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Watsonian Article: by creelan
taken from Adam's lecture the same day
JB Watson was famous for the Little Albert Study
This was a study of infants at Johns Hopkins (1918-1919) into their emotional
lives.
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He used the children of wet nurses.
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He was interested in the reaction of fear in infants. (fear reflex)
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First he attempted to determine the natural stimuli for the fear reflex.
Hypothesis: furry animals might induce fear. Conclusion: no reaction
What did cause fear? Loud sounds and loss of support
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Watson used Pavlov’s classical conditioning techniques. They tried to
teach Albert to be afraid of a rat. It was the loud sound of a pipe banging after he
reached to touch the rat that made him afraid, but he associated the bang with
the rat and learned to fear.
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Watson later postulated 3 fundamental reflexes in the neonate-fear, rage
and love.
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Watson disagreed with Freud in saying “fear is as primal as love in influencing
personality”
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Skinner- Operant Conditioning- interested in the effect of certain stimuli
referred to as rewards and punishments.
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The American context that Watson points to (meaning reward and
punishment) as a means of controlling behavior has a deeply imbedded cultural
history in American religion prior to its formulation in scientific psychology. The
model of an omnipotent God who “binds” himself in a covenant relationship with
his people such that he “promises” salvation if their behavior is worthy and
“threatens” damnation if it is sinful. To get salvation, certain behavioral conditions
must be fulfilled.
Creelan’s view of the Little Albert Experiment and what it symbolized
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He sees Christian symbols of guilt and a lot of religious sympols from
Watson’s early childhood. Watson was supposed to become a priest and went
the opposite way.
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Adultery is a sin that virtually guarantees everlasting damnation. Creelan sees
Watson as playing God.
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The Albert experiment is an enactment of a scene of guilt and also
redemption.
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The banging of the bars symbolizes angry punishing protestant God coming
down at the sinner
Another interpretation was that he named the child Albert B. Watson’s
mother’s brother, Albert Broadhus was the high priest of the southern Baptist
church. He sees it as revenge against the church which crushed him as a child.
**what you need to understand about the article though, is that Watson's claim of
behaviorism as psychology's approach to becoming a natural science was
actually strongly rooted to his fundamentalist religious background
the two main sections of the article basically analyze Watson's most famous
experiments, rats and Little Albert. with the rats, Creelan shows that Watson is
recreating the Garden of Eden etc and with Little Albert Creelan connects
Watson's conditioning to the religious beliefs of how to get a key to the gates of
heaven...
naturally, what i said is just a crude summary...but i think that should point you in
the direction of how to look at this article...
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INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS- taken from Cordy’s lecture 3/6/09
The function of dreams is to prepare sleep when a stimulus such as external
(noise), internal (the feeling to urinate) or psyche (anxiety)threatens to wake us
up.
Dreams are usually triggered by events of the previous day
All dreams fulfill a wish (or attempt to)
There are two parts to a dream
Manifest- the dream story itself
Latent- the meaning behind the story.
Free Association on the dream images in therapy provides clues to the latent
content.
Theory of dreamworks, are the “mechanisms” that transform latent content into
manifest content of the dream.
Thoughts , feelings→→→→ disturbance of sleep→→→ censoring,
disguising→→ manifest
Impressions, memories
Conscious and unconscious
Types of dreamsCondensation-multiple elements “condense” 2 or more thoughts
Displacement-shifting the affect toward or about someone or something to a
different object
Verbal metaphor- when something methaphorical manifests literally
Representation by the opposite
Reversal of Revelation-when intentions and emotions are swapped. Your
intentions are reflected to the other person
Faces in a Cloud
FACES IN A CLOUD
BY George Atwood and Robert Stolorow
Ch 1-Personality Theory and Subjectivity
Each theory of personality constitutes a system of statements regarding the
meaning of being human in the world. Personality theorists tend to rely on their
own lives as a primary source of empirical material. The modern field of
personality psychology comprises a variety of schools of thought. Unfortunately,
each is limited to its own domain.
There are problems associated with the study and clarification of the subjective
origins of personality theory. First, identifying the personal influences which color
a theorist’s thought. Second is the subjective dimension for assessing the validity
of the theory. The ultimate aim is to arrive at comprehensive principles to account
for human experience and human conduct. Yet another problem is that this
theory cannot be validated or invalidated because there are structures presumed
to encompass and ultimately determine the human condition.
BehaviorismThe importance of considering the subjective dimension of psychological
knowledge and of human behavior in general is not universally recognized and a
number of approaches have evolved to study it. The most radical school of
thought is known as behaviorism, where the whole concept of man as an
experiencing subject is eliminated. It’s thought is that psychology is a natural
science and must be founded upon the idea that man is an objective organism
behaving in an objective physical and social environment. It is no longer wildly
accepted as a foundation for psychology.
Methodological Objectivism
This is less extreme than behaviorism. This is a philosophy of the relationship
between the scientist and his work. It emphasizes a disjunction between the
investigator as a person and the material he studies and aims at establishing
universally verifiable, purely objective truths, divorced from the human context in
which they are discovered.
Phenomenology
(see definitions page attached)
Bracketing-where the phenomenologists frees himself from preconceptions and
achieves the purity of the transcendental perspective. It refers to a radical
alteration of one’s position in relation to all those assumptions, beliefs, and
attitudes which in the natural standpoint are taken for granted.
Psychobiographical Studies
It has three general features that distinguish it from other methods.
1. Its personalistic and phenomenological. It presupposes that the issues
being investigated in personality research can be fully understood only if
view in the context of the individuals personal world.
2. It’s historical- the personal world is recognized as a life historical
phenomenon that the issues of research are located on the temporal
dimension of personal development.
3. It’s clinical and interpretative-(rather than experimental and deductive). It
advances the understanding of individuals through a process of
interrogation and construction eveolved from empirical material at hand.
The interplay between individual hypotheses and analysis as a totality follows a
hermeneutic circle which means that the parts give rise to the whole and the
whole provides a context for evaluatin of the parts.
Structures of the Subjective World
Cognitive-affective schemata-that through which a person’s experiences of self
and other assume their characteristic forms and meanings.
Provisional descriptive characterization- discovering and formulating the
unique dimensions on which his experiences are organized
Ch 2-the study of Freud is limited here to subjective sources of his life of certain
features of his theory of psychosexual development.
George Atwood(2:30 PM EST) the second chapter is easier for sure, about
freud the first chapter just says, over and over, our theories are intensely
personal creations, reflecting who we are, and we should study that!
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His theories were intimately tied to his self analysis.
He was the first born and his mother’s favorite. Thus he was very tied to
her. He believed that the relationship between mother and son was “ the most
perfect, the most free form of ambivalence of all human relationships.”
A younger sibling came to be some 11 months later and Freud was filled with
jealousy and ill wishes. This brother later died (Julius). He saw this as his mother
was less available to him.
The nurse who lived with them , he remembered a contrast to his mother. He
blames her for his “neurotic suffering” as the mother is absolved and is preserved
as an idealized object. She treated his poorly. However, he does show some
affection for this old nurse, as she was like a surrogate mother to him. (especially
when his mom was busy giving birth to her other children)
Mom has another child (Anna) when he was 3, but the old nurse was arrested
and imprisoned at that time because his older half brother caught her stealing. In
his mind, she disappeared just like his brother Julius –a magical fulfillment of ill
wishes.
In analyzing the nature of Freud’s fear of losing his mother and also of his
defensive nature to preserve an entirely positive and idealized image of her,
Atwood and Stolorow believe that the source of this conviction can be found in
the narcissistic enmeshment between mother and son-in particular- the mothers
reliance on her son’s greatness and on that” most perfect “relationship between
them to uphold her own self esteem. Freud perceived that any aspect of his
affectivity-his angry feelings for example, that disturbed the perfection of this tie
was psychologically damaging. Thus arose the perception of his rage as
destructive, and a threat to his mom’s existence (in his young mind). This is why
he thought she would too disappear like the old nurse.
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It is thought that the primary source of his hostility in this connection was that
his mother had once again betrayed his love by bringing another hateful intruder
into the world (altogether she had 5). His emotional conflict of loving her and
hated her was thus established.
The two most important relationships of Freud’s young and middle adulthood
were dominated by his wish to restore and preserve the lost ideal union with his
mother that was traumatically disrupted by the births of Julius and Anna. These
were with his wife Martha and his mentor, Wilhelm Fliess. She was his “whole
world”, his “ideal of womanhood”, total goodness, understanding, kindness and
nobility. (an idealized lover)
He was very jealous and dramatic. He required “complete identification with
himself, his opinions, his feelings and his intentions.” Very Possessive. So, he
wanted to mold her into a “mother surrogate” who loved him exclusively with total
loyalty and devotion. Despite all this, his marriage(1886) was happy (probably
because he became involved with Fliess)
Wilhelm Fliess (1887)became the Freud’s archaic idealized needs and thus
Martha no longer felt this burdeon.
It was of interest how as with Martha, Freud’s reactions to disappointments by
Fliess . EX: Emma, the patient that Fliess mishandled her surgery. Freud blamed
himself for pressing Fliess to operate! Thus he internalized blame to grandize
Fliess(the mother surrogate). This protected the perfect mother image.
Freud’s theory of psychosexual development reflects a persons conflicts and
neurotic difficulties from a reified, internal, biological factor-from a childs own
instinctual drives and drive energies (the concept of the id)
Oedipus Complex- a concept used in psychoanalysis, is a child's unconscious
desire for the exclusive love of the parent of the opposite sex. This desire
includes jealousy toward the parent of the same sex and the unconscious wish
for that parent's death.
The term Oedipus complex was first used by the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund
Freud. It comes from the myth of Oedipus, a Greek hero who unknowingly killed
his father and married his mother. Freud used the term to describe the
unconscious feelings of children of both sexes toward their parents. However,
later researchers used the term Electra complex for the complex in girls.
According to Greek legend, a woman named Electra helped plan the murder of
her mother.
Freud believed that the Oedipus complex is a normal part of human
psychological growth. The Oedipal phase of development is commonly
considered to last from the age of 21/2 to 6. During this period, children
experience intense feelings--love and hate, yearning and jealousy, fear and
anger--that produce emotional conflicts. Most people outgrow the Oedipal phase,
but some mentally ill individuals have a strong Oedipus complex as adults.
According to Freud, the principal reason for the weakening of the complex in
boys is the fear of punishment from the father.
Freud thought that all peoples experience the Oedipus complex. But many
anthropologists and researchers in psychoanalysis doubt that the complex exists
in certain non-Western societies. They believe it develops as a result of a
person's social environment and does not occur in everyone.
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Fantasies of Flight by David M Ogilvie
There is evidence that the desire to fly can be traced to lingering remnants
from distant times. We need only go back to a time in an individual’s life when
earthbound reality presented them with obstacles that they subjectively
experienced as so threatening to their survival that they desperately sought to
resurrect sensations that accompanied feelings of earlier safety.
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This book teaches how to interpret stories in the context of major underlying
concerns of their creators.
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Reductionism involves the conviction that past experiences shape
personalities; in its strongest and most pessimistic form reductionism holds that
personalities are determined by childhood events-they cause us to be the way
we are.
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Gordon Allport-considered to be the father of personality psychology. He
argued that we are our traits. We not only have traits, we are motivated by them.
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Henry Murray-also a case study advocate, but he believed that we are our
needs. Coined the term personology. (The study of the whole person) wrote the
book “Explorations in Personality”. Believed we reveal a lot of ourselves by the
stories we make up. (beneath the manifest content is the latent content)
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Was the director of the Harvard University Psychological Clinic?
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The Five Factors Model-aka the Big Five-proposed that all people in all
cultures can be profiled according to their relative places on five broad
dimensions: extroversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness,
and conscientiousness. This gives trait psychology a useful organizational
structure.
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The Society of Personology-founded by Rae Carlson-believes that studying
personality is studying the person’s life. (in the old tradition of case studies)
Person centered biographic studies.
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The Icarus Complex-a term developed by Henry Murray in 1955. Referred to
the Greek mythology story “the legend of Icarus” (father and son were trapped on
an island, no way to escape, father thought they should attach feathers to their
arms and fly off, son disobeyed, and soared toward the sun which melted the
wax and feathers off his arms so he plummeted and drowned).
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Ascensionism-the wish to overcome gravity, to stand erect, to grow tall, to
dance on tiptoe, walk on water, swing in the air, to climb, to rise, to fly, to float,
rising from the dead. An upward thrust of desire. A rise in prestige.
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Hermeneutics-the art and science of interpreting texts. Can be texts as in
books, or text as in the multi layers of a person’s own story using in depth case
studies.
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TAT Test (Thematic Apperception Test) - an exercise that invites an
individual to make up 20 separate imaginative stories in response to viewing 20
different drawings. When analyzed, repeated themes are treated as clues to the
contours of the inner self.
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Remember…a case study is a psychological story about another person’s
story and one must wonder about whose story is being told and analyzed.
(projective identification)
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Freud believed that the sexual instinct is the key understanding to
psychological development.
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Psychobiography- a biography written from a psychodynamic or
psychoanalytic point of view
Case Study-Peter Pan as created by JM Barrie
Publicly this man was highly respected, showered with honors, rich, successful.
However, behind the fame was a lonely heartbroken man.
The first try at this story was called “The little White Bird”. It’s the story of a boy
who is half bird, half boy who lived on an island in Kensington Park.
Peter Pan is an image that gave expression to the conflicts of its creator. It
symbolized the dilemma of being locked into a pattern of simultaneously wanting
to return to an early stage of security by a welcoming mother and knowing that
things has been changed forever. Pan represents a prepubescent, a sexual boy
who has no desire to end the cycle of hovering in the general vicinity of maternal
protection. He yearned to reunite with his mother but it is countered by a fear that
his fragile psychic boundaries will be obliterated. He is a symbol of Barrie’s
dilemma of not quite wanting to be a man. He had early attachment and
separation issues. Ex: Peter’s relationship to Wendy is an example of imaginary
flight and resistance to intimacy.
Prototypical scenes-a scene that anchors a life for personological inquiry. It’s a
fundamental scene that both sponsors and attracts other self defining memories
that cohere to its basic form. It encapsulates a summary that is a source of
derivative themes and provides a nest for other memories that seek meaningful
places in the individual’s master story.
Unity thema- a compound of interrelated needs whose history could be traced to
early childhood.
Script theory- created by Silvan Tomkins, who was one of Henry Murray’s early
associates at the Harvard clinic, Tomkins believed that the puzzle of motivation
would remain unresolved until affects, or feelings were granted their proper place
in shaping lives. He proposed that emotions are regulated by scripts, (sounds
very Goffman-like)
Affects-the hidden players in the game of motivation.
Personological scripts –each person develops a set of unique scripts that are
covered with its own fingerprints and life can be viewed as interplay between
externally imposed and internally created scripts.
Case Study-Carl Jung
Carl Jung-had a different interpretation. Originally was a close friend of Freud.
He developed a perspective on psychic development that was at odds with Freud
which terminated their friendship. Jung had a “romance with mysticism. EX: when
Peter Pan always came back to his mothers window, Freud interpreted it as a
Childs desire to express his sexual impulses in the direction of the object familiar
to him-his mother. Jung thought that Peter was seeking what we all do-to return
to the source of our existence. Mother is a physical representation of something
more enduring. This is called the collective unconscious. This is the source of our
existences; it contains the raw materials of our personalities. It is beyond words.
Because of this, it is expressed to us thru images in dreams.
Archetypes-ageless predispositions that operate as corrective forces to psychic
imbalances incurred by belief systems, rules of conduct, social pressures, and
routinized ways of thinking that have taken us away from our true selves.
Archetypes react to the external facts of a person’s life. They make themselves
known when the psyche becomes too one sides, too bend out of its natural
shape.
One such archetype is the self.
There are 3 steps in the process of realizing the Self:
1.
Ease up on ones attachment to social definitions of the self by reducing ones
investment in personas as carriers of life’s meaning.
Become familiar with a force that has been there since the “gray dawn of
history” by merging with it.
3.
Achieve a balanced relationship between the true source of human life and
reality as known by consciousness through the process of individuating a Self
from its archaic foundations.
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The collective unconscious-an archaic source of energy that has no
boundaries; a storehouse of inherited impersonal memories forged by the
collective experiences of humankind throughout all time.
We strive for what our cultures inform us is worth striving for. We internalize the
values stressed in our homes, neighborhoods, and nations and learn which
“personas” are most suited to our roles and positions. Problems arise when we
come to believe we ARE our personas (like being an executive, a wife, a
husband, etc)
Classical conditioning theory is an association. Pavlov said that infants are
conditioned to respond to their mothers more than to other people because they
associate mom with receiving nourishment because food is a primary drive.
Therefore Mom is the secondary drive to the food.
Harlow’s test on monkey’s and surrogate mothers showed that Mom is not a
secondary adjustment. They needed to be comforted; to be attached.
Attachment theory-the idea that mothering is as important to the human infant’s
development as proper diet and nutrition. This was confirmed by John Bowlby.
Bowlby argued that this behavior system had been retained through the
evolutionary process of natural selection. We inherit a gene that gave us an edge
on survival, so this same gene millions of years ago afforded infants protection
against being attached by predators. He proposed there is an instinctive quality
to attachment.
So the idea that infants are born with attachment systems in place helps us
understand why infants show signs of distress in the absence of their primary
attachment figure. As the child grows older, they do not require her physical
presence at all times; just as long as they are convinced that she is available in
the event that she is needed. So separations can be tolerated as long as
reunions are assured.
Working model is an implicit guide to interactions that can be brought to
consciousness by an act of will. This helps us recognize alternations in our
environment. This occurs outside of our awareness. One of the functions of these
beneath the surface working models serve is to assist us in making our
interpersonal lives predictable. They provide us with a compact history of past
interactions.
Daniel Stern’s Outside-In Theory of self development
After an infant’s birth, they show clear evidence of possessing a self in the
making. He calls this the emergent self. Stern says it is willful, coherent, and
bounded. Ex: a baby shows preference, seeks visual and auditory stimulation
and adapts to changes in its environment. (Demonstrates mastery of simple
cause and effect relationships)
Within months of development, the infant enters into the stage of core self
development. During this stage it gives evidence of knowing that it is an
organized invariant in the world of other objects.
RIGs- representations of interactions generalized. A RIG represents something
that has never happened before exactly that way, yet it takes into account
nothing that did not actually happen once. It’s based on averaged experiences
and is a kind of abstract representation that packages actions, feelings, and
sensations as well as certain features of the environment that have become
associated with past experiences with a particular other. A baby is capable of this
at around 7 months of age.
The subjective self- an advanced stage of self development. This is the stage
where the self is sharable and capable of engaging in “intersubjective union” with
another. Babies and Mothers are able to now read each other’s faces and reach
a level of harmony that provides them with feelings on oneness and with the
other. It’s formed by way of repeated experiences that feelings can be
importantly changed.
The verbal self-emerges at about 18 months of age. Baby enters into a world of
symbols and categories. Words replace gestures and grunts. This is the self we
are most familiar with.
Stern says bonding is not the same as attachment. He says attachment happens
between 7 and 15 months old. This is when two subjective selves, Mother and
child, unite as one. It gives the child its first sense of psychic intimacy.