Poster Feedbacks

I thought the poster presentation day went well. I got really good feedback and a couple of critiques which I intend to incorporate into my final paper. The main thing I need to add are braoder/substantial aspects into some of the factors supporting my main research question. Specifically, I hope to find information on health insurances and Medicaid policies towards psychoanalysis. That should nicely add depth to my point about costs as a social inhibitor of psychoanalytic progression.

Less than a week before everything will be all done. Then I believe I'll be able to breathe again.

Until then, eating sushi will be my engine fuel. haha

Expert Interview

I interviewed my grandmother. She is a psychoanalyst in Brazil. I thought her opinion was good because it gave me an analysts' perspective on some of the issues I've been researching. She also has an "outsiders" view when considering psychoanalysis within the United States.

The only hard part about this assignment was having to translate her email form Portuguese into English. hehe...I think I did a pretty good job.


Interview
Q: On average, how much does it cost for an individual to undergo psychoanalysis?

A: The "value" of analysis is not exclusively quantified by the monetary aspect, but rather by an individuals' "implication" with themselves. I use the word implication to signify the patients' persistence in continuing with the process. Psychoanalysis is of the patient and not of the analyst. The value of the analysis depends on the value the patient gives to them self, and on their socioeconomic conditions. There are people for whom 30 dollars is too much, and yet they pay with satisfaction. For others, 300 dollars is nothing and yet they complain.

Q: Given your knowledge, do you believe psychoanalysis is practiced more within Brazil or the United States?

A: I'm assuming psychoanalysis is more widely practiced in Brazil, but that does not go to say there aren't psychoanalysts in the US. There was a time in which psychoanalysis was greatly developed within Argentina, until the military regime banned the practice and many analysts took refuge in Brazil in order to continue practicing. It was not of the government's interest because they already had "analysts" within their regime.

Q: Would you say there is a specific "type" of person that seeks out psychoanalysis more so than others?

A: I would say yes. A fundamental element needed for somebody to seek out an analyst is the desire to better understand themselves. Few are those that become familiar with their existence.

Q: What are some factors you have found to get in the way of an individuals analysis?

A: Once a client is conscious and more aware of the role psychoanalysis has on them, there may be personal resistance. There isn't really such thing as inhibiting factors, but rather desires on the line. I have found no external factors, but yet it is interesting to see many people resist analysis claiming they have no economic conditions to pay.

Q: Do you think the Brazilian government is in favor of psychoanalysis? Do you think they support it?

A: Here, the government neither supports nor favors it. However, there are public institutions where an analyst may be given a role to fulfill, almost always in the health area.

Q: Given your knowledge, what are some factors differentiating the US from Brazil that ultimately inhibit the progression of psychoanalysis?

A: In the United States, I believe a combination of both cultural and economic factors are fundamental in the inhibition of psychoanalytic development. This is because, as an intensely capitalistic society, Americans are continuously in search of "something" (an "object") they may buy in order to immediately resolve that which they are in search of. That is, the solution to their "problem". Proof of this is the intense use of psychological medications. Both Freud and Lacan do not offer these purchasable objects. The American culture is a consumerist one, always hoping their solution is on the market. What a waste of time! This is good for commerce and the industry, but not for an individual subject to the Unconscious. People buy their psychological medications to find they are still having emotional problems. They buy another brand, and same results. And they buy another...

Annotated Bibliography

I submitted the bibliography today.

Thanksgiving Post

I've dedicated this break to really concentrating on the project. Here is the progress I have thus far. This seems like a long post, and it sort of is. But I'm putting this up to track my progress because not only do I think its important, it helps me to organize the project and motivates me to continue. My goal is to have this bibliography turned in by the end of the break. I'll take the late hits, because rightfully so, I deserve them.

Annotated Bibliography

Source One: book

APA Citation:

Schwartz, J. (1999). Cassandra's daughter : A history of psychoanalysis in europe and america. London: Allen Lane.

Brief Summary and Critical Analysis

Although this book contained several chapters of insignificant information, Chapter 7, titled Expanding the Frontier: Psychoanalysis in the United States I, was very pertinent to my research and in collecting information. Essentially what the chapter discusses are issues in psychoanalytic development within the United States. Europe began the frontier building of psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud in Austria, and Europe’s high-cultural appeal took this science beyond medical fields. Britain, France, Germany, and Austria – where Freud was from initially – were leaders in expanding on psychoanalytic thought through practices such as literature, philosophy, law, and other natural sciences. The United States, however, presented a different environment catering to an extension of medical practice. Individuals underwent psychoanalytic training as a branch of psychiatric practice.

Source Two: scholarly journal

APA Citation:

Burnham, John C. (1982). The Reception of Psychoanalysis in Western Cultures: an afterword on its comparative history. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 24, 603-610. Retrieved October 31, 2007 from JSTOR.

Source Three: website

APA Citation:

Kirsner, Douglas (1998) Unfree Associations: Inside Psychoanalytic Institutes. Retreived September 24, 2007, from Wikipedia: http://www.human-nature.com/kirsner

Brief Summary and Critical Analysis

This source reviews the four major psychoanalytic institutes of the United States: New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago. Each institute underwent splits

New York is the largest institute, in number of analysts, in the United States and the world. Immediately after World War II, membership to the institute was regarded as prestigious because analysis dominated the field of psychiatry. Yet the institute eventually reformed, due to internal conflicts. Its weakness resided in its membership; a small oligarichy of The restructuring helped in reformulating the institution’s purpose and in giving the foundation greater solidarity.

Source Four: book

APA Citation:

Roazen, P. (2001). The Historiography of Psychoanalysis. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.

Brief Summary

There are particular times which the introduction of psychoanalysis has been more receptive in America. America develops a romance with psychology. People should embrace psychology with an understanding that there are differing standards of what is right and wrong.

- Times if war

- When religion has waned. People are open to looking at ‘selfhood’ and not directing attention towards God.

The bread-and-butter of psychological development is yet to be done. Primary historical documents in the field remain almost untouched.

Part of the research process is discovering that a source is not useful. While the author uses some nicely painted language to describe his work, the essence of the material did not exactly capture the ideas I looked for. However, like I said, there were some points to be taken from the source.

Compared to other sources, this chapter to …approach. The author summarizes distinct analysts’ central to psychoanalytic development, and further discusses their impact on the field.

Philip Cushman looks at understanding modern conception of the self, deviating from traditional views of Freud. Spelling out the strengths of prominent psychologists immediately following Freud, gets away from instinctual orientations, which ultimately leads to understanding inadequacies. In researching these psychologists, Heinz Kohut and Donald Winnicott were important figures. Cushman says the avocation of consumerism promotes the idea of an ‘empty self’ which ultimately inhibits progression of psychoanalysis in the masses.

However, it does not mention cultural influence. I believe unearthing cultural impacts is significantly important in explaining inhibitors of widespread practices of the field. Again, what is important are how these developments have impacted the masses.

This source was hard to sift through. The approach I took to extract useful points was skim the reading, then summarize and condense what I found significant into a summary. This helped me to organize the information the source has to offer, and also better map out the project. I truly feel like I’m going somewhere. What I’ve done thus far is look atresources describing the cultural acceptance of psychoanalysis in America, as well as other parts of the world including: France, Great Britain, and Argentina. I then took a comparative approach and targeted specific causers of inhibitors of psychoanalytic reception in America.




I was looking at the criteria on the assignment sheet, and saw I've formatted my bibliography incorrectly. It's ok though, I'll keep trudging along until I finally put everything together. Leo was right, if you do this right adn do it well, it DEFINATELY helps with the final project. I'm excited about where this is going, and my goal is to do the extra work needed to have a good project.

I need a little break before I come tackle this assignment again.

Class Time

So although my hand hurts from writing so much in class, I felt it was very beneficial to see what others were doing. I can now take ideas that were presented well and apply that to my poster. Thanks guys for going first!

That annotated bibliography is still coming along.

Trouble

Leo told us to blog about our difficulties as we push through the last stretch of this project. Well, if I were to write on end about my difficulties with this project, I'd probabyl take up a good amount of space on my blog. So instead I'll just list a few of the things I'm struggling with.

First off, I haven't turned in my Annotated Bibliography. Yep. It's been a week, and I just can't push through it. I've written about half of it. But for some reason when I sit down to do my work, it's like I huge headache overwhelms me. Know the feeling? haha. Kinda funny. Kinda not.

I'm going to do the best I can to do well in this class. I struggle with getting things turned in on time, and if it means re-doing my bibliographies for the final portfolio and/or writing more bibliographies then that is what I'll have to do.

The point of the class is to learn. It's the proccess, not the end goal. (Well, it's the end goal too - haha - but the proccess is more important). Sounds a little cliche, doesn't it?

Hopefully Leo actually reads these posts.

Class Notes

Issues the class is having with the project:
· Having to ask too many questions about the same topic
· Finding up-to-date studies and data. Too much data…
· How to condense so much information in a 2-3 pg. paper
· Being able to decipher between objective and biased information.
· Hard to understand the language used in sources.
· What if you run out of ideas?
· Technological problems

Solutions:
· Narrow down your questions to one big important question. Everything else can/should be used as sub-questions.
· Prioritize your sources. This helps you to sift through your information.
· Use an expert and your expert interview to help you prioritize the information you’ve gathered. They know more about your topic than you do.
· If it’s in a science area, go to the specific journal.
· When evaluating the source ask: Who is paying for it? What is their agenda? Is it recognized by anybody?
· If you don’t understand what is being said in the source, don’t use it. Find something else.
· If you’re talking about technology, look at what you have, and again ask: who is putting money behind this?

Questions to ask the class about your poster:
· How can I make better connections about my ideas?
· Is there a new approach or angle I can take about this issue?
· Is the information clear?
· Am I communicating the ideas well?

Screwed

I'm pretty over my head and behind with work in general. It's as if all proffessors decided to mount a ton of work within the last three weeks of classes and add work that wasn't previously assigned. Guess its the price you pay for going to UNC. Hopefully the break will be a chance to catch-up.

RefWorks

I decided to try the Refworks that we learned about in class one day. It's been such a useful tool, especially with the annotated bibliographies we're having to do. They really should require more students to learn about the different tools Carolina offers to help with term papers. Here is a list of some references I've found:

References

Golan, R. (2006). Loving psychoanalysis :Looking at culture with freud and lacan [Ahavat ha-psikhoơanalizah.English] . London: Karnac.

Roazen, P. (2001). The historiography of psychoanalysis. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.

Schwartz, J. (1999). Cassandra's daughter :A history of psychoanalysis in europe and america. London: Allen Lane.

Thompson, M. G. (2004). The ethic of honesty :The fundamental rule of psychoanalysis. Amsterdam; New York, NY: Rodopi.

Wirth, H. (2004). 911 as a collective trauma and other essays on psychoanalysis and society. Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag.

Zaretsky, E. (2004). Secrets of the soul :A social and cultural history of psychoanalysis (1st ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Seems like the last stretch of the semester has really proven to be hectic. It's as if we've put ourselves into 5th gear, but hopefully this will really be an opportunity for me to fully take advantage of what this course has to offer, as well as accomplish the course objectives and fulfillments.

In the meantime...here is a video...which really has nothing to do with the question of my topic, expect that its related to Freud.

I did find it interesting though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-EAv2waXbY

Quick Post

I'm trying to get a head start on my poster presentation so that I don't leave everything for the last minute. I've written a list of materials I need to buy to prepare the poster: board, glue, construction paper, tape, and markers. The Union is a great place to go to organize ideas....or when you just need to get your work done :/

In Class Assignment

1. Psychoanalysis is a form of psychology existing since the beginning of the twentieth century, yet has died down since and is not widely practiced today.

2. The reasons behind the dissipation of psychoanalysis is an intriguing one, and raises questions about its validity and efficiency. While not commonly spoken about within the United States, and other parts of the world, psychoanalysis still exists. Plenty of papers have been published, and scholars debate about whether or not psychoanalysis' is a field worth pursuing. Topics such as length of time needed for psychoanalysis to produce results as well as its affordability are both issues preventing this field of study in becoming more popular.

3. Personal experiences as well as input from individuals who have experienced this type of therapy would help me in better concluding whether or not psychoanalysis is worth its costs.


Questions:

-what is the process an individual must undergo through psychoanalysis?
-how long does this therapy take?
-how much does it cost?
-where is it available in the United States?

The Bi-Weekly Update

I have 15 cited usefull sources I've gotten a hold of. I guess that's pretty good. At least I know I'm half way there. Now I just have the other half of the lake to swim. My sources range from scholarly journals, newspaper articles, and other websites. Many of them I found through the UNC library source. The class we had with that librarian was very helpfull in aiding my search.

I've also added to my actual paper draft. However, I have put a hold on that aspect of the project in attempts to focus more on my group work.

Posting on Topic

Somewhere along the lines there needed to be a post about our topic...

Here is a brief historical timeline of psychology :

Turn of the century: Sigmund Freud gives birth to psychanalysis through the conceptualization of the mind as an ancient buried ruin needing to be unearthed.

1896: Freud begins development of foundational theories for psychoanalysis.

1890: "Mental Tests" is coined by James Cattell and marks the beginning of psychological assessment.

1890: William James publishes 'Principles of Psychology', the foundation of functionalism,

1892: Foundation of the American Psychological Assiciation (APA)

1906: Journal of Abnormal Psychology founded by Morton Prince

1913: Carl G. Jung develops Analytical Psychology after departing from Freudian views due to an inability to acknowledge religion and spirituality.

1916: Intelligence Test published in the United States

1938: Electroshock therapy first used on a human patient.

1939: Canadian Psychological Association was founded.

1945: Journal of Clinical Psychology founded.

1952: Chlorpromazine (Thorazine) first used in treatment of schizophrenia.

1988: American Psychological Society established.

1998: Psychology advances to the technological age with the emergence of e-therapy.

2002: W. Bush promotes legislation that would guarantee comprehensive mental health coverage.

Class Got Cancelled

This post isn't going to be very long because I feel like a lot of my research consists of repeating the same steps and knowing what materials to weed out and which ones not to. Today during class time I continued to surf the net for useful resources and spentmost of my time really getting into my topic. I even outlined the initial abstract for the paper. This past weekend I phoned my grandmother in Brazil - a really cool lady by the way. She works with psychoanalysis down there, so I asked if she knew of any resourceful articles I could use for my assignment. Hopefully she will email those to me this week.

Well, see everyone in class on Wednesday. Hope everyone had a good day off.

Peace ;)

Updated Prospectus

Description
Psychoanalysis is a science, stemming from Freudian thought, concerning varying theories about the functioning of the mind. It involves an analytic patient [analysand] talking about their thoughts and feelings in a chair, often facing the opposite direction of the analyst. The analyst in turn, interprets the patients’ speech to explain the unconscious bases for the patient’s symptoms and behavioral problems. The belief is that, through the analyst and analysand relationship, unresolved emotional conflicts are unearthed and ultimately symptoms diminish.

Research Question
Why is psychoanalysis not widely practiced in the United States?

Initial Research
Psychology is the study of mental processes and behavior. That is, the varying processes and behaviors incorporated and having to do with the different activities involving the mind. Modern day psychology, specifically cognitive behavioral therapy, is a field of science greatly practiced in the United States. Approaching psychology from a historical perspective will enable a better understanding of the componential aspects of the science, as well as its development.

Some consider psychoanalysis a branch of psychology. It is, as defined by Kardiner (1941) “a practical psychology, which seeks to make intelligible the aberrant phenomena in the stream of human experience which often are coincident with suffering and ineffectuality” (p. 233). Differing from psychology, most individuals within the psychoanalytic academia find the science and its practice a social responsibility. Unfortunately, psychoanalysis isn’t widely practiced in the United States, but rather in areas such as Western Europe, Argentina, and Brazil.

Assignment

Assignment

primary research question:
why is psychoanalysis not commonly practiced in the United States?

sub research questions:

what is psychoanalysis?

where and how did psychoanalysis develop?

was there ever a time where it was popular in the United States?

is the United States structured differently politically, economically, and/or socially from areas that do practice the science, including Western Europe, Argentina, and/or Brazil?

do these differences affect the popularity of psychoanalysis?

physical:
most of my research has been looking up scholarly journals and articles eletronically. Some specific journals I have researched include JSTOR and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association

affective:
I am somewhat confident in my research. There is a lot of information out there. I haven't found trouble with that. My challenge will be condensing and sorting through that information to really be able to answer my question.

cognitive:
which articles are most relevant to my topic, given the many ones associated with psychoanalysis?

the LATE Kulthau theory

Kulthau's theory essentially examines the gap between the user and the information/knowledge he wishes to attain through his/her research proccess. Because we aren't sure exactly where we are going with our research, we know there is a question at hand but we don't know exactly what the outcome will look like, our topics and work is subject to change.

This precisely exemplifies my research experience. I began with a topic I picked, psychology, because it interested me. However, I wasn't exactly sure what question I would pose to further narrow my research. Once I began retreiving information - that is, briefly googling my topic - I was able to attain a better idea of where I was heading. As I continue to search and retrieve information, my topic becomes more narrow and specific. My project begins to shape nicely, and part of the reason this is so, is due to the journey taken through the research process. This is exactly what Kulthau theorizes.

Information Need

Brief Blog Exercise

I haven't really begun researching my topic so I'm not sure if there is sufficient scholarly information out there or not. If there isn't, I may need to re-approach the research assignment with a different question.

I think I need to look up basic information regarding psychoanalysis: What theories was it founded on, what are the basic elements guiding this practice of science, and what are the techniques used to exercise psychoanalytic therapy. Next I need to to look up the same information about psychology. That will give me a better foundation to compare and contrast the two fields.

Prospectus

These ideas are far from organized in a well thought out manner, but this is what I have been brainstorming thus far...

What do I know?

I do know I would like to research the area of psychoanalysis. Why? Because this is a science that is not widely practiced within the United States and the little I have experienced with it fascinates me. My grandmother is a psychoanalyst in Brazil, and has taken me to work several times. I've met her colleagues and the school she attends. One interesting thing about psychoanalysis which differs from psychology is that analyst themselves must undergo the process of analysis from beginning to end. Although I believe many psychologists have done therapy, they are not required to at the extent which psychoanalysts are. For these reasons, which perk my curiosity, I'd like to do my INLS research project on psychoanalysis.

Rough Prospectus Paragraph and Research Question:

What are the facets of psychoanalysis which have stunted it from attaining popularity within the United States? Psychoanalysis stems from Freudian thought, which although is recognized within the United States, contains a stigma. It is an uncharted field of science many are hesitant to step foot in. Psychology, on the other hand, is a widely practiced tool of therapy, as is psychiatry. I propose to compare and contrast the field of psychoanalysis and psychology in attempts to better understand why psychoanalysis has not attained the high demands of psychology.

Intro Post

My name is Nina and welcome to my INLS blog. I'm a senior and International Studies major. If all goes well I'll graduate in December. I have one younger brother that is 11 - yes that is a ten year gap. I love traveling, learning new cultures, and picking up different languages. One of my favorite foods is black beans and rice, it goes well with about anything, and I also enjoy different kinds of fruits.