Psychoanalysis Psychoanalytic Schools and Theorists 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Erik Erikson expanded Freudian theory by proposing a lifespan model based on which organizing principle?
- Libidinal zones
- Psychosocial crises across eight stages (Correct answer)
- Archetypal individuation
- Primal scene re-enactment
Correct answer: Psychosocial crises across eight stages
Erikson's psychosocial theory describes eight stages each involving a crisis between two opposing tendencies, such as trust vs. mistrust.
Question 2: What distinguishes ego psychology, as advanced by Heinz Hartmann, from classical Freudian theory?
- It rejected the concept of the unconscious
- It proposed that the ego has autonomous, conflict-free functions (Correct answer)
- It replaced the structural model with the topographic model
- It denied the role of drives entirely
Correct answer: It proposed that the ego has autonomous, conflict-free functions
Hartmann argued that the ego possesses autonomous functions—such as perception and memory—that are independent of drive conflict.
Question 3: W.R.D. Fairbairn's object relations model departed from Freud by proposing that the libido is fundamentally what?
- Pleasure-seeking
- Object-seeking (Correct answer)
- Self-preserving
- Drive-reducing
Correct answer: Object-seeking
Fairbairn argued that the libido's primary aim is contact with objects (people), not pleasure or tension reduction.
Question 4: In Jungian analytical psychology, the 'shadow' refers to which aspect of the psyche?
- The compensatory function of dreams
- The unconscious repository of traits the ego rejects or denies (Correct answer)
- The masculine aspect in a woman's psyche
- The collective inherited layer of the unconscious
Correct answer: The unconscious repository of traits the ego rejects or denies
Jung's shadow comprises the personal unconscious elements—impulses, weaknesses, and desires—that the conscious ego disavows.
Question 5: The term 'interpersonal psychoanalysis,' associated with Harry Stack Sullivan, emphasizes which core premise?
- The primacy of intrapsychic drive conflict
- Personality is shaped entirely by interpersonal relationships and security operations (Correct answer)
- Dream analysis is the royal road to the unconscious
- The transference is always a repetition of the Oedipus complex
Correct answer: Personality is shaped entirely by interpersonal relationships and security operations
Sullivan held that the self and personality are constituted through interpersonal experience, not internal drive dynamics.
Question 6: Which post-Freudian concept, developed by Wilfred Bion, describes the analyst's mental function of receiving and transforming the patient's raw emotional experience?
- Projective identification
- Reverie and the container-contained model (Correct answer)
- The alpha function alone
- Holding environment
Correct answer: Reverie and the container-contained model
Bion described the analyst as a 'container' using reverie to transform the patient's beta elements into digestible alpha elements.
Psychoanalysis Psychoanalytic Schools and Theorists 2
Erik Erikson expanded Freudian theory by proposing a lifespan model based on which organizing principle?