PSYC 32 My Personality Profile: The Psychoanalytic Perspective

ANALYZE YOURSELF!
Before the training of any Freudian therapist is considered complete, the budding therapist must first psychoanalyze themselves. So I ask you to do this.

PART 1: BE THE PATIENT 1. Think about yourself. Find a quiet place where you can be alone. Get out your phone (or some other recording device) and record yourself talking out loud about your life and some of the things that might be bothering you or causing anxiety in you. Try not to worry about being judged as you will be alone and nobody will ever hear this recording. Be honest with yourself and talk about anything that comes to mind. Talk for as long as you have something to say, but attempt to talk for a minimum of 30 minutes. 2. Record as many dreams that you can capture over the rest of the semester. Keep your phone next to you while you sleep (or a tape recorder or even just a note pad) and when you wake up during a dream, record as much of the details as you possibly can capture before the memories of the dream fade. 3. Look at these inkblots. Write down what you see in them. (A)

Nos Foratu

(B)

Man riding motorcycle

(C)

Torso

DO NOT CONTINUE (or even read on) UNTIL YOUVE COMPLETED PART 1! (Seriously dont look.)

PART 2: BE THE FREUDIAN THERAPIST 1. Actively listen to your recorded free association self-therapy session. Pretend it isnt you, but another person that you are attempting to understand. Look for a flow to your conversation. Notice how you move from topic to topic the transitions of your thinking. Write the transitions down. Ask why you transitioned from one topic to the next. What was it about one topic that lead you to think of the next topic? a. Born, HB house, schooling, Nico and Miranda, travel, brother, parents marriage, open relationship with parents, hard times with mom, close with brother, copying him, home video toddlers, nothing major, travel, Disneyland, no bad experiences, fire, relationships, Ben, anxieties, finals, animation, PA, Hunter, shopping, hard to talk about myself, joints, doctor frustrations, stupid school payment 2. Consider the content of your dream. What does your dream content symbolize? Do you see any representations of any of your anxieties symbolized in your dream? Maybe dream content that symbolizes dependencies, control, or sex? Why do you think you dreamed that dream? What does it mean to you? a. Dream Sam chose a girl over me, we were dating and our backstory is essentially the same as far as I could tell but he lost interest or something and started gravitating toward this other girl, kind of like Little Mermaid with Ariel, Eric and Ursula. He comes back, though. 3. What did you report seeing in the inkblots? Here are the correct answers for what a normal person should see in the inkblot. a. Bat, butterfly, or moth b. Animal hide c. 4-legged animal What were your answers? What do your interpretations say about you? Are your interpretations reflections of fixations at earlier stages of your life (dependency, control, or sex)? Nos foratu, man riding motorcycle, torso. My interpretations mean Im at least slightly versed in classic horror films, that I think of strange angles to take photographs, and that Im thinking about a torso rather than a fourlegged animal so one could say Im thinking about sex but I prefer to think of it as Im NOT thinking about bestiality.

PART 3: EVAULATE THE PROCESS Did you learn anything about yourself that you dont feel that you knew previously?

No.