Psychoanalytic Pesonality Assessment
Indirect because they are designed to assess unconscious processes that cannot be directly observed. Two methods; dream interpretation and projective techniques.
Dream
Psychoanalytic Pesonality Assessment
In mental experience during sleep that involves mainly visual images. The images are often considered "real". Have been called cinematographic.
What Dreams Result From
Psychoanalytic Pesonality Assessment
The dynamic interaction of:
1. Unconscious wishes
2. The censoring mechanisms of the ego
3. Events of the waking life
Origins and preparation of the dream reflect all aspects of the dreamers psychological experience. Always a concealed wish and the true m
Manifest Content
Psychoanalytic Dream Theory
Psychoanalytic Pesonality Assessment
What a person remembers and reports of a dream.
The dressed-up version of the threatening determinants.
Latent Content
Psychoanalytic Dream Theory
Psychoanalytic Pesonality Assessment
Underlying meaning of the dream.
The set of underlying intrapsychic events that lead to the other type of content.
Primarily unconscious thoughts, wishes, fantasies, and conflicts, that are expressed in translated or disguise form in the other type of con
Dream Work
Transition from Latent to Manifest Content
Psychoanalytic Dream Theory
Psychoanalytic Pesonality Assessment
Process of transforming latent content into manifest content.
Condensation
Dream Work
Transition from Latent to Manifest Content
Psychoanalytic Dream Theory
Psychoanalytic Pesonality Assessment
The dream work process in which separate thoughts are combined or compressed.
All elements in the dream results from more than one latent source. Dreams are multiply determined; they are the product of many sources.
Displacement
Dream Work
Transition from Latent to Manifest Content
Psychoanalytic Dream Theory
Psychoanalytic Pesonality Assessment
In a dream, shifting the emphasis from an important element to a seemingly trivial element.
As a defense mechanism, shifting an impulse from a threatening or unacceptable event or person to something less threatening or unacceptable.
Visual Representation
Dream Work
Transition from Latent to Manifest Content
Psychoanalytic Dream Theory
Psychoanalytic Pesonality Assessment
Abstract wishes, urges, and ideas that make up the latent content may be translated into concrete pictures or images.
Secondary Revision
Dream Work
Transition from Latent to Manifest Content
Psychoanalytic Dream Theory
Psychoanalytic Pesonality Assessment
After we awaken, we often try to reconstruct our dreams.
Dreams are compromises of simultaneously expressing wish and resistance, subjective need and it's repression.
Symbolization
Dream Work
Transition from Latent to Manifest Content
Psychoanalytic Dream Theory
Psychoanalytic Pesonality Assessment
The process through which threatening objects or ideas are represented by nonthreatening ones.
Allows latent contact to become part of the manifest content directly, but in an unrecognizable form.
Freud believed some have universal meanings and and to him
Freudian Dream Interpretation
1. The person reports the dream.
2. The person has been asked to make associations to the dream.
3. Finally, the psychoanalyst uses dream work and symbolization to interpret the latent meaning of both the manifest content and the associations. Also takes
Validity of an Interpretation
Freudian Dream Interpretation
It is a matter of how useful it is in providing the psychoanalyst with information about the individual's personality.
The Functions of Dreaming
Freudian Dream Interpretation
1. Wish fulfillment
2. The release of unconscious tension
3. The preservation of sleep
Wish
The Functions of Dreaming
Freudian Dream Interpretation
Could either be a conscious desire that is not fulfilled during the day or an unconscious desire that is an expression of a repressed impulse. (Or a combination of the two.)
Day Residues
The Functions of Dreaming
Freudian Dream Interpretation
Elements of actual external events in waking life that occur in dreams.
The Importance of Manifest Content
Freud disagrees, but contemporary psychoanalytic researchers found manifest content itself to be rich with psychological meaning.
Dreaming as Problem-Solving
Dreaming may integrate current stressful experiences with similar experiences from the past, thus enabling the individual to use basic coping mechanisms to deal with the current stressful situation.
Projective Techniques
Subjects are presented with ambiguous stimuli and asked to impart meaning to them. Presumably reveals unconscious motives, ideas, and feelings.
Projective Hypothesis
Ambiguity and the Projective Hypothesis
Assumption that when people are forced to impose meaning to a stimulus, the response will reflect significant aspects of their personalities; basis for projective techniques.
Be unconscious is Krisam ugly free to project meeting onto the stimulus of the s
4 Categories
The Nature of Projective Techniques
1. Association, such as to inkblots or words
2. Construction, often of stories about pictures (TAT)
3. Completion, usually of sentences fragments
4. Free expression, in drawings or through acting out a loosely specified role
5 Important Characteristics
The Nature of Projective Techniques
1. The stimulus is relatively unstructured and ambiguous, which compels subjects to impose their own order, structure, and meaning.
2. The purpose of the test and how responses will be recorded or interpreted are not disclosed to the subject.
3. The subje
Rorschach Inkblots
The Nature of Projective Techniques
First to use a standard set of inkblots to assess personality.
10 nearly symmetrical inkblots; 5 have some color and 5 are limited to black-and-white.
Administered individually in two phases; psychodiagnostic.
Performance Proper
2 Phases of Rorschach Inkblot Assessment
Rorschach Inkblots
The Nature of Projective Techniques
Begins with simple instructions from the examiner: "I'm going to show you a number of inkblots and I want you to tell me what you see in each of them." Examiner records exactly with the subject says.
Inquiry
2 Phases of Rorschach Inkblot Assessment
Rorschach Inkblots
The Nature of Projective Techniques
Starting with the first card, the examiner reminds the subject of each response made. Examiner asks where on the inkblot this response was seen, and what made it look like that.
Characteristics of Response Scoring
Rorschach Inkblots
The Nature of Projective Techniques
1. Location - where on the card the concept was seen.
2. Determinant - the qualities of the block that led to the formation of the concept.
3. Popularity-Originality - the frequency with which particular responses are given by people in general.
4. Conten
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Henry Murray
Concerned with uncovering latent needs.
The original consists of a set of 20 pictures; multiple variations.
They are devised specifically for use with men, women, children, and various racial and ethnic groups. Most show at least one person, whom the resp
Imaginable Need
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Henry Murray
The amount of need tension that exhibits itself in thought and make-believe action.
Strong Latent Need
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Henry Murray
Is apt to perceive what it wants. A subject under the influence of a drive has a tendency to project into surrounding objects some of the imagery associated with the drive that is operating.
*
Interchangeability of the words need and drive.
*
Free Association
Other Projective Techniques
Commonly used by Freud.
Word association; subjects are provided with a word and asked to respond with the first word or thought they experience. Responding quickly and freely is assumed to cause defensive processes to interfere less and to allow the uncon
Draw -A-Person Test (DAT)
Other Projective Techniques
Loose instructions require subjects to produce line drawings.
"Draw a person."
No specification as who to draw.
The resulting picture yields information about the person's interpretation of the task, degree of planning in execution, attention to instructi
Sentence Completion
Other Projective Techniques
Involves providing the beginning few words for a sentence to be completed by the subject. Multiple sentence openings are provided.
Responses are again interpreted in light of recurrent themes.
Assessment has Low Reliability and Validity
8 Most Commonly Voiced Criticisms
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
Low interrater reliability, low internal consistency, and low retest reliability.
Projective techniques may be measuring individual differences and immediate perceptual and cognitive factors rather than assessing underlying personality dynamics and motiva
Interrater Reliability
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
Agreement among raters.
Internal Consistency
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
Agreement among the items or stimuli used within a given technique.
Retest Reliability
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
Consistency over time.
Concepts are Poorly Defined
8 Most Commonly Voiced Criticisms
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
Researchers who wish to test claims of psychoanalytic theory have no concrete guidelines for determining when a phenomenon discussed by the theory is actually occurring.
Some Hypotheses are Untestable
8 Most Commonly Voiced Criticisms
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
Psychoanalytic theories are not testable; they are not open to verification or falsification through testing.
The Reasoning is Prone to Logical Errors
8 Most Commonly Voiced Criticisms
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
3 Logical Errors:
1. They fail to distinguish between observation and inference.
2. Often confuse correlation and causation.
3. Analogy is not proof.
Classical Theory is Sex Biased
8 Most Commonly Voiced Criticisms
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
Freud used a male personality as a prototype and considered it the ideal.
1. Females are castrated.
2. Females have more difficulty establishing sex-role than males.
3. Vaginal orgasm indicated sexual maturity.
Contemporary Feminist Objections to Freud's Theories
Classical Theory is Sex Biased
8 Most Commonly Voiced Criticisms
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
The primary points of diversion:
1. Objection to the male-centered (androcentric) focus in psychoanalysis.
2. The absence of direct study of women in their own right.
Oversimplifications and binary thinking have governed psychoanalytic theory about women.
Container Function of Women
Contemporary Feminist Objections to Freud's Theories
Classical Theory is Sex Biased
8 Most Commonly Voiced Criticisms
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
The primary criticism of Freud's psychoanalytic theory, that women are portrayed as the receptacle of all that is negative, undesirable, or not embraced by the male character.
This allows women to be characterized as merely the opposite of masculinity and
Case Studies are Unduly Biased
8 Most Commonly Voiced Criticisms
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
Possibility of succumbing to observer bias.
The sample is not representative of the population.
Treatment does not Recover Historical Truth
8 Most Commonly Voiced Criticisms
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
Treatment does not recover historical truth.
Is Psychoanalysis a Science?
8 Most Commonly Voiced Criticisms
Limitations of the Psychoanalytical Strategy
Use of arbitrary standards. Freud often considered calling psychoanalysis metapsychology-meaning that it goes beyond psychology-thereby removing it from psychology, defined as the science of behaviour.