Assigned Reading from Text:  Chapter 6.  Psychodynamics.  [Chapter 5 not assigned]
    Not responsible for pages 197-206.

Sample Essay Questions:

    a.  Define five defense mechanisms.  Give a concrete example of each of these five.
    b.  List two common beliefs about hypnosis.  Briefly discuss the results of at least four empirical studies refuting one or both of these beliefs.
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A.  Freud and the study of the unconscious
    1.  Freud was a major theorist dealing with the unconscious.
    2.  His theories are NOT widely accepted today, but many of the ideas are accepted.

B.  Important Freudian ideas
    1.  Stages of development:  Oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital
    2.  Defense mechanisms
            a.  Repression.  Important beliefs or emotions are taken out of conscious awareness.
            b.  Denial.  Not accepting the reality of something unpleasant
            c.  Projection.  Perceiving one's own feelings as belonging to someone else
            d.  Isolation.  Conscious thoughts without the underlying feelings
            e.  Regression.  Involves fixation (maintaining a high level of emotional involvement in an earlier developmental stage).

C.  Empirical studies of defense mechanisms
    1.  Scales have been developed to measure them.  Validity issues with these scales.
    2.  Use of certain types of defenses appears to be a personality style.

D.  Evidence that the unconscious exists
    1.  Subliminal perception.  Perception without conscious awareness.
    2.  Mindless action.  Acting without conscious awareness.
    3.  Creative behavior generally.
    4.  Dreams are widely believed to be a window into the unconscious.

E.  Hypnosis:  Common beliefs.  What is the data?
    1. Under hypnosis, the person has perfect memory, but many false memories.
    2.  Under hypnosis, one  can regress to birth or an earlier life.  But, no good evidence.
    3.  Under hypnosis, almost any problem can be cured.  Data that hypnosis is effective
in treating some types of problems, but not all.

F.  Psychotherapy
    1.  Many different types including hypnosis and psychoanalysis.  Both attempt to reveal the unconscious to the conscious self.  Techniques such as free association and dream analysis to trick the conscious self.
    2.  These and other types of therapy are known as "insight therapy".  Other types of therapy are based on different assumptions.