Psychoanalysis Criticisms and Alternative Perspectives 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which school of thought replaced the psychoanalytic emphasis on internal drives with a focus on interpersonal relationships and attachment?
- Gestalt therapy
- Object relations theory (Correct answer)
- Rational emotive behavior therapy
- Existential therapy
Correct answer: Object relations theory
Object relations theory, developed by Klein, Winnicott, and Fairbairn, shifted focus from drives to early relational experiences with caregivers.
Question 2: Frederick Crews became one of psychoanalysis's most prominent critics primarily by challenging what?
- The efficacy of drug treatments
- Freud's historical claims and the scientific basis of recovered memory (Correct answer)
- The ethics of Rorschach testing
- Behaviorism's rejection of mental states
Correct answer: Freud's historical claims and the scientific basis of recovered memory
Frederick Crews attacked the scientific credibility of Freud's case histories and the recovered memory movement linked to psychoanalytic practice.
Question 3: Alfred Adler broke with Freud primarily over which theoretical disagreement?
- The role of sexuality versus social striving and inferiority feelings (Correct answer)
- The existence of the unconscious
- The validity of free association
- The use of hypnosis in treatment
Correct answer: The role of sexuality versus social striving and inferiority feelings
Adler believed that feelings of inferiority and the drive for social superiority, not sexuality, are the primary motivators of human behavior.
Question 4: Which criticism argues that the 'talking cure' relies on retrospective narrative construction rather than recovery of actual memories?
- The seduction theory critique
- The narrative critique (Correct answer)
- The drive-reduction critique
- The topographic critique
Correct answer: The narrative critique
The narrative critique, associated with thinkers like Donald Spence, holds that psychoanalysis creates plausible stories rather than historically accurate reconstructions.
Question 5: Evolutionary psychology challenges psychoanalysis mainly by arguing that psychological mechanisms are best understood as what?
- Culturally constructed social scripts
- Adaptations shaped by natural selection, not repressed wishes (Correct answer)
- Purely linguistic phenomena
- Products of neurochemical imbalance
Correct answer: Adaptations shaped by natural selection, not repressed wishes
Evolutionary psychologists argue human behavior is explained by adaptive mechanisms, making Freudian concepts like the death drive theoretically unnecessary.
Question 6: The 'false memory' controversy in the 1990s most directly damaged the credibility of which psychoanalytic practice?
- Transference interpretation
- Recovered memory therapy for childhood sexual abuse (Correct answer)
- Dream analysis
- Free association on the couch
Correct answer: Recovered memory therapy for childhood sexual abuse
Research by Elizabeth Loftus showed that memories of childhood abuse could be implanted, casting doubt on recovered memory therapy rooted in psychoanalytic ideas.
Question 7: Jacques Lacan's reinterpretation of Freud is most associated with which intellectual framework?
- Behaviorism
- Structuralist linguistics (Correct answer)
- Gestalt psychology
- Evolutionary biology
Correct answer: Structuralist linguistics
Lacan reformulated Freudian concepts through Saussurean linguistics, famously claiming 'the unconscious is structured like a language.'
Psychoanalysis Criticisms and Alternative Perspectives 3
Which school of thought replaced the psychoanalytic emphasis on internal drives with a focus on interpersonal relationships and attachment?