History and Theory: Freud and Rogers

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History and Theory: Freud and Rogers PSYCH/504 May 13, 2013 Nancy Lees History and Theory: Freud and Rogers The article, “Using the Delay Discounting Task to Test for Failures in Ego Control in Substance Abuse” in the Psychoanalytic Psychology Journal talks about the study done on the self-medication hypothesis of substance use disorders (SUDs). It says that individuals use substances to mask un-pleasurable feelings or experiences. As a society we see this daily. People who have experienced tough times and do not want to feel pain any longer; emotional or physical, are more likely to abuse substances. Individuals do this to make the pain go away which ultimately they really just defense mechanisms (Gottdiener, Murawski, & Kucharski, 2008). “According to psychoanalytic conflict theory, defense mechanisms are activated when the individual experiences any form of displeasure, especially anxiety or depressive affect” (Brenner, 1982). Failures of ego control are related to individuals with substance use disorders. “Ego control refers to the efforts of the individual to control thoughts, emotions, impulses and ability to perform tasks and attention processes” (Baumeister & Vohs, 2004, p. 2). The article also addresses the result of consistent failures in ego control. Ultimately, it was suggested that individuals with SUDs would reveal such failures across a wide range of behaviors and could be measured on a variety of psychological and behavioral tasks (Gottdiener, Murawski, & Kucharski, 2008). Freud states that people who experience painful events didn’t necessarily forget the traumatic event but repressed it into their unconscious meaning that Freud thought that the unconscious was both a cause and effect of repression. He proposed that the unconscious is divided into 3
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