Freud and Little Hans
As everybody knows, this is certainly an amazing case study by Sigmund Freud. He studid a 5-year-old child name Hans. Interesting enough, Freud never met his young patient. The communication was carried out by letters and the child's parents. After having a glimpse of what this case study is about, I somehow feel that it was the kid that cure himself afterall, while Freud was just studying the information and interpreting the ideas. I don't feel like Freud had done anything to cure little Hans from the fear of horses, instead, I think that as Hans grow up, the strange feelings start to untangle themselves. Am I wrong?
~Daniel
Freud's Family
*Our next project explores the life of the famous psychologist, Sigmund Freud. From my research on his family background, I found out about his unbelievably surprising family tree (he is younger than his nephew!!!). Of all the 8 children in the family, he is the first, and most beloved by his mother (from this, he developed a close maternal relationship). He is born a child prodigy, meaning his intelligence level reveals at a surprisingly early stage of life (he read Shakespeare's work at 8 years old!!!). At the age of 4 he experienced a huge contrast of environment, when his family left the calm, mountainous hometown to the metropolitan Vienna, where he spent the rest of his life there. All of these factors should be drawn into consideration when studying about his thinking patterns and methods later on.
*What's new to me is that the death of his father had made a great impact on Freud's life. It's even more surpirsed to find out that he actually reached the stage in which he imagined that his brother was his father!
~Daniel
IB Psychology HL Y1 Assessment [Aug 21st, 2006]
Thanks to the advancement of studies and researches, psychotherapy undergoes many great changes this century. In general, more people accept, therefore attend therapy courses, nowadays than in the 19th century. People pay huge amount of money to attend group and individual therapies with the experts. As the field has been broadened, therapy evolves from one-culture into multicultural to handle the diversity of the clients’ backgrounds. It reaches into education, management, business, and labor areas. Many modern therapists create their own ideas and practices from the new therapy methods discovered, unlike in the past when major methods were rare and therapists relied on a single principle. Religious and spiritual issues are being brought in to heighten the efficiency of today’s therapy, although they were very much neglected in the past. A breakthrough in modern technology, advance study and research, and the growing popularity of it reshape the ideas and practice of psychotherapy.
The article mentions twenty breakthroughs conducted by many experts. Here are the five that I find most important:
Breakthrough #1: Jean Piaget shows that, unlike adults, children are unable to understand that the volume of a liquid will still remain constant even if it is poured from a tall glass into a wide bowl. The result suggests that the brain goes through stages of development. Knowing this, psychologists can design suitable experiments according to their patients’ (or clients’) ages, in order to obtain the most effective results.
Breakthrough #2: Matina Homer, former president of Radcliffe College, conducted an experiment which shows that male performs better than women in a competitive situation. The experiment has two parts: first part includes them doing some tests in a separated environment, and the second part involves them sitting in the same room and do the test. The male student performs worse on the first, but excels in the latter. This critically can help psychologists to answer why male tends to dominate the society (because male performs better under pressure).
Breakthrough #3: Harry F. Harlow points out that female, compared to male, is far more effective in child care. He backs his statement up with an experiment involving a set of male, female, and baby monkeys. This knowledge will tremendously help to understand the issues relating the youngsters (child-abuse cases, child-care center, etc.).
Breakthrough #4: Robert Epstein’s research had identified four ways to boost creativity, which are capturing, challenging, broadening, and surrounding. This information will play a big role in improving young people’s education, and making them potentially successful individuals.
Breakthrough #5: Hans Selye, the first researcher to introduce psychological stress, shares with his interviewer a very important idea about stress. He said that stress is not necessarily a bad thing. Some people are happier in life when they have a fast-pace and busy lifestyle, which is not abnormal. He advised that people should know their capability of handling stress, and not to go beyond that limit to avoid danger.
~Daniel
The Big Issues...
I did an in-class survey to find out about myself in terms of: rationality (score of 25) vs irrationality (score of 0); stability (score of 25) vs change (score of 0); nature (score of 25) vs nurture (score of 0). The first two results were as expected, but I was surprised about the final one. Here are my results:
19: toward rational, true.
10: toward change, true.
16: toward nature, very false.
What happened to that last one? I always believe firmly that a person's thinking, behavior, and personality are all influenced by their families, cultures, and society. This is my idea: a child who is raised by an uncivilized society will NEVER be as successful in the real world as a child being raised by a warm, educational family, even if his IQ is double the other guy. I'm still not convinced by the survey result...
~Daniel
Why do we do the things that we do?
Actions are often resulted from the desire for pleasure, restrictions of religions and moralities, the need to adapt to the surroundings, instinct to survive, and basically putting their creativity into the real world. These can be observed in daily activities such as going to school, going to work, or any other activities that include interacting with others. For example; we eat because we feel hungry (desire for pleasure); a muslim prays every night before going to bed (religions/moralities); we ask questions about where the new gym is located (adapting to the surroundings); we run for our life when we see an armed mental hospital patient (instinct to survive); we write diaries (putting thoughts and creativity into the real world).
Of course, there are many more reasons for why people do the things they do. These are just some of my own ideas from my 17 years of life experience. I am looking forward to adding on my list as I move on...
~Daniel
Why am I in This Class??
Getting to study the mechanics of the human brains and the mystery of human nature is truly a golden oppurtunity for any student. Where else can you study that, if not the psychology class? Without hesitation, I decided to move from the overcrowded IB Business class to IB Psychology when I heard there's a class at the same time. So here I am...
Psychology is broader than Business, and since I'm not planning to major Business for my Bachelor Degree (more interested in doing Engineering), IB Psychology HL will benefit me more than any other social science courses, and plus it's my personal interest as well.
I want give reasons to most of the things happening in my daily life. I want to have a better, more logical, and more intelligent explanations to any event (why certain people act the way they do, why this, why that??), not just "God knows".
~Daniel
