Superego in psychology series#

Deficits in regulating emotions, self-esteem, relationship, and self-care interact variably and cause individuals so affected. The author places emphasis on addictions as a self-regulation disorder. Read moreĪn understanding of addiction to drugs and alcohol and their treatment is reviewed from a modern-day psychodynamic perspective drawing on ego/self-psychology and object relations and attachment theory. Appreciating these vulnerabilities and in contrast to outmoded psychoanalytic modes of detachment, passivity, and more strictly interpretive approaches, the author considers, from a contemporary perspective, important therapeutic elements and attitudes necessary to address the vulnerabilities such as being more interactive and to incorporate attitudes of kindness, support, empathy, respect, patience, and instruction in order to build and maintain a strong therapeutic alliance. The action of each class of drugs is linked to how individuals discover these specific effects in relation to the suffering associated with their self-regulation problems. Individuals so affected discover that depending on the particular emotional pain with which they suffer, they discover a preference for a particular class of drugs. Alcohol and drugs, short term, relieve and/or change states of anhedonia, dysphoria, and unbearable painful emotional states. The author considers addictive drugs to be appealing not so much as pleasure producing but rather as agents that create and foster comfort and contact for individuals who are discomforted and disconnected. to relieve their pain and suffering associated with these deficits with addictive substances and to become addicted to them. This paper argues that religious-cultural symbolism may promote transformations of archaic affect and neurotic conflict that progressively reshape these pre-reflective materials into complex existential insights and convictions.Īn understanding of addiction to drugs and alcohol and their treatment is reviewed from a modern-day psychodynamic perspective drawing on ego/self-psychology and object relations and attachment theory. Couched in a theological idiom, the method helped individuals to work through conflicts created by the three main traumata of British middle class childhood: authoritarian parenting and unresolved bereavement grief.

Superego in psychology series#

Wesley's developmental model involved a series of spiritual phases each characterized by techniques and meditations (ritual mourning, the practice of the presence, introspection) that culminated in sanctification, a cognitive-emotional transformation marked by the eradication of sinful temptations and the perfection of altruism.

By employing a psychoanalytic perspective that explains the pastoral effectiveness of the method, I claim that Wesley's view of spiritual growth was therapeutic and transformative as measured by contemporary clinical standards. This paper examines the contemplative techniques that comprised wesley's method of spiritual transformation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Sexual and aggressive aims play an important role in regaining the approval of the superego through their unique capacity to evoke a sense of the omnipotence of the corporeal self. Conflict between the ego ideal and the conscience constitutes a vital aspect of intrapsychic functioning which self psychology has neglected in its focus upon developmental arrest. Kohut's grandiose self can be seen as a precursor of the ego ideal and his idealized parent imago as a precursor of conscience. Kohut's clinical contribution can be redefined in terms of the structural model as the delineation of the regressive, pathological, and healthy methods through which the ego attempts to restore the approval of the superego. The thesis of this article is that self psychology can be construed as a superego psychology in that both involve an intensive study of the self-regulatory and self-evaluative functions of the mind and their precursors in early object relations.