seldom admit their mistakes and are compulsively driven to appear perfect, powerful and superiority

             1) To be powerful

             2) To exploit others

             3) Receiving recognition and prestige

             4) To be admired

             5) To achieve

• Play to win rather than the enjoyment of the contest
• Appear to be hardworking and resourceful on the job but take little pleasure in the work itself

[Moving Away From people] # 8-10

• Behave in a detached manner
• Expression of needs for privacy, independence, and self-sufficiency
• Compulsively putting emotional distance between themselves and other people
• Associating with others is an intolerable strain
• Build a world of their own and refuses to allow anyone to get close to them
• Greatest fear is to need other people

             1) Self- sufficiency and independence

             2) Perfection and prestige

[Intra-Psychic Conflicts]

     1. The Idealized self-image : Attempt to solve conflicts by painting a godlike picture of oneself         2. Self-Hatred : Interrelated yet equally irrational and powerful tendency to despise one's real self

• Gap creates a growing alienation between the real self and the idealized self and leads neurotics to hate and despise their actual self because it falls so short in matching the glorified self-image

[The Idealized Self- image]

• The need to acquire a stable sense of identity
• Creating an idealized self-image, an extravagantly positive view of themselves that exist only in their personal belief system
• As the idealized self-image becomes solidified, neurotics begin to believe in the reality of that image
• Loses touch with real self and use the idealized self as the standard of self-evaluation
• 3 aspects :

             1) Neurotic Search for Glory

                    - Neurotics come to believe in the reality of their idealized self, they begin to incorporate

                      it into all aspects of their lives : their goals, their self-concept, and their rations with

                      others

                          a. Need for Perfection - Drive to mold the whole personality into the idealized self;

                                                                 erects a set of "should" and "should not"
                          b. Neurotic Ambition - Compulsive drive toward superiority. Channels their energies
                                                                into those activities that are most likely to bring success
                          c. Drive toward a Vindictive Triumph - The most destructive element of all.
                                                                                          Desires to take revenge for real or imagine
                                                                                          humiliation
             2) Neurotic claims
                    - Builds a factory world : World out of sync with the real world
                    - Feels entitled to be treated in accordance with their idealized view of themselves
                    - Fail to see that claims of special privilege are unreasonable
                    - If not, met, neurotics become indignant, bewildered, and unable to comprehend why
                      other have not granted their claims.
             3) Neurotic Pride
                    - A false pride based on a realistic view of the true self but on a spurious image of the
                       idealized self
                    - Based on an idealized image of self and it unusually loudly proclaimed in order
                      to protect and support a glorified view of one's self
                    - Because they think themselves glorious, wonderful and perfect, when others fail to treat
                      them with special consideration, their neurotic pride is hurt.
                    - Avoid people who refuse to yield to their neurotic claims

[Form of Self-hatred :]

     1. Relentless demands on the self (exemplified by the tyranny of the should)
     2. Merciless self-accusation (constantly berate themselves) - "I'm really a fraud!"
     3. Self-contempt - Belitting, disparaging, doubting, discrediting, and ridiculing oneself.
                                   "Successful career? It's just luck!"
     4. Self-frustration - "I must not strive for a better job because I'm not good for it."
     5. Self-Torment - Anguishes over a decision, exaggerates pain, cut themselves, start fights that
                                  they are sure to lose, invites physical abuse
     6. Self-destructive actions and impulses
             - Over eating, abusing alcohol/drugs, working too hard, driving recklessly, suicide.
                Quitting a job when it begins to be fulfilling, breaking off a healthy relationship in favor of
                 a neurotic one..

[Oedipus complex]

• Feminism Psychology sight
• Horney saw no evidence for a universal Oedipus complex
• Found only in some people and is an expression of the neurotic need for love
• The neurotic need for affection & Aggression usually begin in childhood and are two of the 3 basic neurotic trends

             - When child clings to parents, his/her main goal is security, not sexual intercourse

• Penis Envy

             - There is no more anatomical reason why girls should be envious of the penis than boys
               should desire a breast or a womb

• Boys express a desire to have a baby : Womb envy



Karen Danielsen Horney - Neurotic Needs

Neurotic Needs

[Neurotic Needs]

• Characterize neurotics in their attempts to combat basic anxiety
• A single person can employ more than one

[The Neurotic Need for ...]

1. The Neurotic need for Affection and Approval

             - Attempt indiscriminately to please other

             - Try to live up to the expectation of others

             - Tend to dread self-assertion

             - Quite uncomfortable with the hostility of others as well as the hostile feelings

                within themselves

     2. The Neurotic need for a Powerful partner

             - Lacking self-confidence

             - Attaches themselves to a powerful partner

             - Includes an overvaluation of love and dread of being alone or deserted

             - Strong need to relate to great person

     3. The Neurotic need to Restrict one's Life within narrow Borders

             - Strives to remain inconspicuous

             - Take second place

             - Be content with very little

             - Down grades their own abilities and dread making demands on others

     4. The Neurotic need for Power

             - Need for prestige and possession

             - Manifest itself as the need to control others

             - Avoids feelings of weakness or stupidity

     5. The Neurotic need to Exploit others (I can control someone)

             - How they can use/exploit others

             - Fears being used/exploited by others

     6. The Neurotic need for Social Recognition or Prestige

             - Trying to be first

             - To be important

             - Attract attention to themselves

     7. The Neurotic need for Personal Admiration

             - Need to be admired for what they are rather than for what they possess

             - Inflated self-esteem must be continually fed by the admiration and approval of others

     8. The Neurotic need for Ambition and Personal Achievement

             - Strong drive to be the best

             - Defeat other people in order to confirm their superiority

     9. The Neurotic need for Self-Sufficiency and Independence

             - Strong need to move away from people

             - Can get along without others

             - Playboys

     10. The Neurotic need for Perfection and Unassailability

             - Strives relentlessly for perfection in order to receive "Proof" of their self-esteem

               and personal superiority

             - Dreads making mistakes and having personal flaws

             - Desperately attempts to hide their weakness from others



Karen Danielsen Horney - Importance of childhood experience

Importance of Childhood Experience

[The Impact of Culture]

• Modern culture : Based on competition among individual

             - "Everyone is a real or potential competitor of everyone else"

• Competitiveness and the basic hostility it spawns result in feeling of isolation
• Feelings of being alone is a potentially hostile world lead to intensified needs for affection (Cause people to overvalue love)
• Love and affection is seen to be the solution for all their problems
• Genuine love can be a healthy, growth-producing experience but the desperate need for love provides a fertile ground for the development of neuroses

[The Importance of Childhood Experience]

• Childhood is the age from which the cast majority of problems arise
• Traumatic events may leave their impressions on a child's future development
• These event can be traced to lack of genuine warmth and affection
• Parents : Powerful effect on personal development
• Difficult childhood is responsible for neurotic needs

[Basic Hostility and Basic Anxiety]

• Each person begins life with the potential for healthy development
• People need favorable conditions for growth
• Children need to experience both genuine love and healthy discipline

[Role of parents]

• Parent's inability or unwillingness to love their child
• If parents do not satisfy the child's needs for safety and satisfaction, the children develops feelings of 'Basic Hostility' toward the parents
• Repressed hostility leads to profound feelings of insecurity and a large sense of apprehension called 'Basic Anxiety' - feeling of being isolation and helpless in a world conceived as potentially hostile
• Anxiety and fear can also lead to strong feelings of hostility

[4 General ways that people protect themselves against this feeling of being alone in a potentially hostile world :]

     1. Affection 

             - Strategy that does not always lead to authentic love. People may try to purchase love with

                self-effacing compliance, material goods, or sexual favors

     2. Submissiveness

             - Submit themselves either to people or to institutions such as an organization or a religion

               (Submits in order to gain affection)

     3. Power, Prestige, and Possession :

             - Power : A defense against the real or imaged hostility of others and takes the form

                             a tendency to dominate others

             - Prestige : A protection against humiliation and expressed as a tendency to humiliate others

             - Possession : Acts as a buffer against destitution and poverty and manifests itself

                                    as a tendency to deprive others

    

     4. Withdrawal

             - Developing an independence from others or by becoming emotionally detached from them

                > Can't be hurt by other people

• Horney believed that all people use them to some extent
• Compulsion is the salient characteristic of all neurotic drives

[Compulsive Drives]

• Neurotic individuals have the same problems that affect normal people, except neurotics experience them to a greater degree
• Aim is to guard themselves
• Neurotics do not enjoy misery and suffering
• Can't change their behavior by free will but must continually and compulsively protect themselves against basic anxiety



Karen Danielsen Horney - biograpy

Karen Danielsen Horney

[Psychoanalytic Social Theory]

• Built on the assumption that social and cultural conditions, especially childhood experiences; are largely responsible for shaping personality

[Karen Danielsen Horney]

• September 15, 1885 - Born in Eilbek, Germany
• The youngest children of a 50 years old father (captain) and his second wife (younger 18 years old than his husband)
• Had an older siblings favored by the parents
• Felt unwanted and unloved
• Unhappy family - Older half-siblings turned father against his second wife
• Felt hostility toward her stern, devoutly religious father and idolized her mother who protected her
• Age 13 : Want to be a Physician, No university in Germany admitted women
• Age 16 (Start of her independence)

             - Despite the objection of her father, entered gymnasium

• Independence was superficial
• Compulsive need to merge with a great man

             - Morbid dependency : Idealization and fear of inciting angry rejection haunted Horney
                                                  during her relationships with a series of men

• 1906 : University of Freiburg
• One of the first women in Germany to study medicine
• Oskar Horney - Political science student
• Married in 1909 : Settle in Berlin

             - 1910 : Began an analysis with Karl Abraham ( attended his evening seminars)
             - 1915 : Received her MD degree
             - 1917 : Wrote her first paper on psychoanalysis
                          "The Technique of Psychoanalytic Theory"

• Give birth to 3 daughter in 5 years

             - 1926 : Separated (Divorced in 1938)

• Freud reacted negatively to Horney's position, she become even more outspoken
• 1932

             - Left Germany for a position as Associate director of the newly established Chicago
                psychoanalytic Institute

• Resigned from the institution over issues of dogma and orthodoxy and formed a rival organization - The Association for the Advancement of psychoanalysis

             - AAP become the Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Institute

• Died of cancer on December 4, 1952

[Introduction to psychoanalytic Social Theory]

• Constructed a revisionist theory that reflected her own personal experiences
• Culture, especially early childhood experiences, plays a leading role in shaping human personality, either neurotic or healthy
• Early childhood traumas are important, but differed from him in her insistence that social rather than biological forces are paramount in personality development

[Horney  VS  Freud]

• Objected to Freud's ideas on feminine psychology
• Stressed to emphasize the importance of cultural influences in shaping personality
• "Man is ruled not by the pleasure principle alone but by two guiding principles : Safely and satisfaction."
• Questioned Freud's validity of his interpretations



Melaine Reizes Klein - Internalization

Internalization

[Internalization]

• The person takes in aspect of the external world and them organizes those introjections into a psychologically meaningful framework
• Kleinian Theory's 3 important Internalization :

             - Ego, Superego, Oedipus complex

[Ego]

• Reaches maturity at a much easier stage
• Klein largely ignored the id and based her theory on the Ego's early ability to sense both destructive and loving forces and to manage them through splitting, Projection, Introjection
• Ego is unorganized at birth, it's strong enough to fell anxiety, to use defense mechanism, and to form early object relations in both phantasy and reality
• Before a unified ego can emerge, it must first become split
• Infant innately strive for integration, but at the same time, they are forced to deal with the opposing forces of life and death
• "Good me" and "Bad me"

             - Dual image of self allows them to manage the good and the bad aspect of external objects

• As they grew up, they become more realistic, and no longer see the world in terms of partial objects
• Ego become more integrated

[Super Ego]

• Differs from Freud's in at least 3 aspects :

             1) Emerges much earlier in life

             2) Not an outgrowth of the Oedipus complex

             3) Harsh and Cruel

• Early Superego produces not guilt but terror

             - Young children fear being devoured, cut up, and torn into pieces

• Infant's own destructive instinct : Which is experienced as anxiety
• Klein concurs that the more mature superego produces feelings of inferiority and guilt

[Oedipus complex]

• Oedipus complex begins at a much earlier age than Freud had suggested
• Begins during the earliest months of life, overlaps with the oral and anal stages, and reaches its climax during the 'Genital' stage at around 3-4 years

             - Note : Klein preferred the term 'Genital' instead of 'Phallic'

• Significant part of the Oedipus complex is children's fear of retaliation from their parents for their fantasy of emplying the present body
• Stressed the importance of children retaining positive feelings toward both parents during Oedipus complex years
• During its early stages, the Oedipus complex serves the same need for both genders, that is to establish a positive attitude with the good or gratifying object and to avoid the bad or terrifying object
• Children are capable of homosexual and heterosexual relation with both parents

[Female Oedipus Development]

• Similar with Freud's Oedipus complex.
• Strong attachment to her mother throughout this period

[Male Oedipus Development]

• Not so different with Freud's Oedipus complex
• Start from homosexual relation toward his father, change into the heterosexual relation with his mother
• See parents as whole object : a condition that enables him to work through his depressive position



Melanie Reizes Klein - Psychic Defense Mechanisms

Psychic Defense Mechanisms

[Psychic Defense Mechanisms]

• To protect their ego against the anxiety around by their own destructive fantasies
• Controls these anxiety through

             - Introjection, Projection, Splitting, Projective Identification

[Introjection]

• First feeding : Incooperate the mother's breast into the infant's body
• Introjects good things to protect against anxiety
• Introjects bad things in order to gain control over them

             - Dangerous objects become internal persecutors

                    - Terrifies the infant and leaves frightening residues that may be expressed in dreams :

                       sometime in fairy tales

• Introjected objects are not accurate representations of the real object but are colored by children's fantasies

             - Fantasizes that mother is consistently present

             - Feels that mother is always inside their body

             - The real mother is not perpetually present, but infants devour her in fantasy

               so that she becomes a constant internal object

[Projection]

• Get rid of object 
• Projection is the fantasy that one's own feelings and impulses actually reside in another person and not within one's body
• Unmanageable destructive impulses onto external object
• Alleviate the unbearable anxiety of being destroyed by dangerous
• Children project both bad and good images onto external object

             - ex) Young boy desires to castrate his father may instead project these castration fantasies

                     onto his father, thus turning his castration wishes around the blaming his father

                     for wanting to castrate him

• People can also project good impulses

             - Infants who feel good about their mother's nurturing breast will attribute their own feeling

               of goodness onto the breast and imagines that the breast is good

    Later on ...

• Adults project their own feelings of love onto another person and become convinced that the other person loves them
• Projection always people to believe that their own subjective options are true

[Splitting]

• Infants can only manage the good and bad aspect of themselves and of external objects by splitting them
• Ego must be split

             -"Good me" and "Bad me"

• Positive effect : Can evaluate behavior as good or bad like/unlike
• Negative effect

             - Excessive and inflexible splitting can lead to pathological regression

             - Cannot introject bad experiences into the good Ego

             - When children can't accept their own bad behavior, represses them instead

[Projective identification]

• Psychic defense mechanism in which infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves, project them into another object, and finally introject them into themselves in a changed or distorted form
• Taking back the object inside themselves make infants feel that they have become like that object. They identify with the object
• Projective identification exerts a powerful influence on adult interpersonal relations

             - Exists only in the world of real interpersonal relationship

• Examples

             - Husband with strong but unwanted tendencies to dominate others

             - Projects those feelings into his wife

             - See her as domineering

             - Subtly tries to get his wife to become domineering

             - Behave with excessive submissiveness in an attempt to force his wife to display

               the very tendencies that he has deposited in her