Psych Study Guide 2

Personality Psychology
Exam 1 Review
The golden age of personality psychology at Livingston College (Version 1)

-resurrecting the personology approach.
1. All issues to be studied in context of exploring individual lives, personal worlds,
histories in depth.
2.Mutual investigations using different methods.
3.Collaborative integration of findings.
-―Personology‖ – coined by Henry A. Murray (Harvard Clinic, 1938-1960). Vanished as
Murray became older; we are able to reappear on Livingston
-Tomkins suggested that if the 4 (Storolow, Ogilvie, Carlson, Atwood & Rosenberg) of the
them were able to get a few more people, they could create a ―Critical mass.‖
-a critical mass would be something compared to a nuclear fusion where intellectuals with
a common vision with a diverse background come together and collaborate their ideas.
-a REVAMP of psych! It was the end of the possibility of a huge shift in RU to more
humanistic treatment! The repersonification of individuals in psych again, a counter to the
huge influence of the Newtonian G. Worldview!
o 1972-1979
o Silvan Tomkins inspiration to resurrect the Psychology movement at Livingston
o Assemble a group: Tomkins, Atwood, Ogilvie, Rosenberg, Carlson, Stolorow
 ―Critical evaluations kill creativity‖
o Support ―Personology‖
 Continuous collaborative discussions and technology
 Intensive mutual analysis
 Absence of criticism
o 3 Points:
 Invariant Organizing Principles
 Turning psychology back on itself
 Study the theories themselves
 Dream for a grand structure of theory that encompasses all the classic
theories of personality
George Atwood‘s good luck continues…
Tomkins was in search of a ―critical mass‖ - an explosion of creativity where intellectuals with
a common vision and diverse backgrounds, could come together to collaborate their ideas.
Recreating the personality approach
-intensive interaction, collaboration, co-teaching
-mutual analysis, continuous
-always no critical evaluation, everyone is a genius!
-all issues to be studied in context of exploring individual lives, personal worlds,
histories in depth
-mutual investigators using different methods
-collaborative integration of findings
―Personology‖ term coined by Henry A Murray (Harvard Clinic 1938-1965) – Personology is
defined by its method, the intensive, in depth simple case study – a focus on personal lives,
personal worlds
Death of the golden age (Version 1)

-external reasons  the professional academic setting, the separateness of the individual
colleges.
-internal reasons – jealousy and possessiveness of one‘s ideas. No one wanted to share
anymore thus separating Atwood from Tomkins
Death of the golden age (Version 2)
The Golden Age bites the dust…
External reasons – forces from outside: vision of psychology as a natural science

(quantification, experimentation); difficulties with promotion/tenure (Atwood denied, then let
in, Storolow denied (tragedy at Rutgers)
Dream of resurrecting personology – the associated clinical-personal PhD program is shattered.
Internal reasons – forces from within: jealousy, competitiveness, accusations of robbery, and
emotional violence. Tomkins – the worst.
Invariant Organizing Principle (atwood and storolow) (Version 1)

-recurring theme in a short definition – recurring melody that a person‘s life follows and if
someone is able to identify the theme, there is a benefit to it.
-they are the life themes of a person from the theory of personology. Recurring affect and
emotions and corresponds to underlying personality and behavior.
-the invariating consits of 3 elements:
-contempt (side of mouth curls a bit) object is bad
-smile (false) – making nice
-self-bite (biting down on lower lip) – I hate myself, depression
o Learned from Tomkins – ―I see the invariant‖
o Recurrent life theme (―Golden Thread‖), ―world design‖, nuclear script, style of
life
o Looked at facial affect during Rorschach, TAT themes
o Studied life history, dreams, love life
 I.e. Facial expressions: contempt, smile, bite lip
 ―The object is bad‖  ―yes to the object‖  ―I hate myself‖
(a runs river that runs through each one of us, a golden thread, a pattern in common)
A Tomkins moment – seminar in affect patterns and personality – video was shown of female
subject‘s Rorschach‘s test. Tomkins had volume turned down to study the facial expressions
Contempt – lip curling – object is bad
Smile (false) – complying – saying yes to object, making nice
Self bite – I hate myself
Tomkins – ―I see the invariant…‖ -
Woman enmeshed with suffocating, smothering mother
Unity Thema (Murray) (Version 1)

-TAT tests  Thematic Apperception Test. Study the stories for some kind of pattern and
extract the underlying story which gives a clue to the history of the individual
-Murray; TT (story from a picture), study the little stories for some kind of pattern and
extract the underlying story, that story gives a clue to the history of the individual.
-a compound of interrelated needs whose history could be traced to early childhood (from
Fantasies of Flight)
-essentially, what Murray did he interpreted people‘s responses to certain stories they
derived from pictures in order to get a better understanding of their history why they are the
way they are essentially.
o Used TAT test to study stories and extract clues from them which will help
discover the underlying history about an individual
o A compound of interrelated needs that could be traced back to early childhood
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) – pictures shown, subjects write short stories about the
pictures, and then the pictures are studied to find some pattern in the storied that gives clues to
the actual history of the individual in order to gain a better understanding of why the person is
the way they are.
Nuclear Scene and Script (Tomkins) (Version 1)
-like to think of personality as a play being staged
-people are replaying scenes, persons face shows distinct emotional patterns
-Atwood administered the Rorschach test and video taped her facial expressions. Tomkins
had never met her or seen her at all… insisted that the volume be turned off when watching
the video – ―I see the invariant.‖
-Example – self-bite… bite bottom lip with own teeth, the person hates themselves or smile
of accommodation/compliance
o People replay scenes and face shows distinctive emotional pattern
o Atwood administered Rorschach test, Tomkins had never met subject, watched
video with sound off, and ―saw the invariant‖ – contempt, smile, lip bite
 Tomkins liked to think of personality as a play being staged.
 People are replaying scenes and their facial expressions show distinct emotional
patterns – he demonstrated this idea with the videotaped Rorschach test. Tomkins had
never met the subject and knew nothing about her case. With volume off on the tape,
Tomkins said, ―I see the invariant…‖ (Lip curl, smile, self bite = enmeshed
relationship with mother)
Personology (Version 1)
-resurrecting the personology approach: all issues to be studied in context of exploring
individual lives, personal worlds, histories in depth
-mutual investigators using different methods
-collaborative integration of findings
-not based on quantitative but descriptive and interpretive
o Henry Murray – The Harvard Clinic – 1988-1962
o The method of the intensive in depth study of single case study
o The study of personal worlds
 Personology is characterized by its methods, specific to a specific human being – in
depth exploration of a person‘s life, their personal world.
 Personology not based on quantitative methods, but is descriptive, interpretive, and
intellectual.
The “diagnostic council” in personlogical studies (Version 1)
-Murray was involved in writing psychological narratives. Insisted that narratives be
written as part of a join venture with input from a team of researches that constituted what
became know as a ―diagnostic council‖
-more than one person doing an in-depth case study on an individual
-you combine… everyone‘s knowledge since…. One person can have a different
interpretation
-Murray‘s diagnostic council: members were charged with the task of studying case
materials and arriving at a consensus regarding critical components of a person‘s life
The “diagnostic council” in personlogical studies (Version 2)
Murray was involved in writing psychological biographies. He insisted that these narratives be
written as a joint venture with input from a team of researchers that constituted a ―diagnostic
council‖ in order to control for a very serious problems in writing psychobiographies. The
problem is that it is often impossible to ―disentangle the psyche of the psychobiographer from
the major issues he or she identifies in another person‖. People are inclined to see in others
things that have more bearing on themselves than the person being scrutinized.
The diagnostic council served as Murray‘s safeguard against the projection of the researcher‘s
lives on their subjects. Group discussions counterbalanced the effects of projective tendencies
and allowed the group to come to a consensus about the major themes of a person‘s life.
The intensive, in-depth case study (Version 1)

-you look at a persons life through many investigations and for a long period of time. Its
OD in depth
-multiple investigators, multiple methods, converging studies, creative integrations, study
person‘s childhood
Positivism (Comte) a self-cancelling idea (Version 1)

-the doctrine saying all true observation is external to the observer, or all those statements not
referable to external factual data are to be cast into the fire
-philosophy that states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such
knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method
-however positivism is not provable by external knowledge
-comte is the father of it.
-the self cancelling aspect is ―all those propositions or assertions about the world that are not
provable by external evidence by empirical data, are to be thrown into the fire. All true
observation is external to the observer.
Positivism (Comte) a self-cancelling idea (Version 2)
 ―All those propositions or assertions about the world that are not
provable by external evidence by empirical data are to be thrown into
the fire‖
 ―All true observation is external to the observer‖
o Positivism itself is not provable by external knowledge (?)
o Can only know what you can physically touch, measurable, concrete
 Only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge
o (Comte thought he was high priest of a new religion after ―soulmate‖ died and
caused psychotic break – called it ―positivism‖ – finding the soulmate
dependence could be related to destruction with the mother (?))
Behaviorism (Version 1)
-Atwood‘s definition is that you take all of the thoughts, feelings, emotions out of psychology
and then you get behaviorism
-Watson is the father of Behaviorism
-Behaviorism wanted to model the great sciences, so it used Stimulus – response as its atoms
-also called the learning perspectie, is a philosophy of psychology based on the propostion that
all things which organisms do – including acting, thinking, and feeling – can and should be
regarded as behaviors.
-seeks to understand human behavior.
-they don‘t believe in anything that can not be observed pretty much.
-Skinner is popular here, too!
-BEHAVIORISM is when the whole concept of man as an experiencing subject is eliminated.
The Unholy Trinity of Watson, Skinner, and Hull (Version 1)

-Watson, Skinner, and Hull helped create the Newtonian Galilean World View
-that you need things to be like the physical sciences
-know they had INTENSE religious background
Atwood called Watson, Skinner, and Hull the ―Unholy Trinity of American Behaviorism‖
-followed by atheism
-Behaviorism came to symbolize a negation of religion and belief in G-d and in its own way
became a religion because of the absolute certainty against religion.
-just the fact that all three came from a heavy religious background and found their ―truths‖ in
atheism.
-because the 3 of them together advanced the view that you need to view psych like the
physical sciences and that you need to have things you can measure and ultimately
behaviorism.
The Unholy Trinity of Watson, Skinner, and Hull (Version 2)
o Create the Newtonian-Galilean World View
o Flipped from theism to atheism
 Behaviorism – negation of religion and belief in God and in it‘s way
became it‘s own religion
o Watson  mother dies, converts to atheism from Southern Baptist Church, does
not go to seminary, has a ―nervous breakdown‖
 Forget about mind, thought, will, desire, etc.
 Stimulus and response – classical conditioning
 Little Albert (―Albert B.‖)
o Skinner  controlling intrusive mother, grew up to be an atheist, tried to be a
writer, goes into deep depression, became psychologist
 Behavior is controlled by its consequences (the Golden Key)
 Operant Conditioning
 Discriminative Stimulus – Response – Reinforcement (either
positive or negative)
o Hull  President of the APA, mathematical learning theory
 A Newtonian physics of behavior – dream of the behavioral algebra
book
 Habit strength increased by drive reduction
 The greatest sin: subjective anthroporphism
Materialism, determinism, rationalism: the Newtonian-Galilean Weltanschauung

(Version 1)
-William Blake was against the N-G worldview which included materialism, determinism,
and rationalism
-Determinism: no freedom or spontaneity for anything. What you are going to do is set in
stone. Everything you do is already determined.
-determinism – the human consciousness of freedom and will do not exist.
-determinism is that everything is determined by cause and effect, there is no choice or free
will for us.
-Nothing comes out of spontaneity
-Newtonian materialism – means no soul, no G-d, the only thing that is real is matter and
energy
-Materialism: the only form anything is = matter/energy. Spirit does not exist. No human
should. No G-d.
-Rationalism: entirely knowable scientifically, there is nothing outside the realm of what
can be understood scientifically.
-No alternative paths to knowledge but reason which is the study of natural science. Rules
out mythical understanding.
-N-G World view – the absolute nature of reality. It‘s the trend in psychology to view
people as physical things rather than an experiencing person.
Materialism, determinism, rationalism: the Newtonian-Galilean Weltanschauung
(Version 2)
 (a viewpoint on the world, held so deeply that one is not aware of it as such, becomes
manifest as ―the way things just are‖)
o Materialism
 Nothing immaterial, such as ―spirit‖
 The only thing that exists is matter
o Determinism
 No freedom
 Everything is set in stone, preconditions
 No such thing as spontaneity
o Rationalism
 The only mode of knowledge is rational, scientific knowledge, logic,
reason
J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, the tragedy of Barrie’s early family (Version 1)

-Barrie‘s brother died in an ice skating accident or something and his mother never
recovered, his mother never smiled.
-Barrie spent most of his time trying to cheer her up and trying not to grow up, so he tried
to do everything possible to get his mother to notice him.
-She kept telling Barrie stories of her childhood, eventually she says that she would be
proud if she was the mother of a famous writer.
-J. M‘s mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever,
never to grow up and leave her.
-he was always trying to earn her love and attention, which was like the window in peter
pan and he could never get in.
-the story of Peter Pan is an image that gave expression to the conflicts of its creator
-Peter Pan was a story about a boy who wanted to return to his mother, just like Barrie.
Peter Pan wanted to make his mom smile, just like Barrie
-it symbolized the dilemma of being locked into a pattern of wanting to return to an early
stage of security by a welcoming mother and knowing that things will stay the same
forever.
-Barrie didn‘t want to grow up either, no one in the whole book wanted to grow up.
J.M. Barrie is the author of peter pan. His whole name is Jamie Barrie, he was the youngest of
seven. All Jamie wanted to do was to get his mother to love him as much as she appeared to
love David (his brother killed in a skating accident).
Peter Pan came to life because J.M. Barrie meet a woman named Sylvia, who never forced him
to grow up. Barrie became a good friend of Sylvia‘s family and her children, George and Jack.
Barrie often played with George and Jack in Kensington Park and it was there that an invisible
boy was created (Peter Pan).
Peter Pan, born from Barrie‘s desire for eternal childhood, free to enact the script of wanting
and resisting maternal care, an asexual figure playing his emotional tag game, seeking and
being repelled by intimacy, free to fly away and be sad and lonely…‖ (86).
―A critical event…that assured the survival and contributed to the actions of Peter Pan, was the
death of Margaret Ogilvy.‖ (87).
- J.M. Barrie’s brother died when he was young, which affected his mother
greatly.
- After the death, his mother was unable to smile, causing Barrie to spend a
lot of time trying desperately to cheer her up.
- He tried many times to ‘become’ his brother by rehearsing acting as he did,
to try and fool his mother into thinking she still had her son.
- His mother wanted to have a son who was a writer, so Barrie decided to
write
- Peter Pan developed out of the situation with his brother, in that his
mother always viewed his as a boy, one that would never grow older.
- Peter Pan’s story symbolized Barrie’s wanting to be with his ‘old mother’
again and to have her smile.
- Because Barrie remembered a happier childhood, before his mother
became depressed, he also longed never to grow up and to remain that
little boy whose mother was happy.
The meaning of fantasies of flight in relation to early bonds to the mother (Version 1)
-A fantasy of flight, in relation to the mother, means people who have had dreams about
flying are in distress. They want to return to a more peaceful time. Usually that means in
your mothers arms.
-usually, something happens to the mother which disturbed these boys lives.
-flying takes them away form this place and comforts them.
-OR George said it could mean reaching for some goal … perhaps for Barrie… reaching to
make his mother smile.
-have in common the fact that they were placed into these situations, like Barrie didn‘t
choose to have his brother die and his mom got depressed.
o People who have dreams about flying are distressed; they want to return to a
more peaceful time, usually that means into a mother‘s arms
o Typically, something has happened to the mother, which disturbs the child‘s life
o Flying takes them away from this place and comforts them OR it could mean
reaching for some goal
- In the purest sense, a fantasy of flight is the longing to be able to fly away
somewhere.
- In relation to early bonds with the mother, those who have these fantasies
are often suffering, wanting to fly and return to a time when they were safe
in their mother’s arms.
- The flying itself can represent two things: either fleeing to a safer place or
being able to reach a goal (i.e. Barrie’s making his mother smile)
C.G. Jung’s early childhood history and the splitting of his selfhood into No. 1 and
No. 2 (Version 1)
-Jung had 2 personalities – he called them No. 1 and No. 2
-when he was 3, his mother was hospitalized. He couldn‘t love anyone since he didn‘t like
his mother being hospitalized. He felt abandoned.
-Carl‘s father was a pastor – His mom died and he developed a skin disease or something,
and he didn‘t like the fact that his mother wasn‘t there anymore.
-He didn‘t like the world love.
-He was charmed with the concept of mysticism
-No. 1 was responsible for coping with the realities of everyday life. It was the evolving
result of experiential learning required to get along with other people
-one personality was in the real world, and the other was the subconscious?
-Jung thought Peter was seeking to return to the source of his existence – his mom
-p.104 of Fantasies of Flight
-his solution to fill the void of not having his mother was to invent a new companion and
he called it the collective unconscious
-No. 2. – p.104 for concrete definition *
-it was connected to something much grander than any earthly attachments he had to
offer. Jung became a seeker for a better life. He called them the self and the Self.
-it was the collective unconscious.
-this is the source of energy that has no boundaries, a storehouse of inherited impersonal
memories forged by the collective experiences of humankind throughout all time)
C.G. Jung’s early childhood history and the splitting of his selfhood into No. 1 and
No. 2 (Version 2)
- When he was 3 years old, his mother was hospitalized, and later she died.
The absence of a mother figure disturbed Jung, and he had difficulty loving
people
- Developed the collective unconscious, which in a sense became a
companion, and replaced the loss he felt.
- Developed two personalities; calling them No. 1 and No. 2
 No. 1 was the coping personality
 Helped him get along with other people
 No. 2 was the personality that went beyond human attachments.
 This was the collective unconscious
 Jung was always looking for bettering his life
 This is where he stored impersonal memory and energy
*The psychology of knowledge and the sociology of knowledge(Faces in a Cloud)

(Version 1)
-The psychology of knowledge looks at intellectual ideas with a personal/subjective
background
-the sociology of knowledge looks at intellectual ideas with a social/historical background
-Remember sociology looks at things from the outside in.
-Definition: studying the role of subjective factors in the structure of man‘s knowledge in
general.
-they just choose different background factors to filter their knowledge with, ti‘s more than
taking into account socio/historical context
* Decentering in the genesis of knowledge (Version 1)
-taking the me out of the process of the beginning of knowledge
-genesis is the beginning and de-centering is displacement
-The de-centering process occurs as an understanding that tone‘s view of knowledge is
particular and subjective rather than universal and objective.
-A sharpened self-consciousness, an understanding of one‘s own viewpoint, leads to a
better understanding of the way objective reality is structured.
-Metapsychology – exploratory realm of concepts about universal foundations of human
nature and experience; each theory has a few ideas that characterize the building blocks of
what makes us what we are.
-Discover the lens behind – what they are doing and how it restricts the field you are
looking at
-*One view of knowledge is subjective and not universal, but as a person becomes self-
conscious they understand their view better and becomes objective and universal!
Relation between the subjectivity and the validity of a theory of personality (Version
1)
-put subjectivity and the validity of any theory together
-the theories are supposed to be looked at objectively right, without bias
-but personality deals primarily with personal feelings
-everyone is different, so you have to be subjective, but if you put all those subjectivities
together you get a theory
-objectivity is really just a bunch of subjectie thoughts
-each thoer is based of subjective ideas – it‘s a consensus
-so the theory of personality is taking all the other theories and using them in concert,
subjectivtely
-validity – that no one theory of personality can‘t be valid since it can not apply to
everyone. Most persaonlity theories are specific to certain person or type of persons
-it‘s a clear break from behaviorist principles
-behaviorist is the total opposite of subjective, its altogether objective.
-Personality Theory – each theory of personality comprises a system of statements
regarding the meaning of being human in the world.
Pure phenomenology, methodological objectivism, and behaviorism (Version 1)

-Phenomenology  study of experiences
-deals with consciousness, specifically the invariant structures of consciouness that
constitute the ultimate conditions of the possibility of all conscious experiences
-it is the study of things as they are perceived as opposed to the study of being, the nature
of things as they are.
-Methodological objectivism  it is a philosophy of the relationship between the scientists
and his work
-its based on purely objective truths and everything that goes beyond anything that is
verifiable is thrown out
-you disregard the sentiments of the scientists
-get rid of experimenter bias by essentially getting rid of the experimenter himself (you can
replace the experimenter and it should give same results)
-Behaviorism is a topic before
Freud’s feelings toward his mother, and their impact on his theory (Version 1)
-he adored her. ―the relationship between mother and son was the most perfect, free form of
ambivalence of all human relathionships.‖
-He feared losing her to his siblings-
-Atwood believes that he did anything to preserve an entirely positive and idealized image
of her, like blame the nursemaid for his neurotic suffering; yet he was torn because he said
that she betrayed his love by bringing another ―hateful intruder‖ into the world (a sibling).
Thus substituting his idealization of his mom for his wife Martha.
-his theory of psychogsexual development reflects a person‘s conflics and neurotic
difficulties from a reified, internal, biological factor – from a child‘s own instinctual drives
and drive energies (the concept of 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.
-Freud used the term to describe the unconscious feelings of children of both sexes toward
their parents.
Freud’s tendency to form idealizing relationships (Version 1)

-Take Martha from Faces in a Cloud as an example. He wanted to mold her into an
idealized image of perfection in order to prevent traumatic betryals.
-Had a defensive mindset with his relationships. He wanted to protect the image of his
relationships from invasion by negative effects.
-Take Fliess for example where Fliess messed up an operation, he took to blame in order to
protect his relationship with Fliess. The same occurrence appears several times when he
protects his mother.
Freud’s tendency to form idealizing relationships (Version 2)
o Had defensive mindset with his relationships
 He wanted to prtect the image of his relationships from invasion by
negative effects
 For example:
o Martha from Faces in a Cloud – he wanted to mold her
into an idealized image of perfection in order to prevent
traumatic behaviors
o Fliess messed up an operation, and he blamed himself for
his patient‘s referral in order to protect his relationship
with Fliess.
o Appears several times in terms of protecting his mother
The purpose of psychobiographical analysis of personality theories (Version 1)

-All theories of personality will remain colored by subjective and personal influences.
-It is person-centered research, which gathers large amounts of information on a specific
person, where you can identify recurrent themes and see how a life is organized.
-The internal pressures and external circumstances that contribute to enduring patterns of
thought and behavior – basically it‘s the ―long way of doing it.‖
-What information you collect form the person is influenced by your own life experiences
because people tend to identify with others and dwell on their similarities.
Freud’s speculative theory of the girl’s psychosexual development (Version 1)

-He saw that in civilization, women have a restraining influence on children and resent the
intimacy and love that work takes away from marital relationships.
-They blame their mothers for not being boys and that is why they start to pull away from
their mothers when they realize.
-This realization is coupled with the knowledge that her mother doesn‘t have a penis leads
to her thinking her mother is unworthy, and becoming attracted to her father, as he does
have a penis.
-Girls will develop love for their mother until they come to this realization then switch over
to love for their father.
-Girls specifically were high in number with hysteria and that they had a longing for their
dad, kind of like how boys had a longing for their mom.
Subjective anthropomorphism (Hull) and mechanomorphism (Maslow) (Version 1)

-Anthropomorphism – giving something unhuman humanistic characteristics such as
emotions
-Mechanomorphism – seeing that which is not a machine as a machine (attributing non-
human thinking to humans). It is basically making humans like robots.
Subjective anthropomorphism (Hull) and mechanomorphism (Maslow) (Version 2)
 Subjective anthropomorphism (Hull)
o Giving something not human humanistic characteristics, such as emotions
o Treating nonhumans as humans
 Mechanomorphism (Maslow)
o Attributing non-human characteristics to humans
o Treating things that aren‘t machines like machines
o Making humans into robots (basically)
Watson’s turn to atheism (Version 1)

-Watson was raised in South Carolonia Southern Baptist
-He was closest to his mother who was a fnatic with regard to the church and he always
promised her that he would become a minister. However, once his mother died, he felt no
obligation to continue pursuing such an occupation and turned to atheism and behaviorism.
Watson’s turn to atheism (Version 2)
o Watson‘s mother had a plan for his to attend the seminary and become a
minister
o She dies and he feels free of his obligation to continue pursuing this occupation
o He turns to atheism and behaviorism
Marshall Applewhite and Larry Walker: similarities and differences (Fantasies of

Flight) (Version 1)
Applewhite thought he was one of two witnesses and wanted to denounce all material
things. He castrated himself and started a new religion where he killed his followers by
convincing them to drink cyanide
o Walker put balloons on his lawn chair and floated up into the sky. He brought a
BB gun to pop the balloons in order to return to the ground. He forgot to tie the
BB gun down and dropped it and then had to wait for the balloons to pop in
order to float back down
o Similarities:
 Both men had dreams/goals of flying away and where trying to escape
reality. When they thought they had succeeded they ended up failing.
 Both believed that their bodies were ―containers‖ for the soul
 Applewhite thought that committing suicide would facilitate his
body rising up and that the spaceship would take him away
(flying)
o Heaven‘s Gate – in bodies that other souls rejected
o Differences:
 Walker literally went up in the air and ―flew‖ but everything he had
wanted was then done. Applewhite had a vision of a spaceship coming
behind a comet to take him to heaven – his dream never actually
materialized
Marshall Applewhite and Larry Walker: similarities and differences (Fantasies of Flight)
(Version 2)
- Marshall Applewhite:
 Started a new religion and was able to convince people that a
spaceship was going to be coming for them to take them away to a
better place
 Convinced them to drink cyanide, in turn killing many people
 Believed he was one of two witnesses and wanted to dismiss all
material things
- Larry Walker
 Always had fantasies of flying and conjured up a plan to fulfill this
 Decided to tie balloons to a lawn chair, and let it rise up, taking
provisions up with him and bringing a bebe gun to shoot the
balloons when he was ready to come down.
 Originally did not want to go too high up, but he miscalculated how
many balloons were needed. In panic he lost the bebe gun.
 Airplanes were calling into the control panel stating, ‘we have a man
in a lawn chair up here’.
- Similarities and Difference
 Both had fantasies of flying due to wanting to find an escape in life,
and they both believed that their bodies were only ‘containers’ for
their souls
 Their souls rejected their bodies, and only when they reached
heaven, could their souls become happy
 Walker actually acted on his fantasy, whereas Applewhite only
fantasized about it
Perry Smith and the dream of the great parrot (Fantasies of Flight) (Version 1)
-after killing people in Kansas, he dreamt that there was a big bird that would carry him
away to paradise island which is full of fruits and happiness.
Perry Smith and the dream of the great parrot (Fantasies of Flight) (Version 2)
- Perry Smith dreamt of a great parrot that picked him up and carried him
away to a paradise island filled with fruits and happiness. This was after
the fact that in Kansas he has killed people.
Skinner’s “dark year” of depression and its relation to his behaviorism (Version 1)
-Skinner had a dream to be an author but his parents only offered him support for 1 year and if
he didn‘t write something worthy he would have to find another career. When he sat down to
write, he had absolutely nothing to say.
-Skinner‘s Dark Year – Elms  shattering depression  burial of feelings and embracing the
study of behavioral phenomena
-He ended up doing behaviorism…. Well operant conditioning to be exact
Watson’s getting fired from Johns Hopkins for the “sin” of adultery (version 1)
-He went to John Hopkins and only got the job because there was a scandal: the Baldwin
was caught in a raid at a ―colored brothel‖ ad excused from the department
-Rosalie Raynor was his lab assistant during the Little Alert experiment with whom he had
a passionate sexual love affair
-Watson was a married man with children, an authority figure in Baltimore and the families
were closely acquainted. Through exposure and letters, he was fired from John‘s Hopkins
Freud’s study of Leonardo and its problems (Fantasies of Flight) (version 1)

-The first violation is that he built an argument on a single fragment of a memory or a
single ―clue‖ Leonarado had jotted own in his scientific notebook.
-the second is that he idealized his subject AKA Leonardo and in many ways identified
with him
-Leonardo‘s abstinence contributed to him being able to operate freely in the service of
intelletual pursuits
-The quality of Freud‘s analysis of Leonardo does not fit his legacy of introducing the
power of unconscious processes to modern science
-He based his portions of his argument on a text that had mistranslated the Italian word
―Nibbio‖  a word that refers to a bird commonly known as a kite, not a vulture.

 (Fantasies of Flight pp 30-40ish)
o Leonardo was an illegitimate child to Caterina and was take from her between
the ages of 3 and 5 to live with his father and stepmother. Freud reasons that
during the first critical years of his life, his mother overstimulated Leonardo in
the place of his father.
o Image of the bird in the dream that hit him with its tail and the mouth of his
mother when she passionately kissed him
 Bird – his mother
 Bird‘s tail – the penis he assumed his mother must have, due to the
absence of a father, (she had impregnated herself like the ―vultures‖ of
antiquity)
o Mona Lisa‘s unfathomable smile – brought back memories of the mother he had
lost
o Problems:
 He built his entire argument on a single fragment of memory that
Leonard jotted down in his scientific notebook
 Idealized Leonard and identified with him in numerous ways – Freud‘s
early relationship with Amelia
 The quality of Freud‘s analysis of Leonardo does not fit his legacy of
introducing the power of unconscious processes to modern science
 He based his argument on a text that mistranslated the Italian ―Nibbio‖
as vulture instead a bird known as a kite
- Freud was fascinated in finding the reason behind Leonardo’s use of flying
in his paintings
- Some problems were that Freud used one particular point that Leonardo
made in his notebook to explain everything, rather than looking at
Leonardo’s life on a larger scale.
 Mistranslated the Italian word “Nibbio” which refers to a bird
known as a kite, for vulture.
Another problem, in general with Freud, was that he tended to relate those he studied
to himself, in terms of how he would act and behave
Creelan’s view of the Little Albert experiment and what it symbolized (Version 1)
-He sees Christian symbols of guilt and a lot of religious symbols from Watson‘s early
childhood. Watson is supposedly acting like a Christ-like figure.
-Adultery like that is a sin that virtually guarantees everlasting damnation. Watson must have
had some twinges of guilt about his feelings.
-The Albert experiment is an enactment of a scene of guilt and also redemption
-Watson named the child Albert because the ―clang‖ for his uncle (attack on the authority –
flinging te horrible curse of that religion back at its central representative of the family)
-The clang symbolizes angry punishing protestant g-d coming down at sinner (the baby was on
the threshold of committing the sin that will violate G-d‘s standard for what human behavior
should be)
-Another interpretation was that he named the child Albert B. Watson‘s mothe‘s brother,
Albert Broadhaus, was the high priest of the SB church. He sees it as revenge against the
church which crushed him as a child.
Creelan’s view of the Little Albert experiment and what it symbolized (Version 2)
o The Little Albert experiment had a lot of basis in Watson‘s religious upbringing
o The subject of fear held a personal importance for Watson
o Symbols:
 ―Reward‖ and ―Punishment‖ – like the rewards and punishments
discussed in the Puritan religion and in the Bible. God would reward or
punish (promises salvation, threatens death, etc.)
 ―Loud Sounds‖ – ―the Word of God‖/Covenant, warning against sin
 Iron bar used to make the sound – ―rod‖ referred to throughout the Old
Testament
 Rat – sinner/ flesh of children
 Rat = flesh
o Playing with the rat symbolizes sexual
desires/masturbation - sin
 ―Albert B.‖ – the name of the minister in his town that he was named
after (John Albert Broadus)
 Enmeshed in Watson‘s personal and moral identity
 Fascination with animals – Watson‘s role of the devil
Dream interpretation
-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 trigerred by events of the previous dal.
-All dreams fulfill a wish (or attempt to)
-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
(obvious, clear)
-impressions, memories, conscious and unconscious
Types of dreams
Condensation – multiple elements ―condense‖ two or more thoughts
Displacement – shifting the affect toward or about someone or something to a different
object
Verbal metaphor – when something metaphorical manifests literally
Representation by the opposite – when intense love manifests as murderous intent.
Reversal of Revelation – when intentions and emotions are swapped. Your intentions
are reflected to the other person.
Latent dream thoughts vs manifest dream contents
-Latent  meaning behind the story
-Manifest  actual story
sources of dreams
-dreams are triggered from by events from previous day
wish fulfillment theory of dreams
-they attempt to fill wishes
-the ―mechanisms‖ that transform latent content into manifest content of dream.
Examination dreams and flying dreams according to Freud
-Freud considers ―typical dreams‖
-Dreamer sees himself back at school taking an exam
-Dreamer is embarrassed to seem himself as an adult among much younger fellow students
and obligated to retake an exam that he already passed a long time ago
-He said that those anxious exam dreams you have that you‘re not going to pass a test….
Only happen to people who‘ve managed to pass exams in the past, not people who flunked
-He said those anxiety dreams about failing happen with takss you‘ve had success with
before.
dream work and the mechanisms of condensation and displacement = censorship
-Condensation – when two ore more dream elements condense into one (two friends into
mom, example)
-Displacement – shifting the affect toward or about someone/something to a different
object (kicking your dog when you actually want to kick your mom)
-Verbal metaphor –when something metaphorical manifests literally
-Representation by the opposite – when thoughts you have are reversed but with
emotions or objects.
-Reversal of relation – when thoughts you have are reversed but with people (you like
your neighbor but you dream that they like you)
 Dream interpretation - Latent dream thoughts vs manifest dream contents

o Latent – meaning behind the story
o Manifest – actual story
 Sources of dreams
o Dreams are triggered by events from the previous day
o Unconscious/repressed thoughts
 Wish fulfillment theory of dreams
o Dreams attempt to fulfill wishes
o The ―mechanisms‖ that transform latetent content into manifest content of the
dream
 Examination dreams and flying dreams according to Freud
o Freud considers them ―typical dreams‖
o Anxiety dreams about falling happen with tasks you‘ve had success with before
 Dream work and the mechanisms of condensation and displacement = censorship
o Condensation: when two or more dream elements condense into 1 (2 friends
into mom example?)
o Displacement: shifting the affect toward or about someone/something to a
different object (kicking your dog when you actually want to kick your mom)
o Verbal Metaphor: when something metaphorical manifests literally
William Blake and his paintings that forecast the destructiveness of the Newtonian-
Galilean worldview (Version 1)
o Portrait of Urizen
 ―Ur‖ – means ―original form‖
 ―Rizen‖ – weird spelling of ―reason‖
 Meaning – ―original primal emergence of reason‖
o Man was given by God the gift of reason
o Newtonian world view take reason to an ―evil‖ level
 Urizen has fallen out of heaven into water and is half submerged
 Human beings submerged into a world of materialism
o ―Newton‖ Underwater
 Has a compass – measuring the earth
 At bottom of ocean, completely submerged into materialism
o Son of Urizen (Los) and Los‘ Son (Orc)
 Orc is shackled to rocks, Los is distressed/crying
 Symbolizes chains of causality – we are all trapped to cause and
effect
o ―Urizen-like‖ Character
 Also shackled – lack of freedom
 ** ALL PAINTINGS ARE METAPHORS OF OBJECTIFICATION
 People are just things with no ethical concerns involved
The symbolic significance of Seligman's learned helplessness experiments and the
trauma experience underlying Zimbardo's prison experiment. (Version 1)
-learned helplessness is the idea that even if you have the opportunity to help yourself you
don‘t because past experiences have made you feel as if there is no solution.
-Guantanamo
-experiments exposing screaming babies to horrible noises; shocking dogs – science, used
to the benefit of national security.
- that we are doing learned helplessness on the prisoners through torture
-learned helplessness is the conditioning procedure in which an organism stops
responding to inescapable aversive stimuli because they have ―learned‖ their actions do not
control the environment
-Seligman had a father who had a stroke that left him helpless… eventually he made the
dogs in his experiment helpless.
The symbolic significance of Seligman's learned helplessness experiments (Version 2)
squeeze the mice and then plop them in the water and measure
the time until they drowned
Produce animal analog of human despair in white lab coat --> fancy
scientists with external observations
Quantify learning capability with dogs that shocked and cannot escape and
those dogs that can
Learned helpness – idea that even you have the opportunity to help
yourself you don’t because past experiences have made you feel as if there
is no solution
Symbolism: Seligman had a father who had a stroke that left him helpless
which made animals helpless by running these tests
Symbols (images in dreams always meaning the same thing according to Freud) in
dreams (Version 1)
The images in dreams always mean a sexual symbol or a reference to the
genitals
"Errors" and their unconscious significance, according to Freud (Version 1)

slips of the tongue person who intends to say something may use another word instead
Usually slips of the tongue are either words that are similar to the intended word
But the most common is saying the opposite of what one intended to say
misreading read something different than what is actually before his/her
eyes mishearing hearing something different on the assumption there is no
organic disturbance on his hearing forgetting (a temporary one) example: a person is unable
to get hold of a name which he knows and recognizes at once, or is unable to carry out an
intention but remembers later and only forgotten it at that moment
Not explained entirely through physiological factors or attention theory –
Freud is not denying them but thinks that these influence the production
of slips Influence of sounds –facilitate slips by the direction they can take
Take Home Message: **Parapraxes are mental acts, they have a sense, and
they occur; they arise from mutually opposing action of two different
intentions**
Heidegger's list of the qualities of Dasein: including being-in-the-world, being-

toward-death, being-with, thrownness, etc.
-Dasein is a being for which being is an issue. It reflects on being and nonbeing. No other
being does this.
-Dasein is a being that poses the question of Being a being that mistakes itself for that
which it is not and sees itself in the reflected light of things.
-Being-in-the-world – an organic unity NOT a ―thing‖ inside a bigger thing. The world is
an irreducible context in which anything appears to us, it is part of our being.
-Dasein‘s first tendency in forming a concept of itself is to make an error to see itself as an
object (a thing among things) to reduce itself to the status of an objective entity.
-Quality of Dasein, the distinctively human mode of being: he tends to fall into errors,
mistaking itself for one of the objects in its world and thus is blinded by the refolded light
of its world.
-flying takes them away form this place and comforts them.
Stimuli that become incorporated into dreams: external, bodily, psychic
Sources of so-called anxiety dreams - also known as nightmares, and their relation to
the theory that all dreams fulfill wishes.
Freud’s attitude toward the possible existence of G-d

-he saw G-d like he saw a father and his wanting to destroy his father disproved his belief
in G-d
-he thought G-d was like what you believed in when art and science were absent.
-He saw religion as controlling
-He thought G-d was an ―enormously dignified father‖ and that religion was childish and
ridiculous
 Heidegger's list of the qualities of Dasein: including being-in-the-world, being-toward-

death, being-with, thrownness, etc.
o Being is an issue: we sit around thinking about why we exist
o Error of seeing itself in the reflected light of objects: reduce ourselves to objects
o Being-in-the-world: no such thing as a ―soul‖, no worldless ―I‖ ego, thing
among things, enworldly
o Dasein is a being-with: people relate to people
Complications: struggle between being one‘s outmost self and being the
they-self (authenticity and inauthenticity)
o Being-toward-death: aware of the inevitability of mortality, know we are going
to die
o Dasein historizes: perpetually generates pictures of its own history and future
 Denial of history is itself a form of historizing
o Thrownness: always already in an enveloping situation
 i.e. being male or female – you can‘t change it (fundamentally)
Faces in A Cloud
Chapter 1: Personality Theory and Subjectivity
 Metapsychology- resembles metaphysics- preoccupies itself with absolutes and universals
o Removed from empirical reality of persons, and aims at knowledge of ultimate
determinants of human condition
 Most divisive controversies in field of personality theory- concern not specific empirical
phenomena but rather the opposing and hypostatized images of human nature within which
those phenomena are interpreted
 Metapsychological thought
 Its speculative absolutes of human nature are reminiscent of metaphysics and reflect
continuing lack of differentiation between psychology and philosophy—preoccupation
with universal laws and quasi-objective energies and its inclination to treat immaterial
subjective experiences as thing-like entities
 Other hand- import imagery from the physical and biological sciences and reflect the
failure of personality theory to define concepts and units of analysis of its own
psychological and phenomenal terms
 Associated with struggles of psychology to define itself as independent field
 This book is concerned with the subjectivity of psychological knowledge and especially
with the subjective origins of universalized metapsychological doctrines
 Intend to use psychobiographical analyses as points of departure for a discussion of the
possibility of a more general and inclusive framework for understanding human personality
The Observer is the Observed

 Each theory based on relationships between man and the world
 Bound up with theorists‘ personal reality and precede his intellectual engagement with the
problem of human nature
 Theorists views world from a limited perspective of his own subjectivity
 His understanding of phenomena of human behavior develops with certain limiting
dimensions of experience which are products of his own life history
 Jung (1968)- ‗the observer is the observed‘
 All theories of personality will remain colored by subjective, personal influences
 Other persons, in reactions to theoretical ideas are similarly subject to these influences
 Commitment to a particular personality theory is therefore a process rather different from
what the popular cannons of the scientific method would lead one to believe
o Cannons conceive the acceptance or rejection of theory based on the logical
coherence and consistency with empirical reality
 Confrontation with theory of personality-awakens pattern of positive and negative
subjective resonance in the individual, and the eventual attitudes will be affected by the
degree of compatibility with his personal reality
 Personality psychology- comprises a variety of schools of thought, each carrying research
of its own domain
o Psychological research on human personality is a largely noncumulative affair- in
contrast to natural sciences, where knowledge develops in a progressively
accumulating and deepening way
o Ex- biology builds on old concepts
o Psychology of personality ignores its history, constantly making fresh starts
o No theory general to include and unify the various schools of thought
 If science of human personality is to ever achieve a greater degree of consensus and
generality- it must turn back on itself and question its own psychological foundations
o Can be achieved by a psychobiographical method with systematically interprets the
metapsychological ideas of personality theories in light of the critical formative
experiences in the respective theorists‘ lives
o This transforms the subjectivity inherent in present systems into an explicit object
of investigation
 Psychobiography cannot lead to reconciliation of the different theories
 Should be capable of flexibly drawing upon the knowledge of all the different schools of
thought and devising new concepts as it goes along
Subjectivity and Validity

 Two problems associated with the study and clarification of the subjective origins of
personality theory:
 1. Problem of identifying personal influences which can actually be shown to color a
theorist‘s thought
 2. Import of the subjective dimension for assessing the validity of the theory
 One position would be to consider the explication of psychological origins as a means of
invalidating the theory
 Investivations of the subjective origins of knowledge are themselves associated with a
background of subjectivity and can in principal be analyzed and ―invalidated‖ in the same
manner
 Validity of a theory must be determined in ways sharply dissociated from considerations of
genesis
 Aim of personality theory is to arrive at comprehensive principles to account for human
experience and human conduct
 Empirical phenomena of the human world present themselves differently according to the
perspective of the observer
 The particularity of the psychological context from which the personality theorist views
reality guarantees that his interpretations will be focused on selected features of the
empirical field and that the specific dimensions of human conduct bearing a
correspondence to his own pretheoretical vision of man will be magnified in his eventual
theoretical constructions.
 Our position on subjectivity and validity is different from the two above
o We envision a hierarchal progression of recursive analyses, in which the theoretical
systems at each level of the hierarchy are shown to be limited and particularized by
reference to the more inclusive systems at succeeding levels
o Another problem- personality theories contain many concepts which cannot under
any circumstances be validated (or invalidated)l these are reified metapsychological
superstructures presumed to encompass and ultimately to determine the human
condition
The Psychology and Sociology of Knowledge

 The psychobiographical investigation of personality theory actually represents only one
branch of a broader discipline which would study the role of subjective factors in the
structure of man‘s knowledge in general- ―the psychology of knowledge‖
o Concerns itself with knowledge which is demonstrably valid, knowledge which is
demonstrably invalid, and knowledge which is based on faith
o It would study subjective and personal influences on artistic and literary creations,
philosophical systems and political theories, and on works in mathematics and
sciences as well
 Strong analogy between the ―psychology of knowledge‖ and ―sociology of knowledge‖
 Mannheim- distinguished between immanent and extrinsic perspectives on intellectual
systems and ideologies
o Immanent- one enters the system, accepts internal postulates, and views world from
its standpoint
o Extrinsic- system itself becomes object of perception and is viewed in the context of
factors and influences external to it
 Sociology of knowledge views intellectual phenomena in formative social and historical
setting of their origin and investigates the dependence of thought upon its social milieu
 Both sociology of knowledge and psychology of knowledge apply an extrinsic perspective
to intellectual activity, and both seek to define the dependence of knowledge upon its
context
 The psychology and sociology of knowledge, which in our view are interdependent
disciplines, must ultimately enter into a cooperative enterprise if the determinates of
intellectual phenomena are to be fully comprehended and clarified.
 In our present analysis, every theory of personality can be shown to contain elements
deriving not only from the theorist‘s personal world, but also from the external social field
of ideas and concepts within which he lives and works.
 Example: way in which Jung and Reich assimilated and transformed Freudian ideas bears
an unmistakable subjective imprint
 Psychological level of analysis neglects the link between the theorist and his milieu and
runs the risk of mistakenly attributing socially determined aspects of thinking to personal
factors located in his unique life history
Decentering in the Genesis of Knowledge

 Thesis of book – the continuing progress of the field will depend upon the clarification on
limiting subjective influences in theory building and on the elaboration of concepts and
methods belonging to a level of generality higher than that hitherto attained
 Differentiation between subjectivity of individual theories and the empirical phenomena
they seek to explain, whereby the existent conflicts between various metapsychologies
might be resolved.
 One essential feature of the advance to the next stage of thought consists in a decentering
process whereby an initial view is transcended by a more general stand point.
o What had earlier been envisioned as universal and objective is now recognized as
particular and subjective
 Such transformations clearly illustrated in revolutions of modern physics
o In theory of relativity, what had previously been taken as objective existence
became only a special case in a system of equally valid alternative appearances
 Piaget (1970)- argues that the decentering- or subject-object differentiating- process
characterizes not only the evolution of the physical sciences, but also the sciences of man.
 Gradual transformation implies not only a better understanding of society in its own terms,
decentered from the subjective experiences of the individual, but also a much clearer and
differentiated self-awareness on the part of the observers
 Chomsky (1965)- program outlined by him includes the clarification of universals
underlying the empirical diversity of human languages, and promises to elucidate the
nature of symbolic communication systems- and hence of the human perspective on the
world- in a radically new way
o These findings showed a deepened self awareness of the link between experienced
reality and milieu, and thus imply a decentering of thought from its embeddedness
within a particular cultural and historical setting
 This recognition of the subjectivity of the analyst‘s experiences in the form of
countertransference manifestations in turn established the possibility of a still deeper and
more articulated knowledge of the analytic patient
Attempted Circumventions of Subjectivity

Behaviorism
 Behaviorism- the whole concept of man as an experiencing subject is eliminated
 Arose as a reaction to an excessive emphasis upon the analysis and description of
consciousness, and especially to the insubstantial controversies of the introspectionist
movement associated with Wundt and Titchener
 Discipline of psychology is a natural science and must be founded upon the primary and
unassailable fact that man is an objective organism behaving in an objective physical and
social environment
 Skinnerian behaviorism
o Skinner‘s Science and Human Behavior- important components of the natural
scientific attitude, proceeds to argue that this attitude can be directed toward the
behavior of the organisms as a new domain of the phenomena for investigation
o Beyond Freedom and Dignity- asserts that in the same way the natural sciences
made progress by deanimating and depersonifying nature, the process of
psychology will depend upon the deanimation and depersonification of man
o Skinner places greatest emphasis on the controlling reinforcement contingences
presumed to universally guide and regulate the course of human lives
o External variables shape and control the behavior of the individual
o Skinner transforms the subjective world of the individual into a covert but
nonetheless objective set of events which, pending the invention of suitable
physiological instrumentation, is knowable only through inference
o Image of man as an experiencing subject is eliminated, and the phenomena
previously relegated to the domain of consciousness are transposed into the sphere
of objective reality
o Repeatedly saying that subjective phenomena are not objective, for causal efficacy
is a property of objective events
o Subjective experience becomes covert behavior and therefore turns out to be
objective after all
o His behaviorism, a radically consistent one, takes for granted that the investigative
activity of the psychologist is under the control for the same kind of contingencies
of reinforcement which are being studied
o Skinnerian perspective- study the functional relationships between theoretical
formulations and the reinforcement contingencies prevailing the theorist‘s past and
present environments
o In our view this would be doomed to failure
o Difficult to imagine such a project providing anything more in the way of results
than the notion that theorists formulate their theories in the ways they do because
they have been reinforced for doing so.
o Major limitation of Skinnerian behaviorism as a workable foundation for the
psychology of knowledge, and more generally for a science of human personality,
lies in its lack of synthetic heuristic principles to guide the interpretation of
psychological and life-historical phenomena.
o Skinner‘s system- atomistic and externalistic in orientation, envisioning human
conduct universally as a set of empirically separable objective behaviors and tracing
functional relationships in which the sources of causality are always finally located
in the external world.
Methodological Objectivism (p21)

 Less extreme than behaviorism, but also exemplifies an attempted circumvention of the
problem of subjectivity, is represented by the notion that the personal concerns of the
investigator are potential contaminating influences and therefore pose dangers to the
scientific value of his research
 Philosophy of the relationship between the scientist and his work
 Emphasizes disjunction between the investigator as a person and the material he studies,
and aims at establishing a universally verifiable, purely objective truths, divorced from the
human contest in which they are discovered
 Accompanied by a devaluation of the personal needs, wishes and interests of the scientist,
such factors being interpreted as ―experimenter bias‖ to be controlled and eliminated
 From this perspective, psychobiographical and intensive case analysis would be construed
as an especially dangerous and seductive procedure, for there is no safeguard against error
other than the investigator‘s judgment, and opportunities for speculative and subjective
distortion of the material are very great
 Consequences of this perspective- involve a narrowing of the range of problems that can be
studied and an alienation of the psychologist from his own research
 Experimental methods replace correlational and descriptive ones, which are associated with
uncertainty of interpretation
o Problem- phenomena of human personality that a practical experimental or
correlational paradigm can capture are few are far between
 Protection against subjective bias is limited, the personal concerns of the investigator will
affect his selection of problems and variables to study, empirical questions he poses, and
his understandings and implications of final results
 The devaluation of specific thought inhibits serious theorizing, diverts the attention of
investigators from issues of broad human significance and refocuses their research interests
upon ever more narrowly defined and theoretical problems
 Further consequence- strips the issues of their human contexts and loses sight of its
presumptively central concern with the experience and conduct of persons
o Deals less and less with the person and more on the relationships between
personality traits such as introversion and creativity, locus of control, persistence in
tasks, etc.
 Limits empirical domain, trivializing problems it studies, and excludes quest for broader
theoretical understanding
Phenomenology
 Attempts to establish itself as a descriptive science of the primordial phenomena of human
consciousness
 Husserl (1931)- goal of this – systematic characterization of transcendental subjectivity,
that is of the invariant structures of consciousness that constitute the ultimate conditions of
the possibility of all conscious experience
 The phenomenological reduction- entails a graded series of alterations of perspective,
beginning from a naturalistic standpoint of consciousness of the world, passing through a
phase in which empirical consciousness itself (rather than empirical reality) becomes the
object of study, and eventuating in the disclosure of the unanalyzable pure essence which
invests the world with its meaning and validity: the transcendental ego
 Central component of Husserlian reduction= bracketing- an intellectual operation through
which the phenomenologist frees himself from preconceptions and achieves the purity of
the transcendental perspective.
o Radical alteration of one‘s own position in relation to all those assumptions, beliefs,
and attitudes which in the natural standpoint are taken for granted
o Natural world as a series of empirical objects is bracketed, all implicit and explicit
assumptions concerning it are held in suspension, and the investigating
consciousness is refocused upon the pure essence of the concrete data of experience
per se
 Lockean empiricism: an implicit mind-body dualism; an image of consciousness as a
quasi-spatial container; a view of man as the passive receptor of discrete, elementary
sensations from the world
 Problem- can bracketing be carried out without becoming involved in a contradiction?
 Another problem in the concept of bracketing- cumulative effects of the phenomenologist‘s
life history
o Inescapable (nonbracketing) influences pose a danger to purity of investigations,
limiting their generality and validity
 Husserlian program to describe transcendental subjectivity is accompanied by an implicit
goal of stepping outside the bounds of personal existence into an unconditioned realm of
pure objectivity on pure subjectivity
o Impossible
 Tendency to always start over again with the uncontaminated facts= rules out any genuine
advance in its discoveries; the essence of the accumulation of scientific knowledge lies in
the testing, reformulating, and deepening of presuppositions regarding the material under
study
The Case Study Method

 3 general features distinguishing it:
 1. Personalistic and phenomenological – presupposes that the issues being investigated in
personality research can fully be understood only if viewed in the context of the
individual‘s personal world
 2. Historical- personal world is recognized as a life-historical phenomenon, so that the
issues of research are located on the temporal dimension of personal development
 3. Clinical and interpretative- advances the understanding of individuals not by the testing
of delimited hypotheses arrived at on some independent basis, but through a process of
interrogation and construction evolved from empirical materials at hand
 Hermeneutic circle- the parts that give rise to the whole and the whole provides a context
for evaluation of the parts
 By lifting the particularizing impact of his personal subjectivity into reflective awareness,
the investigator seeks to deepen and broaden the interpretations that are brought to bear on
the case material
 Goal- the illumination of the inner pattern of a life, that distinctive structure of meanings
that connects the different parts of an individual‘s world into an intelligible whole
 Psychobiographical analysis is an empirical procedure that always entails a complex back
and forth movement between theoretical constructions and the phenomena being studied
o Validity can only be tentatively established, and it relies upon interpretative criteria
pertaining to coherence of argument, comprehensiveness of explanation,
consistency with accepted psychological knowledge and the aesthetic beauty of the
analysis in disclosing previously hidden patterns in the material being investigated
 The psychological analysis of personality theorists from within their own systems
inevitably loses sight of their finiteness and personal limitations, and casts them as
existential heroes who, almost miraculously it seems, uncover the fundamental structures
and motivations that universally determine the human condition
 We are in the paradoxical position of requiring a more embracing standpoint from which
earlier theories can be shown to be limited and particularized, without having such a system
explicitly worked out
o Two considerations:
o 1. We shall be drawing upon the accumulated knowledge of many different schools
of thought, and especially upon their clinical and personological (as opposed to
metapsychological) principles
o 2. Our method of approach is intensive psychobiographical case analysis, a
procedure sufficiently flexible to permit new theoretical ideas to be formulated and
genuine psychological discoveries to be made
o Need to use our studies as explorations of the possibility of a more general
framework
Structures of the Subjective World

 Focus on configurations of the self and other that thematically organize the person‘s
subjective world of experience
 Not to be viewed as mental replicas of interpersonal events, nor should they be seen as
having objective existence in physical space or somewhere in a ―mental apparatus‖
 Instead, conceptualize these configurations as systems of ordering or organizing principles,
cognitive-affective schemata thought which a person‘s experiences of self and other
assume their characteristic forms and meanings
 Conception of such ―structures of subjectivity‖ bears a close and important relationship to
the formulations of the child‘s world in the developmental psychology of Piaget, to
Binswander‘s existential-phenomenological notion of the ―world-design‖, to the system of
personal constructs envisioned in the world of Kelly, and to the theory of ―scripts‖
elaborated by Tomkins
 Psychobiographical research- first phase- consists of a provisional descriptive
characterization of the individual‘s subjective world
o Discovering and formulating the unique dimensions on which his experiences are
organized, the central concerns and dilemmas that are for him subjectively salient,
and the recurrent thematic configurations of self and other that pervade his world
 We assume the subjective experience is always thematically organized around some more
or less coherent set of nuclear concerns and, that these concerns arise out of critical
formative events in a person‘s life
 Second phase- clarification of the developmental origins and of the functional significance
of the particular organizing configurations in the person‘s subjective world
o Now view identified pervading concerns and recurring themes of the person‘s life
as embedded in the history of his psychological development
 In analysis, we view four metapsychological systems of personality theory as reflections to
their creators‘ subjective worlds
o Analyze each theory to disclose the distinctive configurations of self and other that
are reified and universalized in the theory‘s conception of human nature and the
human condition
o Elucidate the developmental origins and functional significance of these
configurations in the context of each theorist‘s formative life experiences and of his
life‘s recurrent themes
Chapter 2: Sigmund Freud

 Our view- any self analysis is limited and circumscribed by the absence of a systematic
transference analysis and by the fact that no individual can successfully stand completely
outside of his own organizing principles
 Argue that the theory of psychosexual development and its central metapsychological
reifications may be partially viewed as serving a defensive-restitutive effort by Freud to
protect an idealized image of his mother against profound unconscious ambivalence
 3 parts:
o 1. Discuss early childhood experiences with a view toward reconstructing the
critical formative influences on development of his personality
o 2. Trace impact of these experiences on the pattern of his intimate relationships as
an adult
o 3. Present an analysis of the theory of psychosexual development and of certain
other features of the psychoanalytic system in the light of the subjective concerns
that dominated Freud‘s personal existence.
Ambivalence in Freud‘s Life

 Freud‘s conscious attitudes toward mother were positive and vividly reflected in his
characterization of the tie between mother and son, ―altogether most perfect, most free
from ambivalence of all human relationships‖
 Conscious attitudes toward mother was the product of a defensive idealization process that
served to protect his image of their relationship from invasion by negative affects
o To avert dreaded emergence of rageful feelings towards her, which he associated
with possibility of losing her
Earliest Experiences
 First months of infancy= positive and undisturbed relationship with mother
 11 months old, younger brother, Julius born—Freud reacted with jealousy and rage
 19 months old- brother died- ―germ of self-approaches‖= Freud drew cause and effect
connection between his own jealous ill wishes and the brother‘s ‗disappearance‘
 Arrival of younger sibling also experienced as betrayal by the mother and an infuriating
disappointment with her
 Freud says early years are exclusively positive, picturing mother as an object of his sexual
feelings and love
 Relationship between him and nurse= intense emotional ambivalence
 She chided him for being incompetent and clumsy, encouraged him to steal money for her,
and generally gave him ―bad treatment‖
 Freud states nurse gave him high opinion of his capacities, provided him with means of
living and surviving at an early age, took him to church
 Nurse= surrogate mother, provided Freud with care when mother was busy bearing
children
 Around the time of Anna‘s birth- critically important for development of Freud‘s
personality
o Infuriating rival for mother‘s love
o Nurse fired for stealing
o Disappearance of nurse= shattering and incomprehensible trauma for Freud and
became frightened of similar ―disappearance‖ of mother
 Freud later envisioned the nurse‘s bad treatment of him as the prime cause of his
psychological difficulties
 Vanishing of nurse was also a security-shattering loss of all those elements in their
relationship that he loved and needed
 Intense separation anxiety presented in the early memory concerned a fear that his mother
had fallen victim to the terrible fate of the nurse- its unconscious meaning is that the
mother was in danger of being similarly shut away from the world and annihilated by
Freud‘s own hostile feelings toward her.
 Freud perceived that any aspect of his affectivity- angry feelings- that disturbed the
perfection of the mother-son tie, was experienced by his mother as psychologically
damaging
o His rage= threat to his mother‘s existence
 Central conflict in his emotional life= intense, possessive need for his mother‘s love and an
equally intense, magically potent hatred
 Nurse=object of ambivalent feelings
 Love/hate attitudes toward father
 Relationship to nephew john= both positive and negative feelings; friend and enemy
 Freud‘s childhood dream- contains expression of Freud‘s hostile feeling s toward his
mother and a depiction of their dangerous consequences
 Two classes of dreams:
o Dreamer is emotionally unaffected
 Have meaning other than the apparent one; conceal content in some other
wish
o Dreamer feels deeply pained by the death
Adult Relationships
 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
o Wife Martha and mentor Wilhelm Fliess
 Freud‘s attraction to the study of Nature as a beautiful and bountiful mother= expressed his
wish to find again the lost paradise of his earliest tie with his mother
 Another context, Freud attributed his interest in medical studies to ―infantile curiosity‖ and
―overpowering need to understand something of the riddles of the world in which we
live…‖
o Riddle= unfathomable mother- showered him with adoration and then betrayed him
 Freud hoped to refind early tie to his mother in nature and dreams and relationship with
Martha Bernays
o ―grand passion‖
o Freud wanted to mold her into his perfect image—connected with his intense
jealousy and possessiveness
 Freud‘s need to mold Martha into an idealized image of perfection, a mother-surrogate who
loved him exclusively, with totally loyalty and devotion, stemmed from his unconscious
desire to prevent a repetition of the traumatic betrayals he had experienced with his actual
mother
o Sought to prevent the dreaded emergence of the split-off image of the gated mother
and of his own repressed rage at her
 Jealous outbursts followed by self-reproaches= need to restore Martha‘s (i.e., mother‘s)
perfect image
 Freud‘s assumption of blame, through an experimental translocation of the sources of
badness from Martha to himself, repeated, we believe, the mental operations by which, as a
child, he had saved and preserved the idealized image of his mother in the face of her
betrayals and of his own resulting ambivalence.
 Wilhelm Fliess- became heir to the archaic idealizing needs and underlying unconscious
ambivalence conflict with Freud had formerly transferred from his mother to Martha
 3 critical circumstances contributed to Freud‘s need to idealize Fliess:
o 1. Cardiac symptoms eventuated in Fliess becoming trusted physician, upon whom
he depended as a magician-healer
o 2. Freud beginning lonely excursions into dark and unexplored terrain of the
unconscious and increasingly felt a strong need for Fliess to fill the role of
perspective mentor
o 3. Freud‘s growing disillusionment with his former mentor, Joseph Breuer
 Became dependent on him for work
 Freud endowed him with unrealistically idealized attributes
 With Fleiss, Freud strove to revive that early blissful union with the idealized maternal
object
 Ambivalent conflict not far
o Always worried about Fliess‘s health
o Preoccupied with danger of a train accident whenever Fleiss went on a trip
o Terrifying thoughts of disaster when he did not hear from him at regular intervals
 = reminiscent of crisis of separation anxiety with mother
 Displacements and internalizations of blame (with Fleiss‘ surgery) through which Freud
sustained his aggrandized picture of Fleiss (another mother-surrogate) repeated the mental
operations through which he saved and protected his early idealized image of his mother
from contamination by disappointments in her and his resulting unconscious ambivalence
The Defensive-Restitutive Function of Freud‘s Theories

 Freud‘s theory= a person‘s conflicts and neurotic difficulties are to be viewed from the
perspective of a reified, internal, biological factor- namely, the vicissitudes of the child‘s
own instinctual drives and drive energies, encompassed in the metapsychological concept
of the id
 Freud‘s view- sources of evil located in the child himself, in his own sexual and aggressive
impulses, which emerge according to innate, biologically predteremined sequence in
relative independence of environmental influences
o Freud‘s wish to exonerate(forgive) his parents, especially his mother
 Freud repeated the process through which he preserved his idealized picture of Martha and
Fliess (mother-surrogates) by internalizing the blame for their disappointing him
 Metapsychological constructions pertaining to the id= Defensive reifications which served
to buttress and consolidate his lifelong efforts to ward off his unconscious hatred of his
mother and to maintain the ambivalence-free purity of his conscious image of their
relationship
 Freud identified most strongly with Oedipus conflict
 Girls- become alienated from mother, while boys do not—―girls hold their mother
responsible for lack of a penis and do not forgive her for their being thus put at a
disadvantage‖
 Boy‘s discovery of mother‘s lack of penis triggers his fear of castration at the hands of the
father and the dreaded vagina eventually becomes ―a place of shelter for the penis‖
 Girl feels herself to already be castrated, she lacks the most powerful motive enforcing
superego formation, and her insufficient superego consolidation accounts for the emotional
capriciousness and undeveloped sense of justice she will supposedly display as an adult.
o In this notion, we see an encapsulation of Freud‘s unconscious grievance against the
treacherous mother who, from his vantage point, capriciously dethroned him and
unjustly prejudiced his rights to her exclusive love
 We believe in Freud‘s theory of psychosexual development not only is the source of
badness transposed into the child in order to absolve the mother of blame but the good and
bad aspects of the mother are also defensively kept separate in order to ward off his intense
unconscious ambivalence conflict.
 Freud‘s innate death instinct- hostility becomes an internal biological necessity—may be
viewed as the final triumph of his wish to absolve his mother
o Source of human aggression located in interior of the individual, AND its original
and essential direction is shifted away from others (mother) and toward the self
Summary and Conclusions

 Freud‘s wish to restore and preserve early idealized image of his mother ran through his
life like a red thread, influencing reconstructions of his early childhood history, his choice
of a field of study, his important adult relationships and his theoretical ideas
 Defensive operation Freud employed to protect the idealized vision of his mother from
invasion of a deep, unconscious ambivalence conflict left their mark on his theory of
psychosexual development and its central metapsychological reifications
o Sources of evil internalized
o Hostility displaced onto father
o Split-off bad maternal image regelated largely to the psychology of the girl
 Freud‘s conceptions of instinctual drive energies were found in part to be products of his
own defensive and restitutive struggles, rooted in his own formative life experiences
INTRODUCTORY LECTURES OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
According to Freud, it is the insistent return of the repressed that can explain numerous
phenomena that are normally overlooked: not only our dreams but also what has come to be
called "Freudian slips" (parapraxes). According to Freud, there is a "psychology of errors"; that
slip of the tongue or that slip of the pen, "which have been put aside by the other sciences as
being too unimportant" become for Freud the clues to the secret functioning of the
unconscious. Indeed, he likens his endeavor to "a detective engaged in tracing a murder"
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)
 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 (obvious,clear)
 Impressions, memories, conscious and unconscious
 Types of dreams-
o Condensation-multiple elements ―condense‖ 2 or more thoughts
o Displacement-shifting the affect toward or about someone or something to a
different object
o Verbal metaphor- when something methaphorical manifests literally
o Representation by the opposite- when intense love manifests as murderous
intent
o Reversal of Revelation-when intentions and emotions are swapped. Your
intentions are reflected to the other person
Irma‘s Injection
 when trying to distinguish why he exchanged her in the dream for her two unruly
friends, he says its because he wishes he could have exchanged them either because
intelligence
 The analytical procedure suggested by Freud begins by examining "day residues,"
events that occur during the days preceding the dream and which, through association,
can clarify the dream episode and restore the identity of the protagonists.
 The interpretation is guided by the assumption that the dream is the fulfillment of a
wish, in this case, the wish to ward off responsibility for the fault onto someone else
 Latent - meaning behind the story
 Manifest- actual story
Dreams are triggered from by events from previous day
Wish Fulfillment Theory of Dreams
They attempt to fill wishes
 The ―mechanisms‖ that transform latent content into manifest content of the dream.
 Freud considers ―typical dreams‖- dreams about flying
 Dreamer sees himself back at school taking an exam
 Dreamer is embarrassed to see himself as an adult among much younger fellow
students and obligated to retake an exam that he already passed a long time ago
 He said that those anxious exam dreams you have that you‘re not going to pass a
test…only happen to people who‘ve managed to pass exams in the past, not people who
flunked
 He said those anxiety dreams about failing happen with tasks you‘ve had success with
before.
Lecture Notes
January 29 Lecture
Personology- Henry Murray- the ―Harvard clinic‖ 1932-1962

The method of the intensive, indepth single case study (the study of personal worlds)
Murray was inspired by conversations with Jung
The golden age of personality psychology at Livingston College (1972-1979)

Silvan Tomkins is inspiration to resurrect the personology movement at Livingston
He began assembling a group to reach ―critical mass‖
Tomkins was the center, with Stolorow, Atwood, Carlson, Rosenberg, and Ogilvie all around
1. Continuous collaborative discussions and teaching
2. Intensive mutual analysis
3. Absence of criticism- everyone‘s a genius since critical evaluation kills creativity
An example: Tomkins showed a student an object (possibly from the Rorschach test)
The girl first showed through facial expressions that the object was bad (contempt)
Then Tomkins analyzed that the student said ―Yes‖ to the object, meaning she just
submitted to it (false smile)
Then Tomkins felt that through her expressions, the student showed a sort of self
depreciation, as if she hated herself (self hate, aggression against self)
February 2 Lecture
Invariant organizing principle- recurrent life theme
The bloody ending of the golden years at Livingston College (about 1979)
Attack by forces from outside- the controlling vision of psychology as a natural science
Attack by forces from within- jealousy, betrayal, accusations, trauma
A tragedy befalls Rutgers when R. Stolorow is denied tenure

The dream of the beautiful resurrection of personology and the associated clinical psychology
PhD program bites the dust
Faces in a Cloud (1979)-

1. Invariant organizing principle
2. Turning psychology back on itself
3. Searching for a more general theory of personal worlds, in all their diversity-
getting rid of reifying, restricting metapsychological assumptions and theories that
universalize the theorist‘s theme
February 5 Lecture (Sorry had to add it as a picture to keep the formatting)
 A weird genealogy of personology and psychoanalysis showing the path of George

Atwood refinding his origins.
 Weltanschaung: a viewpoint o the world – or all that is, held so deeply one is not
aware of it as such – it becomes manifest as ―the way things just are.‖
o you can become aware but it is difficult
o prereflected – haven‘t reflected on it yet. Not conscious.
 The Newtonian-Galilean-Weltanschaung
o Has haunted psychology
o 1) determinism: no freedom, everything is fixed with certainty
o 2) materialism: nothing immaterial exists, such as ―spirit.‖ There is just matter
o 3) rationalism: no mode of knowledge outside of logic, reason, science. Rejects
non-rational forms of knowledge
o Newton and Galileo didn‘t actually believe in this.
 Death force: kills ability to view people as individual humans
 Man-as-machine: a death force view that cancels subjective life. What is a machine?
It is not, reduced to barest essentials, a device having a finite number of internal states
or configuration of its parts that can occur? Is a person a machine Are there features of
an existing, living, person that can never, in principle be reproduced as a machine? Is
the capacity of creativity such a feature?
 Freud followers: believe everyone has a universal thread of conflict. No one is unique.
 Phenomenology: study of experience
 Invariant Organizing Principle: reasons of your existence
February 9 Lecture
A cast of Newtonian-Galilean characters:

1. LaPlace- 18th century, had the dream of a superhuman intelligence with all
encompassing predictive and postdictive
2. Thomas Huxley- late 19th century (popularized Darwin)
3. Frances Crick- 1996, came up with The Astonishing Hypothesis
4. C. Flaherty- ―molecular psychology‖
5. August Comte- 19th century
Positivism: ―all true observations are external to the observer‖ (the credo of 20th century psych)
Larry Schecter: all true statements not grounded in external data are worthless
(this statement is ironically self-cancelling since it is not supported by external data of its own)
On one end is theologism, then metaphysicism, then on the other end is positivism.
Under theologism is animism (worship of spirits), polytheism (worship of many gods),
monotheism (worship of one god)
Comte, Clothilde, and the New Religion

Comte was the high priest of this New Religion, he wanted to ―prove‖ positivism
J.B. Watson- the father of American behavior
Pavlov- creator of classical conditioning

UCS (unconditioned stimulus) => UCR (unconditioned response)
CS (conditioned stimulus) -> UCS => CS -> CR (conditioned response)
February 12 Lecture
―introspection‖ as a method for psychology is the ―last transformation of theology‖, according

to A. Comte
J.B. Watson (1913) – ―Psychology as a behaviorist views it‖

Watson also associated mind, consciousness, experience with soul/religions
Positivism and behaviorism are both movements arising out of a personal context of struggle
against overwhelming religiosity
Watson- Southern Baptist Church

Comte- psychotic religious delusions
Positivism, applied to psychology, becomes behaviorism, a science of the externally
observable
―mind, thought, will, desire, feeling, purpose, meaning, experience, the subjective?‖
Forget about it!
Psychology‘s atom? The basic unit would be the conditioned reflex, an elementary association
that forms between stimulus and response
The natural sciences (especially chemistry and the use of a periodic table of elements) were a
big inspiration for psychology
Salivary response in dogs- Pavlov (eyeblink response in people)

Unconditioned stimulus -> unconditioned response
CS -> UCS => CS -> CR
The most famous experiment in psychology- Little Albert (1924)

When you hit a gong right by a boy, he gets startled and starts to cry.
When you hit a gong right by a rat, it whimpers and starts to shake.
Watson had a fundamentalist Christian upbringing, he was promised his mom he would be a
minister
Fulman College -> Princeton Theological Seminary
When Watson‘s mother died, he became an atheist immediately
February 16 Lecture
Watson‘s PhD dissertation:

―psychic maturity‖ in rat pups‖ (independence from now-dead mother)
―nervous breakdown‖- a crisis of pure externality (behaviorism itself is a system of externality)
Little Albert study

Rosalie Raynor was Watson‘s partner during the study
She was involved in a romantic relationship with Watson, and the scandal led to Watson being
terminated from Johns Hopkins University and having an ugly divorce
The Unholy Trinity of American behaviorism: Watson-Skinner-Hull
Skinner was responsible for ―operant conditioning‖

Operant conditioning involves:
So -> R -> Rf
Discriminative stimulus -> response -> reinforcement (positive or negative) + punishment +
extinction + schedules of reinforcement
Comte: science made progress by depersonifying nature

Chomsky: psychology needs to do the same thing with man
Watson and Skinner both had domineering mothers and turned atheist after fundamentalism
Watson later turned to psychology and felt that behavior is controlled by its consequences
February 19 Lecture
Against a backdrop of religious fundamentalism and maternal hypercontrol, Skinner dreamed

of becoming a creative writer
Skinner then had a ―dark year‖, in which he ―had nothing to say‖ while living in his parents‘
attic studio for one year
Behaviorism involves the annihilation of the ethical
Skinner: behavior is controlled by its consequences

―There is no originating agent within the organism‖
A defense against depression- against shame, blame, guilt
Clark Hull wanted to express psychology with mathematical learning theory

His dream of a behavioral algebra book was ―only 25 years away‖ at the time, according to
him
His ―formula‖ showed that habit strength was increased by drive reduction‖, but why?
What were the units of habit strength? The units of drive strength? Why was it multiplicative?
February 23 Lecture
Clark Hull was the president of the APA at one point

He dreamed of the books of behavioral algebra, which was supposed to show precise
predictions of behavior, animal and human, within 25 years (from 1948)
The equation he came up with is: SER = SHR x D x K x SOR …
SER = excitatory potential
SHR = habit strength, no units
D = drive strength, no units
K = constant (meaningless)
SOR = oscillatory potential
Hull was inspired by Newton‘s universal law of gravitation
The greatest sin to them was subjective anthromorphism (attributing subjective, human
qualities to animals)
Destruction of the ethical:

 Watson + Little Albert
 Zimbardo + the Stanford prison experiment
 Skinner + the Skinner box with its pigeons
 Seligman + learned helplessness
February 26 Lecture- SNOW DAY

March 2 Lecture
Newtonian-Galilean Weltanschauung (aka Newtonian-Galilean worldview)- behavior, but also,

all other approaches grounded in exclusively deterministic, mechanistic visions of human
beings
Experimental cognitive psychology – ―cognitive science‖ – ―artificial intelligence‖

―evidence-based‖ treatments in clinical psychology and psychiatry
These parts of experimental social psychology/experimental psychology- Zimbardo +
Seligman
Real scientists such as Richard Feynman, a physicist, thought that psychology was a ―cargo-
cult science‖ meaning that psychologists were desperate to get attention from the scientists
they idolized
Abusive/unethical experiments including Watson, Skinner, Seligman, Zimbardo
Psychology as a human science is an alternative to the natural science as dictated by the

Newtonian-Galilean worldview
Three dreams, repeating area throughout an entire childhood:

1. The annihilating dark spots
2. The little men and their strings and hooks
3. The monstrous black spider
Consequences of Newtonian-Galilean:
1. Questions of method have priority over questions of substance
2. Quantitative, experimental approaches dominate over and displace
descriptive/interpretive approaches
3. Relentless trivialization, such as eyeblink, dog salivation, white rats
March 5 Lecture
 William Blake (late 18th century, early 19th century)
o Hated Issac Newton and what he came to symbolize. He though it was evil
o Painter
o About his paintings:
 1st painting: Urrizon is diving
 2nd painting: Urrizon falling into waters of materialism
 3rd painting: Newton under water measuring (like Watson measures)
 4th painting: Los, son of Urrizon, is chained up. Orc is crying.
Symbolizes casualty and we are all trapped by this. Behavior is
controlled expressing the sadness we are all experiencing
 5th painting: looks like Urrizon, ut no name, and he is shackled. Again,
we are shackled
o George Atwood thinks that Blake was a prophet
 Phophecy: matter of turning into the undercurrents of an age; get
beneath the surface to see what‘s going on (according to Blake)
Urrizon → Los → Orc

 Urrizon = man‘s reason. It‘s original god given form prophecy.
 Metaphors of objectification
 Wilhelm Dilthey: ―all understanding in the human sciences is a rediscovery of the I in

the thou‖
o Anti-ideal of detached objectivity
 Naturswissenschaften (Natural Sciences) vs. Geisteswissenschaften (Human Sciences)

o Natural Sciences = casualty
 Goal: explanation
o Human Sciences = meaning
 Goal: interpretation – ―reliving‖, entering the person‘s life world.
 Martin Heidegger
o The preliminary question of the being of the questioner
 A human being. ―Dasein‖
 What is being? Why is there anything and not just nothing?
March 9 Lecture
Martin Heidegger- Being and Time, 1927
Ontology- the study of being

The story of ontological shock:
What is the being of one who asks ―What is being?‖
This being, the human being, is a being for which being is an issue
Our existing is something we note and wonder about
Heidegger interrogates the mode of being that you and I exemplify: the human mode of being
He calls it ―Dasein‖, a German term meaning there-being existence
The features of Dasein:

1. Being is an issue (human beings have an issue with being)
2. Error of seeing itself in the reflected light of objects, of things it perceives (we see
ourselves as less than we are)
3. Being-in-the-world, here the world is part of Dasein‘s very being- no worldless I, ego,
or subject, we are always already enworlded (mind and world are not separate, they are
not one object within another like coffee in a cup)
4. Dasein is a being-with (Mitsein- we are always ―connecting‖ with people, even if that
connection is choosing not to associate with people)
5. Dasein is a being-toward-death (forsees its own death and takes up an attitude toward
death)
6. Dasein historizes
March 12 Lecture
The irreducible features of Dasein:

1. Being is an issue for Dasein
2. Dasein objectifies itself, taking itself for a thing among things
3. Dasein is being-in-the-world, meaning there is no isolated mind, worldless subject
4. Being-with means we are always in relation to others
5. Being-toward-death means we are forever in the knowledge of mortality
6. Thrownness- always already in an enveloping situation not entirely of our choosing,
such as gender, century born, etc (thrown projection- we project our own meanings to
things in our lives)
7. Dasein histories, meaning we perpetually generate pictures of our own history (and
future)- the denial of history is itself a form of historizing
NEW STUFF
GOLDEN AGE OF PERSONALITY PSYCH @ RUTGERS (1972-1979)
 Atwood, Tomkins, Stolorow, Ogivie, Carlson, Rosenberg
 Exploring individual lives, personal worlds, in depth histories,
 Tomkins “Jane” study
 Teaching about faces and understanding patterns on faces and how it
connects to personality
 20 year old student volunteered, GA gave her an inkblot test and had camera
set up
 During class showed video without sound and Tomkins watched for 35-40
seconds and saw the variant already; contempt, fake smile, self bite
 Turned out she was only child, mother very depressed and always needed to
tell her she loved her
 Dream that she was locked in room and couldn’t get out
 Couldn’t separate or differentiate; love life one night stands
 Would always say yes to guy, even if she didn’t like them; always said yes to
GA; this was her theme
 Critical mass: something comparative to nuclear fission, when you find
intellectuals who share a common vision, but bring diversity  explosion of
ideas
 Scripts and nuclear scene: liked to think of personality as a play being staged;
people replay scenes, and their faces show emotional cues
 Invariant Organizing Principle: recurrent life these, keeps reappearing, nuclear seam, unity
theme; themes along a person’s life experience; the golden thread; Tomkins example above ^
 Unity thema (Murray):
 A compound of interrelated dominant needs that are linked to press to which
the individual was exposed on one or more particular occasions, gratifying or
traumatic, in childhood
 Many responses may not be understood except in their terms to the unity
thema
 Single response may be linked but only become meaningful when come
together and contribute to the unity
 Observation of many parts, one arrives at the conception of the WHOLE, can
now re-interpret, and understand the parts and the whole
 Thematic Apperception Test; study little stories of a person
END OF THE GOLDEN YEARS:
 Outside forces, trying to take tenure from GA, got rid of Stolorow
 Dept said they were not contributing anything to the field; what they were doing wasn’t
science
 Inside forces; Tomkins said GA was taking his ideas and publishing them (huge blow to GA)
DIAGNOSTIC COUNCIL IN PERSONOLOGY STUDIES:
 Group of analysis that needed to reach an overall consensus
 In order to remove the threat of imposing each researcher’s personality
 Coming together to diagnosis so no bias is used
 So the “diagnosis” isn’t biased
POSITIVISM (COMTE):
 All true observation is external to the observer
 All true knowledge is based on observation
 All those assertions that are not provable by external evidence are to be thrown in the fire
 Positivism… behaviorism  the study of behavior from an external point of view, the death
force in academic psychology
SELF CANCELLING ASPECT:
 “All those propositions or assertions about the world that are not provable by external
evidence by empirical data are to be thrown in the fire” all true observation is external to the
observer
 Says you have to prove everything with empirical data, but no empirical data to back up
positivism itself
JOHN B. WATSON:
 Minister atheism behaviorism
 Little Albert experiment:
 Rosalie Raynor: assistant, sexual lover of Watson, affair with her (already
married)
 Conducted in the 1920s at Johns Hopkins University
 Albert was 9 months old, mother worked at hospital
 Exposed to white rat, rabbit, dog, etc and showed no fear
 Began conditioning when he was 11 months, placed on mattress and white rat
placed by him and he would play and touch the rat, showed no fear
 Began to hit a steel bar w a hammer (to create a noise) and Albert would cry
and scream
 After several pairings, only shown rat w/o sound and would cry and scream
 Intro of loud sound (unconditioned response)  fear (unconditioned
response)
 Intro of rat (neutral) paired with loud sound (uncond stim) resulted in fear
(uncond resp)
 Successive intro of rat (cond stim) resulted in fear (cond resp)
 17 days after experiment, Watson sent rabbit into room Albert showed
distress
 Wastons’s wife became suspicious and found love letters of her husband and Raynor; showed
letters to Pres of University, Watson fired from John Hopkins
 Raised strict Baptist, moral, value, cleanliness; church members were told to spy on one
another and report sins,
 Good Christian boy then turned on it
 Behaviorism cult like science (but not much science involved)
B.F. SKINNER:
 Mother= Pres Church
 Brainwashed by the church, very strict
 First memory: 4 years old, called into kitchen by grandma, tells him to look into the stove and
says it is hell and that is where he is headed for all eternity
 Very controlling mother and grandma
 Run down the stairs for breakfast, mother would see PJs on floor, call him back upstairs to
clean, shake her finger back and forth “tut tut, tut tut”
 Over and over again things like this happen, build up
 Specialized in operant conditioning
 Discriminative stimulus response reinforcement
 Pigeon in box, duck green light, food pellet
 Discriminative stimulus response reinforcement
 Light on  peck  food pellet
 Students present  teaching pay check
 Teacher present attending class good grades
 *GOLDEN KEY* behavior is controlled by its consequences
 Reinforcement = increased bond
 Negative reinforcement = remove
 Punishment = response emitted
 Extinction = build up response and remove the reinforces
CLARK HULL:
 President of the APA, mathematical learning theory
 A Newtonian physics of behavior – dream of the behavioral algebra book
 Habit strength increased by drive reduction
 The greatest sin: subjective anthroporphism
PERSONALOGY:
 an individual’s history; their personal life
 not based on quantitative, but descriptive and interpretive methods
NEWTONIAN GALILEAN WORLDVIEW:

 Behaviorism, cognitive psychology, evidence based treatment in clinical psych, experiments
like Watson, Skinner, Zimbardo (prison)
 Three aspects to this: determinism, materialism, rationalism
 Determinism:
 No freedom, every event that occurs arises out of some sufficient physical cause;
human consciousness of freedom and will are non existent
 Materialism:
 There is no God, or soul; the only thing that exists is matter and energy (anything
immaterial does NOT exist)… rules out religion
 Rationalism:
 No alternative paths to knowledge but reason which is the study of natural sciences…
rules of mythical understanding
 *Newton did not believe this, as he was a very religious man and believed in God
BEHAVORISM:
 Take all the thoughts, feelings, emotions out of psychology (GA not a fan)
 Transformation of the experiencing subject into something to be weighed and measured
 In terms of cause and effect; not subjective
 Concept of man as an experiencing subject is eliminated
 Watson is the father of behaviorism
WILLIAM BLAKE AND NEWTONIAN…
 Against this worldview; artist whose pictures represented his hatred
 Three portraits:
 1st = Urizen being the human capacity for reason and something that goes against the
N-G worldview; in painting Urizen is measuring the world using reason
 2nd = chained to a rock; Urizen represents human reason in god like form, N-G is
submerged under water
 3rd = Urizen is submerged and in chains; fall of reason, supposed to represent what
happens to the human spirit when we adopt a materialistic approach
J.M. BARRIE, PETER PAN:
 Barrie’s brother died very young, mother never recovered; spent a lot of time trying to cheer
up his mother
 Mother said she would take comfort in knowing her (dead) son would never have to grow up
and leave her, would remain a boy forever
 Peter Pan represents dilemma of being locked into a pattern of simultaneously wanting to
return to an earlier stage security by a welcoming mother and knowing that things have been
changed forever
JUNG’S EARLY CHILDHOOD & SPLITTING HIMSELF INTO NO.1 AND NO. 2
 His mother was hospitalized when he was young, could not love anyone since he did not like
her being in the hospital, never learned of love, never loved
 No. 1 outward child was known to teachers and parents; difficulty learning in school, felt
inferior
 No. 2 hidden, inner self, not known to others, entertained secret fantasies about the
cosmos
 Had skin disease
MEANING OF FANTASIES OF FLIGHT IN RELATION TO THE EARLY BONDS OF CHILDHOOD:
 People who have dreams about flying are in distress
 Want to return to the peaceful times of being in their mother’s arms
PSYCHOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE (FACES IN A CLOUD):
 Knowledge looks at an intellectual idea with a personal/subjective/biased background
 Sociology looks at intellectual ideas with historical background
 Sociology looks at things from the OUTSIDE IN
 Psychology personal ; sociology  history
DECENTERING IN THE GENESIS OF KNOWLEDGE:
 One’s view of knowledge is subjective and not universal as they believe it to be
 As a person becomes more self conscious, understands one’s view better, their knowledge
becomes more objective… understand yourself better, can play with reality harmony
RELATION BETWEEN THE SUBJECTIVITY AND THE VALIDITY OF A THEORY OF PERSONALITY:
 Cannot be objective when observing a particular individual bc everyone is different
 However, when you compile all observations together, you can be more objective
 This leads to diagnostic council
PHENOMONOLOGY, METHODOLOGY OBJECTIVISM:
 Phen deals w consciousness, experiences, life of the individuals
 Metho relationship of the scientist to his work, based purely on objective truths, anything
that goes beyond verifiable is thrown out
FREUD’S FEELINGS TOWARDS HIS MOTHER:
 He adored her, relationship very important to her, but feared losing her to his siblings
 GA believes Freud would do anything to preserve perfect picture, image of his mother
 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.
FREUD’S TENDENCY TO FORM IDEALIZING RELATIONSHIPS:
 Wanted to protect his relationships from invasion by negative effects
 Wanted to idealize in order to prevent traumatic betrayals
PURPOSE OF PSYCHOBIOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS:
 All theories of personality will remain colored by subjective and personal influences
 Person-centered research, gathers large amounts of info on one person, can identify recurring
themes
FREUD’S SPECULATIVE THEORY OF GIRLS PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT:
 Girls pull away from their mother’s when they realize they aren’t boys
 Aren’t born with penises, upset with their mothers
 Penis envy…
SUBJECTIVE ANTHROPOMORPHISM (HULL):
 When you give inanimate objects emotions, making something inhuman have emotions
MECHANOMORPHISM (MASLOW):
 Opposite of anthro.; seeing humans as robots; without emotion
WATSON’S TURN TO ATHEISM:
 Was going to become a minister, but his mother died and did not see any point in continuing
 Linkage between behaviorism and religions… breaking off of one religion and onto another
religion which was behaviorism
MARSHALL APPLEWHITE AND LARRY WALTERS:
 Applewhite was leader of cult called Heavens gate
 39 members of the cult found lying on beds, fully clothes, Nikes on their feet, waiting to be
rescued by a flying saucer that was coming with the comet Hale-Bopp
 Consumed lethal mixture of vodka and Phenobarbital pills and lie patiently (DEAD) on their
beds and wait
 All had shaved heads and 5 out of the 19 males were castrated
 Walters strapped himself into a sears lawn chair and 42 balloons rose into the air from his
backyard in Cali
 Daydreamed about flying for at least 10 years
 Returned to the ground feeling empty, never the same again
PERRY SMITH AND THE DREAM OF THE GREAT PARROT (FANTISIES OF FLIGHT):
 Killed 4 people in Kansas
 Dreamt that a parrot would come and take him away to an island
 Again, trying to escape reality
SKINNER’S DARK YEAR OF DEPRESSION:
 Wanted to become a writer, parents gave him one year to write something memorable and
couldn’t do it
 Turned to behaviorism bc didn’t want to feel shamed at failing at writing
FREUD’S STUDY OF LEONARDO:
 Rules: avoid arguments built on a single clue and do not idealize one’s subject when studying
 Freud did both of these when studying Leonardo
 His analysis seemed to be a reflection of himself; very similar childhoods
CREELAN’S VIEW OF THE LITTLE ALBERT EXPERIMENT:
 White rat that Watson used to condition Albert represents “good” in a biblical sense
 Banging of the steel represented the pull away from “good”
 Just like Watson pulled away from the church, having Albert pull away from the white “good”
rat
 Watson reliving and reviving his life through this experiment
 Symbols:
 “Reward” and “Punishment” – like the rewards and punishments discussed in
the Puritan religion and in the Bible. God would reward or punish (promises
salvation, threatens death, etc.)
 “Loud Sounds” – “the Word of God”/Covenant, warning against sin
 Iron bar used to make the sound – “rod” referred to throughout the Old
Testament
 Rat – sinner/ flesh of children
 Rat = flesh  Playing with the rat symbolizes sexual
desires/masturbation - sin
DREAM INTERPRETATION (LATENT, MANIFEST):
 Latent meaning behind the story
 Manifest actual story itself
WISH FULFILLMENT OF DREAMS:
 Dreams attempt to fulfill a wish
 Dreams usually are triggered by days events
FLYING DRAMS ACCORDING TO FREUD:
 Something that Freud describes as natural
 According to Freud the next possible thing a human would think about is flying
 Flying represents moving through various levels of consciousness
DREAM WORK AND THE MECHANISMS OF CONDENSATION AND DISPLACEMENT= CENSORSHIP:
 Condensation condensing 2 or more thoughts in dreams, multiple elements
 Displacement shifting the affect toward or about someone/something to a different object
(kicking your dog when you actually want to kick your mom)
 Verbal metaphor when something metaphorical manifests literally
 Reversal of relation when thoughts you have a re reversed but with people (you like your
neighbor, but you dream they like you)
ERRORS AND UNCONSCIOUS SIGNIFICANCE ACCORDING TO FREUD:
 Something your subconscious is thinking accidently slips out
 Psychical acts that arises from mutual interference between two intentions
 Slips of the tongue
 Parapraxes
 People get very defensive; usually words sound a lot alike
DREAM IMAGES ACCORDING TO FREUD:
 Male genitals 3, weapons, long and upstanding, trees, umbrellas, hammers, flying machines,
pencils, balloons
 Women genitals pits, boxes, trunks, doors, gates, mouth, fruits, bushes, landscapes, rooms
 All sexual
 Departure in dreams means dying
 Materials and things worked upon = female
 Weapons and tools = male
The symbolic significance of Seligman's learned helplessness experiments
 squeeze the mice and then plop them in the water and measure the time until they
drowned
 Produce animal analog of human despair in white lab coat --> fancy scientists with
external observations
 Quantify learning capability with dogs that shocked and cannot escape and those dogs
that can
Learned helpness – idea that even you have the opportunity to help yourself you don’t
because past experiences have made you feel as if there is no solution
 Symbolism: Seligman had a father who had a stroke that left him helpless which made
animals helpless by running these tests
WELTANSCAUNG:
 a viewpoint o the world – or all that is, held so deeply one is not aware of it as such – it
becomes manifest as “the way things just are.”
o you can become aware but it is difficult
o prereflected – haven’t reflected on it yet. Not conscious.
THE FEATURES OF DASEIN:

7. Being is an issue (human beings have an issue with being)
8. Error of seeing itself in the reflected light of objects, of things it perceives (we see ourselves as
less than we are)
9. Being-in-the-world, here the world is part of Dasein’s very being- no worldless I, ego, or
subject, we are always already enworlded (mind and world are not separate, they are not one
object within another like coffee in a cup)
10. Dasein is a being-with (Mitsein- we are always “connecting” with people, even if that
connection is choosing not to associate with people)
11. Dasein is a being-toward-death (forsees its own death and takes up an attitude toward death)
12. Dasein historizes
STIMULI THAT BECOME INCORPORATED INTO DREAMS:

 External hear your alarm clock, in your dream could think that is church bells
 Bodily if you are thirsty when sleeping, in your dream you will keep drinking, but not be
able to fulfill your thirst
 Psychic unconscious, latent content is hidden in a dream
ANXIETY DREAMS; NIGHTMARES; DREAMS FULFILL WISHES:
 Anxiety dream is when the repressed wish had shown itself stronger than the censorship
 Wish fulfillment occurs, regardless of censor ship
FREE ASSOCIATION:
 In 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.
 During psychoanalytic therapy, patient asked to recall whatever comes to their mind, no
censoring or judgment
 Ability to recall memories is not important; focus on the internal mental conflicts that are
buried inside
-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)
Wish fulfillment theory of dreams:
-They attempt to fill wishes
-The mechanisms that transform latent (meaning behind the story) content into manifest
(actual story) content of the dream
Stimuli that become incorporated into dreams: external, bodily, psychic

-these stimuli take different forms in dreams, but not direct forms
-example of the alarm clock represented in a dream in which maid drops dishes and
shattering becomes ringing and soon wakes dreamer up; dreamer then recognizes it?s
the alarm clock
-they do influence some parts of the dream, but don?t tell where the rest of the dream
originates (having a minor impact on the dream itself)
Sources of so-called anxiety dreams - aka nightmares, & their relation to the theory
that all dreams fulfill wishes.
-3 factors that contribute to the result of anxiety dreams
-#1dream-work has not completely succeeded in making the wish fulfillment, leaving the
distressing affect left in the manifest dream
-#2 censorship at nighttime is greatly reduced, allowing evil wishes to be more active,
and later forming part of the anxiety dream
-#3the fulfillment of a wish can lead to an unpleasant outcome- a punishment to the wish
(i.e. the example of the male and female fairy tale and there punishment w/ the sausage)
Time, Death, Eternity: Imagining the Soul of Johann Sebastian Bach
-Bach played with number symbolism in his music; the number 14 was a representation of his
own name
>>when the letters BACH are replaced by their numerical positions in the alphabet
(2,1,3,8) the sum of them is 14
>>there are 14 notes in the fugue (mentioned below) --> a translation of the fugue into
its numerical and alphabetical equivalent is as if it‘s saying, ―Bach...Bach...Bach...etc‖
Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, Prelude and Fugue in C-major
-Bach‘s music tends to be cyclical and repetitive, rather than linear and progressive --> the
music starts and ends in the middle with no clear origin, no intermediate section, and no
conclusion
>>in Atwood‘s mind --> circles and cycles repeating rather than a journey from point A
to B
-religious music in the Baroque period displays timeless, eternal quality, representing symbolic
materialization in sound of God‘s work creating the universe, the cosmic harmony of heaven
and earth
>>perhaps Bach‘s music is expressing his faith in God and a world possessing
transcendent perfection
-in his music, the musical heritage of many nations are darwn together
-Bach wrote for almost every musical instrument, and he draws on every musical form and
genre: vocal, instrumental, solo, choir, orchestra, opera, concerto, etc
-Bach‘s genius resided in ability to bring things together in new and dazzling combinations
-Atwood believes there are 2 kinds of genius: one devoted to extending and integrating all that
has come before; the other destroying existing structures and replacing them with new ones
>>if Bach exemplifies the first, then Picasso is the second
-genius that expresses itself by pulling elements together into new unities is guided mainly by
love; genius that leads revolutions and destroys the old is full of aggression and hate, even if
love is present
>>Eros in one case, Thanatos in the other
>>Bach --> a loving husband, worked to keep his family together, passed on to his
children his knowledge of music
>>Picasso --> destroyed the women of his life, injured and destroyed his children
-These are the two poles of creative genius; both poles are present in every act of creation, just
differeing in relative salience
-Bach --> always weaving and reweaving unities out of previously unconnected elements
>>but why?
-may be associated with fragmentation, a feeling of being in pieces or of the world having
disintegrated in some essential way
>>synthesizing trend in Bach‘s musical compositions would express underlying need to
heal his own fragmented selfhood and/or restore a shattered world its lost coherence
Aria from the Goldberg Variations
-Bach --> youngest child of eight; large extended family tracing several generations of
musicians
-he had 2 constant companions in his childhood: MUSIC and DEATH
-He lived in a lively house with 6 of his siblings, 2 orphaned cousins, and his fathers young
apprentices
-An important yearly event that influenced Bach --> reunions where members of the entire
family would gather together and spend a few days celebrating and making music
>>these times are imagined as filled with great joy
-However, a series of deaths in the family followed Bach during his childhood
-What is the experience of a child in the midst of such catastophe?
>>only facts during this time available are: school attendance and grades in the year
1694-1695, when he lost boty of his parents
>>absent 51.5 days, greater number of absences than any other year
>>grades, formerly top of the class, fell during this time
-A few months after death of father, J.S. Bach and his brother Johann Jacob went to live with
Johann Christoph in Ohrdruf
-Spent the next several years at the top of all his classes, performing at a level matching or
exceeding students older than him
-The Moonlight Robbery: a story from this time that will help us understand his continuing
struggle to master the tragic circumstances of his childhood and how these strugges became
reflected in his music
>>Bach had mastered all the pieces his brother had given him; however, his brother
possessed a book of clavier peices by the most famous masters of the day --> his
brother refused to let him use it
>>He would fetch the book at night and copy it by moonlight until his brother found
out and destroyed his copies
-How to interpret this story? --> perhaps by having all the music his brother possessed without
anything being left out, Bach was trying to give himself the basis for recreating the early
family reunions, where every kind of music was played, in which his early world was intact
>>in the aftermath of the family disaster, the one thing that survived was music
-An analogy between ―Moonlight Robbery‖ and Prometheus‘ stealing of fire from Zues and
giving it to the mortals
>>symbolizes child‘s appropriating parental power to itself and defining its own
independent identity, agency, and destiny
-the imagery of the story of the robbery in the night also embodies ancient archetype of the
prophet who copies and translate the sacred scrolls from the divine word to humanity
>>The Lutheran church in Bach‘s time --> God and music were big
The Coffee Cantata

-Coffee Cantata is a secular work; a 2 person comic opera
-The grumpy, aging father (Schlendrian) argues with his spirited, defiant daughter (Lieschen)
about coffee --> Lieschen loves coffee, finding pleasure in it, and Schlendrian finds this as an
addiction she should overcome and renounce
-Father says she must give up coffee or she will never marry; Lieschen finally agrees, but...in
the end of the story, she marries AND maintains her access to coffee
-But is Lieschen talking about something more than coffee?
-A story about clash between 2 wills: one seaking a pleasure of the senses, and the other
opposing that and affirming the renunciation of that pleasure
-What about the introduction to marriage? No reasons why drinking coffee should interfere
with a young woman‘s marriage prospects
-In another of Bach‘s cantatas (No. 140, Walchet auf, ruft uns die Stimme) the image of
marriage is used as a symbol of the union of humanity with Jesus at the End of the World,
where Christ is pictured as the groom and the souls of humanity the bride
>>Schlendrian and Lieschen --> symbolize Bach‘s conflicting parts of himself?
>>Schlendrian stands for intense religiosity and commitment to union with God
>>Lieschen stands for a love for humanity, for the world, for the pleasure of all senses
>>thus, 2 sides of Bach: one orienting towards heaven, towards his deceased family
members, and the other orienting towards Earth, towards all the desirable things
>>Bach, a man torn between Heaven and Earth, and in his music, both poles were
represented, first at different moments and different ways, then fused together, only
later to separate, but then to reintegrate once again --> a cycle of separation and union
-The end of the Coffee Contata, where Lieschen is married but still has access to her beloved
coffee --> the marriage symbolic of uniting with God and the access to coffee symbolic of
partaking of earthly life
Cantata 198: The Trauer Ode (Ode to Mourning/Grief)
-Written in 1727 to mark ceremonies in honor of recently deceased Christiane Eberhardine,

wife of August II, King of Polond
>>an echo of his own mourning
An excerpt from the cantata: “Princess, Let a ray shoot out of the starry vaults of [Jerusalem].
And see with how much of a downpouring of tears we encircle your time of honor.‖
-This visualizes the Queen looking back at the world (sending a ray from the stars) and seeing
the grief of all that loved her. Even as she looks back, the world looks up towards her, vowing
to never forget her.
An excerpt from the cantata: ―So, Queen, you do not die, One knows, what one possesses in
you, posterity will not forget you, until this created world is one day destroyed.”
-The Queen pictured as a beloved mother to her followers looks back upon the world as she
stands upon the threshold of everlasting life
-Could this also symbolize Bach‘s mother and other loved ones approaching the gateway to
Heaven, but never quite passing in and disappearing?
>>Could they perceive his love for them, as the world of the living looks towards
Heaven and promises to hold the dear departed in its consciousness always
-By 1727, Bach has lost his first wife, his children, and all of his siblings
>>his whole life was a Trauer Ode, an ode to mourning the deaths that followed him
-Bach‘s life --> simultaneously one of never ending sorrow and ever renewed passionate
creation
-He was torn between the human and the deivine, between the eternal and temporal
>>found music as a way to express both of these
-This duality is reflected in the only recorded statement Bach made regarding the essential
purpose of music:
>> ―true music...[pursues] as its ultimate and final goal...the honor of God and the
recreation of the soul.‖
-If Bach was a divided soul with the rift being eternity on one‘s side and temporal world of
earthly life on the other, then his musical expression was the opposite -- embodying the
relationship between two (or more) voices that are independent in contour and rhythm, but
interdependent in harmony
-Many of his creations marked by the presence of two separate melodies, one following the
other, playing concurrently, interlacing, merging, separating, and alternating
>>representing in sound the duality of his inner nature
Cantata No. 140: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme
-the story uses the metaphor of marriage to represent the union of the souls of humanity (bride)
with Jesus (groom)
-In the biblical story, there is a great wedding to take place, but many people are sleeping as
the moment of the actual marriage approaches, so the call of sleepers to waken (Wachet auf!)
stands for a call to humanity to prepare for the Second Coming of the Lord and of Eternal
Salvation
-2 distinct parts that alternate and overlap:
>>the initial instrumental part calls to mind people and animals in motion -- dancing,
walking running, leaping, being on the earth
>>the other part is a Lutheran chorale, celebrating the glory of God, giving voice to
coming union with Jesus
-These 2 parts alternate, and then coincide, playing simultaneously, almost like a kiss at the
final moment of marriage, uniting Heaven and Earth, Jesus and the Soul of Humanity, blending
and unifying the Eternal and the Temporal
Cantata 147: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring
-this presents a similar structure in sound, where a dancelike melody is, after a short period,
joined by a vocal part addressing the glory of God
The Goldberg Variations
-The Goldberg variations are described as circular rather than linear in their organization -- it
begins and ends with the same piece of music, the aria
-Circularity suggests the possibility of the work being played around and around, forever,
which connotes the eternal world beyond time and space
they are fractal in structure, meaning that the same organizing patterns appear and reappear at
whatever level of analysis one chooses
-There is a sequence of 30 variations, organized in 10 sets of 3 variations each
>>triplets symbolize Holy Trinity
>>10 symbolzies the 10 Commandments
-It follows a common pattern: the first variations is a dance, the second a virtuosic piece, and
the third a canon
>>the dance concerned with bodily motion, symbolic of earthly life
>>virtuosic piece: involves rapid sequences of ascending and descending notes, can
look as transitional way stations on a journey depicted in sound
>>canons, involving a melody which follows itself, disrupt the linear pathway; points
to a world beyond time, such as Heaven
-Each triplet can be heard as depicting a journey from Eearth through a transition to Heaven
-The canons (9 of them, the 10th is a little different) are related to one another by changes in
keys in which they are played
>>No. 3 is played at the unison (repetitions of the melody are in the same key as the
original presentation of it)
>>No. 6 is played at the second, which means one key higher than the original
>>No. 9 is played at the third, which means 2 keys higher
>>etc until the 27th variation
-Visualizing this progression of canons, they undergo an ascension --> a ―Stairway to Heaven‖,
parallelling the movement taking place inside each triplet
-The final triplet does not present a canon --> Variation no. 30 is called a ―Quodlibet‖, a piece
of music derived from popular songs often sung at festivities, such as family reunions of
Bach‘s youth
>>is the ascent along the stairway representing a return to an idealized time of music
and joy before Bach‘s loss?
Chaconne of the Partita No. 2 in D Minor for Solo Violin
-written in 1721, year of the death of Bach‘s first wife, Maria

>>perhaps it is an epitaph for her
-Also the year of Bach‘s older brother, Johann Christoph, who served as a surrogate father to
him following the loss of their parents
-Chaconne begins with a sequence of a few notes that present the primary theme of the piece in
four measures
>>then followed by a series of 60 variations on that theme, divided into two parts of 30
each
-Presentation of the theme begins at the beginning, middle (in between the 2 sets of 30), and
end
-the music as a whole forms a circle, which suggests the possibility of it being played endlessly
-contained within the boundaries of the recurrence of the theme are the variations
>>the Goldbergs are also divided into two parts of 15 variations each
-Atwood‘s 2 thoughts about the contents this music, emphasizing Bach‘s mourning of Maria
-In the beginning of the second part of the Chaconne, D minor gives way to D major, and the
music becomes very soft and beautiful
>>the image of a peaceful, late afternoon scene, in which Bach returns to his wife and
children
>>a mournful remembering of happy times
-some commentators suggest the melody is drawn from a chorale celebrating the Second
Coming of Christ
>>does not contradict his associations, because the End of the World marks Bach‘s
reunion with all those beloved he had lost
-The second thought relates to a short passage in Part 2, where the pitch goes higher and
higher, and then falls back into a lower range
>>rising and falling as reaching up to the sky in an effort to climb to heaven where
those who have died have gone, followed by an inevitable falling back into the world
-2 more thoughts:
>>the problem of the relation between madness and genius
>>the relationship between psychological interpretation and the appreciation of a work
of art
Madness and Genius
-Atwood has conducted seminars on madness and genius

-A generalization emerged: acts of creative genius appear to be associated with a rift in the
soul, a duality within which the integrity of ther person‘s selfhood is broken, and the acts of
creation have as one of their meanings and purposes the unifying of the broken self
-Was Bach mad?

>>driving need involved in his life work --> could this driveness be seen as a form of
madness in another sense?
-Atwood begins to think obsessively over it: so much, that he had 2 dreams over it
First Dream
-It was nighttime, and he was in a building that was being heated by a tall brick structure that
was both a wood burning stove and a chimney
-The structure was built into the wall, so one part faced the room he was standing in, and the
other part faced outside into the night
-a voice said, ―IF THE ILLUSTRATOR DIES, MADNESS WILL OCCUR.‖
-a number of dogs started to attack the brick structure that was outside the house and fire and
smoke emerged from places the bricks had been knocked away
>>if the structure broke down, it would be the equivalent to whatever meant by the idea
the illustrator might die
Atwood’s Thoughts on Dream 1
-Bach was the theme-subject of his creations (Goldberg Variations, Chaconne)

-The internal unity of the theme represents for Bach the constancy and coherence for his own
sense of personal identity
-Snapping dogs --> the variations that depart from the coherence of the theme that threaten to
destroy its pattern and order (symbolized by the danger of the brick structure being pulled
down by the dogs)
-One might view the aria that begins and ends the Goldberg Variations as bookends that hold
the wholeness of the structure of variations together, preventing disintegration and disruption
of its internal pattern and order
-The Chaconne has 3 appearances of the theme subject in the beginning, middle, and end --
like the cover, spine, and back cover binding the pages together
-if the variations did not return to their origin, the illustrator might die
Atwood’s Other Thoughts on Dream 1
-The variations are embodiments of Bach‘s ambivalent individuation in relation to his mother
and father, his becoming a distinct person in his own right
-The variations would correspond to a forming child
-The repititions of the theme represents a holding environment where the developing child is
contained and restrained
-the variations --> Bach as an individual
-The repititions --> the limiting boundary
>>Divided between Heaven and Earth
The Quodlibet of Goldberg Variations
-2 melodies combined in this piece, drawn from folk songs
-An excerpt of the first: “I have been away from you so long // Move near, move near”
-the words seem to apply to the variations, which have departed from the theme est. in the aria,
and have undergone a long journey of their own elaboration
-If the aria contains the bond to the parents, and the variations represent Bach‘s individuation,
then it is as if the aria misses the variations, and calls them back to itself
-An excerpt from the second: ―Cabbage and beets have driven me away // Had my mother
cooked meat // I would have stayed longer”
-The person wouldn‘t have strayed from his mother if she provided him with sustaining food
he wanted, but she provided him with food that is unsatisfying
-Could this rflect the tension within Bach between the side of him that sought to remain
faithful to his mother and father, even in death, and the other side that wanted to make his own
way and partake in life that earth had to offer
>>the latter Bach could never be satisfied by the spirits of the dead, because they could
not provide more than what a spirit could give
>>This is the Bach embodied with Lieschen
-But he could never break away; as the final variation ends, the aria returns again
Atwood’s Second Dream
-There was an international crisis between 2 nations, and no one from one was allowed to pass
into the other
-However, there was a small piece of territory in between them, kind of like a demilitarized
zone, where emisarries might meet and negotiate
Atwood’s Thoughts on Dream 2
-the 2 nations are Bach‘s personalities: Heaven and Earth, Eternity and Temporality, the
Infinite and Finite
-Meanwhile, his music is like the emissaries meeting in the transitional space, bringing them
together
Madness and Genius in Bach
-Bach‘s creativity served to hold him together, to maintain the cohesion of his identity and
sanity
>>achieved by integrating and balancing a passionate love of life with the equally
passionate love for all those he had lost
-Also relates to the tragic circumstances of his death: in his last years, his vision was impared
by cataracts and he became almost completely blind
>>chose to undergo two dangerous, painful eye surgeries to recover his ability to see
-The result was his vision was not restored, and he eventually had a stroke that killed him
-His life was a life of musical creation, and he could not have done otherwise than risk it all for
reaching the possibility of a restored capacity for creative work
The Idea that Psychological Interpretation “reduces” the work it is applied to
-C.S. Lewis regarded this as a form of heresy

-There is a form of psychological study that can be characterized as a reduction: when the
interpretor begins with a psychological schema, and the interpretation becomes just
assimilating the material studied to that schema
>>resulting work will not bring out anything intrinsic, just recast the material as an
echo
-Another way a psychological interpretation could be a reduction is when the one context of
meaning is conceived as a central and exclusive place of a work‘s significance as a whole
>>then we have stripped of it meanings beyond the horizons of psychological
viewpoint
-the fanatically antireductionist opinions seem to be rooted in personal issues regarding
individual origins and a need to sever the connection between one‘s life and one‘s work
-if the interpretation is not imposing a preconceived schema and refrains from claiming an
exclusionary validity for itself then it is nonreductionist
>>all we have is a work and a way of understanding it, lying along side other ways of
understanding it, threatening none
Watsonian Behaviorism and the Calvinist Conscience
The Revolt Against Religion: The Behaviorist as Devil
-The beginning of behaviorism appeared in Watson‘s 1913 paper, ―Psychology as the

Behaviorist Views It‖ --> Here, Watson attacked the current state of the field
>>said during the 50 odd years of its existence as an experimental discipline, it had
failed to establish itself as a natural science
-According to Watson, failure lied in 2 things:
1. the preoccupation with the consciousness, which experimental psychology had
inherited from background in philosophy
2. the esoteric method of introspection consciousness was studied
-The battles would continue unless the ―yoke of consciousness‖ was thrown off
-Watson said that organisims (man and animal) adjust themselves to environment by means of
hereditary and habit equipment and certain stimuli elicit these responses in organisms
-The theoretical goal of behaviorism: the prediction and control of behavior
-Watson was very close to his mother, and made a vow to his devout mother that he would
become a minister when he grew up --> the anticipated fulfillment of the vow held a lot of
significane for his identity
>>this project received a setback when, the year of the delay before Watson proceeded
to go to Princeton, his mother died
-With her death, he felt release from his vow --> abandoned his seminary plans and went to
enroll in philosophy curiculum at the University of Chicago
-However, the introspective exercises in the philosophy courses made him feel
―uncomfortable‖ & made him ―act unnaturally‖
-Watson was fascinated with spending long hours, even through weekends and vacation
periods, with observing rats
>>chose to begin his own research with the observation with rat
>>In American Puritanism, this animal is utilized as a symbol for unregenerate
flesh of children
-In Watson, his fascination with rats not only indicates a revolt against the ascetic culture of his
youth
>>his actions of seeking out means of predicting and controlling behavior of rats
proves an acting out of identification with the Devil (who is also referred to as ―The Lord of
Rats and Mice‖)
-Watson states that men have no souls
>>but his interest in rats show that his fascination turned to the nature of the sinful soul
whose existence is controlled by the Devil
-In Watson‘s first study at University of Chicago, Animal Education, he was interested in
determining the ages at which rat-pups achieve ―psychic maturity‖
>>Watson defines this in terms of their ability to perform a certain task
-In his study, the task is to traverse through many kinds of obstacles to get to a source of
nourishment
>>for older rats, it is food
>>for newborns, it is their mother
-However, whatever the scenario, the theme is: the young rat whose existence is threatened by
virtue of his separation from a place or object or being that is the source of life for him
-Watson‘s attidue towards this is ambivalent: he is the man who creates the situation, but is
also the person who permits and encourages his animals to overcome it
-In this study, Watson has created a religious drama where God and the Devil both play
important role
>>he prohibits the rats from partaking the forbidden source of nourishment, but also
encourages the rats to go through the obstacles to claim that forbidden food
>>a symbolic recreation of the Garden of Eden, where Watson is the God and
Devil
-But why did Watson do this?
>>suggested that the separation from his mother imposed by her sudden death brought
him face-to-face with the fact of human mortality
>>more generally, with the condition of human finiteness (also called
existence-in-the-flesh) in a body that is limited and will die
-Watson --> never truly accepted his mother‘s death or the fact of human finiteness
-By only attending to existence-in-the-flesh represented in his rat pups, Watson avoided
personal introspective experiencing and understanding of the event of his mother‘s death and
the condition of finiteness it revealed
-By playing role of the Devil, he both removed himself and indulged in the fantasy of
omnipotent control over the finite world
-However, as he grew older, Watson began to hear the negative commands of his ascetic
conscience
>>expressed in his experiment with ―Little Albert‖; Watson identified the role of the
behavior scientist with the ascetic, disembodied Covenant God
The Behaviorist as the Covenant God
- ―Little Albert‖ part of a larger series of investigation into emotional life of infants
-Watson was interested in reaction of fear in infants --> he said that the need to study fear was
so great that they decided to build up fears in infant and later study practical methods for
removing them
-the only stimuli that would call forth the fear response were ―loud sounds‖ and ―loss of
support‖ --> infants did not fear animals or fire
-For ―Little Albert‖, the stimulus was associated with the ―loud sound‖ was the white rat
>>After awhile, Little Albert would come to fear it and other furry objects
-Watson utilized, on the theoretical level, the conditioned reflex method of Pavlov
>>however, he modified it in ways that suggest influence of symbols of the Covenant
Theology of American Calvinism
-Pavlov limited his notions to conditioning of minute reactions like salivation, Watson defined
his concepts of stimulus and response to refer to holistic situations and total adjustments in
organisms
-Watson postulated three fundamental ―reflexes‖ in a newborn: fear, rage, and love (sex)
>>each had specific stimulus and each capable of being bonded to various other
conditional stimuli
-Besides the fear reflex, Watson also gave attention to ―love reflex‖, called forth by stroking of
the skin, tickling, rocking, and patting, and was evidenced by gurgling and cooing
-The rage response was elicited by restriction of movment (particularly head) and involved
screaming and muscular exertion as well as vasomotor changes
-Watson was primarily concerned with fear and love --> was not certain that rage influenced
personality
-Watson modified his fear and love reflex with Thorndike and Skinner‘s concepts --> the effect
of certain stimulus as a ―reward‖ or ―punishment‖ upon an organism‘s behavior
>>for Watson, loud sounds and loss of support function as ―punishment‖
>>a mother‘s soft touch or soothing voice functions as ―reward‖ to entice child to do
actions favored by parents
-In American context, theme of ―reward‖ and ―punishment‖ as a means of controlling behavior
has deeply-imbedded cultural history in religion prior to its formulation in scientific
psychology by Thorndike
>>the omnipotent God who ―binds‖ himself in a Covenant relationship with his people
--> ―promises‖ salviation is their behavior is worthy and ―threatens‖ damnation if it
sinful
-American Calvinism --> rigid codes of behavior became the ―conditions‖ of a legal contract
with God, whose wrath would attend any failure in their perfomance
>>Watson refer to ―the religious personality‖ as a bundle of habits rather than
experiential state of the soul in its union with God
-verbal ―precepts‖ --> guidance of behavior extracted from Bible (technique is called
―example-precept, promise and threatening‖)
-Verbal precepts for everday behavior have extensive influence on Protestant communities who
have no source of guidance in moral matters besides Bible
>>viewed Bible as providing main script for drama of salvation
>>human action must be constituted to mirror the acts and roles contained within text
-the question of which precepts are linked to which examples is given by ―promise‖ and
―threatening‖ criteria
>>if behavior in Bible is seen as associated with a divine ―promise‖, the linkage is
formed between a ―precept‖ counseling that behavior with the appropriate ―example‖
or situation
>>if behavior is associated with divine ―threatening‖, a ―precept‖ negating that
behavior is linked to ―example‖
-G. Stanley Hall suggested the fear of thunder and loud sounds in children is related to the fear
of heavenly (or parental) wrath were induced during sessions of family Bible-reading
-in ―Little Albert‖, the loud sound represents the ―precept‖ and the ―threatening‖ into a single
warning against sin, associated with the action of playing with the animal
-Watson associated with God
>>‖[God] shall destroy the pride of the sinner as a potter‘s vessel. // With a rod of iron
he shall break in pieces of their substance‖ - from Psalm 11
>>‖I want only the ability to handle my clay as the potter handles his clay‖ - Watson
-The snake -- biblical symbol of evil
>>Hall says religious association of fear of animals and fear of punishment for sin or
―crime‖
-if the latent religious significance of ―Little Albert‖ lies in divine curse upon a sinful child,
what is the child‘s sin?
>>Albert has merited this curse because, by playing with the animal, he has established
a relationship of identity to the curious, impulsive, sexual, mortal flesh of animals from
which puritanical religion sought to dissociate that behavior
>>more specifically, the sin of a little boy playing with the rat may be
associated with masturbation, exploration of one‘s body that enables a sense of embodied
existence to emerge and develop
-the sin of ―Little Albert‖ is the exploration of the flesh
>>the punishment expresses the terror that is associated with existence-in-the-flesh,
existence as a finite creature
-Watson trains ―Little Albert‖ (and other children in his care) into habits desired by a scientist,
whose identity is really the Covenant God
-During the ―Little Albert‖ experiment, had sexual invovlement with Rosalie Raynor (graduate
student)
>>Watson‘s sexual involvement with the flesh at that time required ―Little Albert‖
experiements as atonement rituals to the prohibitive deity
>>thus, the curses are set upon ―Little Albert‖ instead of Watson
-Watson elevates his position as an ―observing‖ scientist in this experiment by also controlling
the sound
>>Watson sets himself ―above‖ the fearful context of prohibitivie meaning
-―Little Albert‖ is refered to by Watson as ―Albert B.‖
>>the name John Albert Broadus was emeshed in Watson‘s personal and moral identity
during his childhood
>>Broadus was deeply revered, and people refered to Watson as Broadus, rather than
John
>>Watson‘s conscience was formed by training of parents who adhered to all of
Broadus‘ pronouncements
-Therefore, ―Albert B.‖ represents the preacher, John Albert Broadus
-But why would Watson give the infant that name?
>>Reik says that naming of children for parents or authorities is a means of prolonging
relationships with such figures in the relationship with the newborn
>>however, many primitive tribes, this is considered a taboo because latent abivalence
towards ancestral authority figure is often expressed towards child, even to the point of
infanticide
>>vulnerable child is acted against as a means of rebelling against one‘s own parents or
ancestors
-Watson can be seen to express such hostility as a vengeful retaliation upon this incarnation of
his conscience

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Personality Psychology

The golden age of personality psychology at Livingston College (Version 1)

Death of the golden age (Version 1)

External reasons – forces from outside: vision of psychology as a natural science

Invariant Organizing Principle (atwood and storolow) (Version 1)

Unity Thema (Murray) (Version 1)

The intensive, in-depth case study (Version 1)

Positivism (Comte) a self-cancelling idea (Version 1)

The Unholy Trinity of Watson, Skinner, and Hull (Version 1)

Materialism, determinism, rationalism: the Newtonian-Galilean Weltanschauung

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, the tragedy of Barrie’s early family (Version 1)

*The psychology of knowledge and the sociology of knowledge(Faces in a Cloud)

Pure phenomenology, methodological objectivism, and behaviorism (Version 1)

Freud’s tendency to form idealizing relationships (Version 1)

The purpose of psychobiographical analysis of personality theories (Version 1)

Freud’s speculative theory of the girl’s psychosexual development (Version 1)

Subjective anthropomorphism (Hull) and mechanomorphism (Maslow) (Version 1)

Watson’s turn to atheism (Version 1)

Marshall Applewhite and Larry Walker: similarities and differences (Fantasies of

Freud’s study of Leonardo and its problems (Fantasies of Flight) (version 1)

Freud’s study of Leonardo and its problems (Fantasies of Flight) (version 2)

 Dream interpretation - Latent dream thoughts vs manifest dream contents

"Errors" and their unconscious significance, according to Freud (Version 1)

Heidegger's list of the qualities of Dasein: including being-in-the-world, being-

Freud’s attitude toward the possible existence of G-d

 Heidegger's list of the qualities of Dasein: including being-in-the-world, being-toward-

The Observer is the Observed

Subjectivity and Validity

The Psychology and Sociology of Knowledge

Decentering in the Genesis of Knowledge

Attempted Circumventions of Subjectivity

Methodological Objectivism (p21)

The Case Study Method

Structures of the Subjective World

Chapter 2: Sigmund Freud

Ambivalence in Freud‘s Life

The Defensive-Restitutive Function of Freud‘s Theories

Summary and Conclusions

 Dreams are usually triggered by events of the previous day

Wish Fulfillment Theory of Dreams

They attempt to fill wishes

Personology- Henry Murray- the ―Harvard clinic‖ 1932-1962

The golden age of personality psychology at Livingston College (1972-1979)

Invariant organizing principle- recurrent life theme

A tragedy befalls Rutgers when R. Stolorow is denied tenure

Faces in a Cloud (1979)-

 A weird genealogy of personology and psychoanalysis showing the path of George

A cast of Newtonian-Galilean characters:

Comte, Clothilde, and the New Religion

J.B. Watson- the father of American behavior

Pavlov- creator of classical conditioning

―introspection‖ as a method for psychology is the ―last transformation of theology‖, according

J.B. Watson (1913) – ―Psychology as a behaviorist views it‖

Watson- Southern Baptist Church

Salivary response in dogs- Pavlov (eyeblink response in people)

The most famous experiment in psychology- Little Albert (1924)

Watson‘s PhD dissertation:

Little Albert study

The Unholy Trinity of American behaviorism: Watson-Skinner-Hull

Skinner was responsible for ―operant conditioning‖

Comte: science made progress by depersonifying nature

Against a backdrop of religious fundamentalism and maternal hypercontrol, Skinner dreamed

Behaviorism involves the annihilation of the ethical

Skinner: behavior is controlled by its consequences