Today I have decided to blog about Alfred Adler a Austrian medical doctor, psychologist and founder of the school of individual psychology. Adler was part of the co-founders of the psychoanalytic movement and was a central member to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Adler was the initial major figure to break away from psychoanalysis to establish his own independent school of psychotherapy and personality theory after Freud said Adler's ideas were to contrary. Adler emphasized the importance of equality in halting different forms of psychopathology and he adopted into his work the development of social interest and democratic family structures as the ideal way for bringing up children. Adler's most well known theories are the inferiority complex, which is related to the matters of self-esteem and its negative compensations. Adler's emphasis on power dynamics stems from the philosphy of Nietzsche. "Adler argued for holism, viewing people as holistically rather than reductively, the latter being the overriding lens for viewing human psychology".The online definition of holism is-"the theory that the parts of any whole cannot exist and cannot be understood except in their relation to the whole". Adler was also among the first in psychology to argue for the side of feminism and Adler is considered to be one of the founding figures of depth psychology, which emphasized the unconscious and psychodynamics. For 25 years Adler traveled and lectured promoting his socially orientated approach. Adler wanted to create a movement that would compete with and even take place of others in psychology by arguing for the holistic integrity of psychological well being with that of social equality. Adler's efforts were halted by World War 1 when he served as a doctor in the Austrian Army. After the war Adler's influence increased much further and in the 1930's he formed a number of child guidance clinics. From 1921 and onwards, Adler was a common lecturer in Europe and the USA, becoming a visitor professor at Columbia University in 1927. For clinical treatment for adults Adler tried to bring to light the hidden purpose of symptoms by using therapeutic functions of insight and meaning. Adler was interested in the overcoming of the superiority/inferiority dynamic and was one of the first psychotherapists to do away with for himself in therapy the analytic couch in return for two chairs. "Clinically Adler's method was not only about treatment after-the-fact but it extended out also to prevention by preempting future problems in the child". "Prevention strategies of Adler included the following: "encouraging and promoting social interest, belonging, and a cultural shift within families and communities that leads to the eradication of pampering and neglect (especially corporal punishment)". "Adler's popularity was associated with the comparative optimism and comprehensibility of the ideas he came up with in psychology". Adler would often write for the lay public in comparison to others in the field like Freud who's writings tend to be more exclusively academic. As a prominent member in the field Adler always retained a pragmatic approach that was task-orientated and these "life tasks" are occupation/work, society/friendship/ and love/sexuality and their success is reliant upon co-operation. Adler was influenced by the mental construct ideas of the philosopher Hans Vaihinger and the writing works of Dostoevsky. Alder developed a theory of organic inferiority and compensation that was the prototype for his later turn to phenomenology and the creation of his famous concept known as the inferiority complex. Adler was also influenced by the philosophy work of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rudolf Virchow and the statesman Jan Smuts who was the person who coined the term "holism". "Adler's School, known as "Individual Psychology", is both a social and community psychology as well as a depth psychology". "Adler was an early advocate in psychology for prevention and he was big on the matter of training parents, teachers, social workers and so forth in democratic approaches that allow a child to exercise their power through reasoned decision making while co-operating with others". Adler was a social idealist and known to be a socialist in Adler's early years with psychoanalysis. "Adler's following of Marxism dissipated over time however he retained Marxism social idealism but stayed further away from Marx's economic theories". "Adler was a practical person and he thought that lay people could make practical use of the insights of psychology and he sought to create a social movement united through principles of community feeling and social interest". "Adler was also a early proponent of feminism's in psychology and the social world believing feelings of superiority and inferiority were commonly gendered and expressed symptomatically in characteristic masculine and feminine ways and according to Adler these ways could form the basis of psychic compensation and lead to some mental health troubles". Interestingly I think, Adler had also spoke of "safeguarding tendencies" and neurotic behavior long before Anna Freud wrote about the same matter in her book "The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense". To give an overall view of Adlerian based scholarly, clinical and social practices the following is what Adler's studies had focused one: "Mental Health Prevention
Social Interest and Community Feeling
Holism and the Creative Self
Fictional Finalism, Teleology, and Goal constructs
Psychological and Social Encouragement
Inferiority, Superiority and Compensation
Life Style / Style of Life
Early Recollections (a projective technique)
Family Constellation and Birth Order
Life Tasks & Social Embeddedness
The Conscious and Unconscious realms
Private Logic & Common Sense (based in part on Kant's "sensus communis")
Symptoms and Neurosis
Safeguarding Behaviour
Guilt and Guilt Feelings
Socratic Questioning
Dream Interpretation
Child and Adolescent Psychology
Democratic approaches to Parenting and Families
Adlerian Approaches to Classroom Management
Leadership and Organisational Psychology."
Adler's book "The Neurotic Character" defines his earlier central ideas. Adler disputed that human personality could be explained teleologically, "separate strands dominated by the guiding purpose of the individuals unconscious self ideal to convert feelings of inferiority to superiority (or rather completeness)". "The desires of the self ideal were countered by social and ethical needs of a sort." "If the corrective factors were forgot about and the individual over-compensated, then an inferiority complex would stir about, fostering the danger of a person becoming egocentric, power-hungry and aggressive or worse". Regular therapeutic tools brought about by Adlder include the use of humor, historical instances, and paradoxical injunctions. Adler believed that human psychology is psychodynamic by nature and is guided by goals and is motivated by a yet unknown creative force. "Adler's fictive goals are mainly unconscious and these goals have a "teleological" function". As a psychodynamic system, Adlerians dig up the past of a client/patient so to alter their future and increase integration into community in the 'here-and-now'. "The 'here-and-now' aspects are especially significant to those Adlerians who are big on humanism and/or existentialism in their approaches. Metaphysical Adlerians believe that spiritual holism is important". "The pragmatic and materialist aspects to contextualizing members of communities, the creation of communities and the socio-historical-political forces that help develop communities matter significantly when it comes to understanding a persons psychological make-up and functioning". "This aspect of Adlerian psychology maintains a high amount of synergy with the field of community psychology". "However, Adlerian psychology, is not similar to community psychology in the aspect that Adlerian psychology is holistically concerned with both prevention and clinical help after-the-fact". "Adler founded a scheme of the so called personality types and these 'types' are to be looked at as provisional or heuristic since Adler did not, in essence, believe in personality types". "According to Adler the danger with typology is to lose sight of a persons uniqueness and to look reductively, acts that Adler opposed". "Adler also attempted to recognize patterns that could denote a characteristic governed under the altogether style of life". "Adler commonly emphasized one's birth order as having an impact on the Style of Life and the strengths and weaknesses in one's psychological make up and Birth Order referred to the placement of siblings within the family". Adler had thought that the firstborn child would be loved and nurtured by the family until the procreation of a second child. This second child would influence the first born to suffer feelings of dethronement, no longer being the center of attention according to Adler. Adler believed that in a three-child family, the oldest child would be the most likely to deal with neuroticism and substance addiction, which Adler reasoned was a way to make up for the feelings of excessive responsibility. "As a result, Adler also predicted that this child was the most likely to end up in jail or an asylum and youngest children would tend to be overindulged, influencing poor social empathy". "Consequently, the middle child, who would go through neither dethronement or overindulgence, was most likely to develop into a successful person yet also most likely to be a rebel and to feel left out in a way". Adler never actually created any scientific support for his interpretations on birth order roles. "Adlerians will spend time therapeutically looking into the influence that siblings (or lack thereof) had on the psychology of their clients". "The idiographic approach encompasses an excavation of the phenomenology of one's birth order position for the probable influence on the subject's Style of Life". Adler's ideas in relation to non-heterosexual sexuality and different social forms of deviance have been controversial for some time. As well as prostitution and criminality, Adler had also classified 'homosexuals' as being "failures of life". "In 1917, Adler started his writings on homosexuality with a 52-page brochure, and sporadically published more ideas throughout the remainder of his life". The Dutch psychiatrist Gerard J. M. van den Aardweg examined how Alfred Adler came to his consensus and it was was then understood in 1917 that Adler believed he had established a connection between homosexuality and an inferiority complex towards one's own gender. Towards the end of Adler's life, in the mid 1930s, his view towards homosexuality began to shift about some. Elizabeth H. McDowell, a New York state family social worker recalls being in supervision with Adler on a male client who was "living in sin" with another man in New York city. Adler had said to Elizabeth, "is he happy, would you say?" "Oh yes," McDowell then replied. Then Adler went on and stated, "Well, why don't we leave him alone."Adler emphasized treatment and prevention and a psychodynamic psychology and Adlerian's promote the foundational importance of childhood in developing personality and any tendency towards different forms of psychopathology. "The best route to aid against what are now called"personality disorders" (what Adler had called the "neurotic character"), or a tendency to various neurotic conditions (depression, anxiety, etc.), is to teach a child to be and feel an equal part of the family". "This incorporates developing a democratic character and the ability to use power reasonably rather than through compensation". "The responsibility to the best development of the child is not limited to the Mother or Father but also to teachers and society as well". "So Adler also argued that teachers, nurses and so on need training in parent education to be able to complement the work of the family with the fostering of a democratic character". "According to Adler when a child does not feel equal and is abused by pampering or neglect they are more prone to develop inferiority or superiority complexes and various accompanying compensation strategies". These strategies can create social issues by influencing greater divorce rates, the breakdown of the family, possible criminal habits and subjective suffering in the various ways of psychopathology and so Adlerian's have for a long time promoted parent education groups. Adler had argued his vision of society in writing which said the following: "Social feeling means above all a struggle for a communal form that must be thought of as eternally applicable... when humanity has attained its goal of perfection... an ideal society amongst all mankind, the ultimate fulfillment of evolution." Adler then follows this statement with a defense of metaphysics: "I see no reason to be afraid of metaphysics; it has had a great influence on human life and development. We are not blessed with the possession of absolute truth; on that account we are compelled to form theories for ourselves about our future, about the results of our actions, etc. Our idea of social feeling as the final form of humanity - of an imagined state in which all the problems of life are solved and all our relations to the external world rightly adjusted - is a regulative ideal, a goal that gives our direction. This goal of perfection must bear within it the goal of an ideal community, because all that we value in life, all that endures and continues to endure, is eternally the product of this social feeling." "This social feeling for Adler is Gemeinschaftsgefühl, which is a community feeling in which one feels they belong with others and have developed an ecological link with nature and the cosmos as a whole, sub specie aeternitatus". So clearly, Adler had little trouble with using a metaphysical and a spiritual point of view to support his theories. "However his overall theoretical yield provides ample room for the dialectical humanist (modernist) and separately the postmodernist to explain the importance of community and ecology through differing views "(even if Adlerians have not fully considered how deeply divisive and contradictory these three threads of metaphysics, modernism, and post modernism are)". Having studied psychology for years Adler has been a name that had become familiar to me so I am glad I delved further into some of his many primary influences and there were certainly a lot to read about since this entry had taken me several days to complete at this point.

Today I have decided to blog about Alfred Binet a French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test, which is the basis of today's IQ test. Binet's principal goal was to help recognize students who needed special help in dealing with school curriculum. Along with a collaborator of his called Theodore Simon, Binet published revisions of his intelligence scale in 1908 and 1911. And a further refinement of the Binet-Simon scale was published in 1916 by Lewis M. Terman from Stanford Unverisity. Terman incorporated William Stern's proposal that a person's intelligence level be measured as an IQ. Terman's test, was named by him as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. Binet had published the first modern intelligence test known as the Binet-Simon intelligence scale in 1905. In 1894, Binet conducted one of the first psychological studies into the game of chess. Binet's studies investigated the cognitive qualities of chess masters. Binet hypothesized that chess is dependent upon the phenomenological qualities of visual memory and after studying the reports by master chess participants it came to Binet's attention that memory was only part of the chain of cognition that was involved in the chess game process. Binet's research was conducted by blindfolding chess players and he found that masters were able to play from memory and that intermediates found this to be an impossible task. It was also concluded that experience, imagination and memories of abstract and concret varieties were essential in grand master chess. The line of psychological chess research was followed up in the 1950's by Reuben Fine and a decade later by Adriaan de Groot. At a point in Binet's career he became engrossed with the ideas of John Stuart Mill and Mill believed that the operations of intelligence could be explained by the laws of associationism. Binet came to realize the limitation of Mills theory, however Mill's ideas continued to influence Binet's work. In 1883, years of independent study ended when Binet was introduced to Charles Fere, who introduced him to Jean Charcot, the director of a clinic called Las Salpetriere. Charcot became Binet's mentor and Binet accepted a job offer at the clinic. During Binet's seven years at the clinic all of Charcot's views were accepted unconditionally by Binet. In 1883, Binet began to work in Jean-Martins Charcot's neurological laboratory at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris and at the time of Binets tenure Charcot was experimenting with hypnotism. However after Binet's curiousity in hypnotism decreased he turned to the study of development, which was also an influenced move because of the birth of his two daughters. Upon a 21 period following a shift in career interests Binet went on to publish more then 200 books, articles and reviews in what now would be called experimental, developmental, educational, social and differential psychology. Binet's research with his daughters helped him to further improve his developing ideas on intelligence and especially the importance of attention span an suggestibility within intellectual growth. Binet and fellow researcher Fere discovered what they called transfer and they also recognized perceptual and emotional polarization, however after research done by many others Binet and Fere were forced to admit that they were wrong about their notions of transfer and polarization.
Since basically, their patients had known what was expected, what was supposed to occur, and so they just assented in the research studies. Binet had risked everything on this experiment and its results, and his lack of success was a obstacle that took a toll on him. In the year 1890, Binet quit his position from La Salpetriere and did not mention it or it's director again. Binets interests then turned in the direction of the development of his two daughters Madeleine and Alice. This research is similar to that accomplished by Jean Piaget not long after, which regards the development of cognition in children. A job came about for Binet in 1891 at the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne. Binet worked for a year without compensation and by 1894, Binet became the director. This was a position as director that Binet held until his death, and it fortunately allowed him to puruse his studies on mental processes. As Binet was directing the Laboratory, Theodore Simon applied to do doctoral research under Binet's guidance. So this was the beginning of Binet and Simon's long, productive work together. During this time Binet also co-founded the French journal of psychology, L'Annee psychologique, and worked as the director and editor-in-chief. In the year 1899, Binet was given a request to be a member of the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child and to this group to which Binet became a member hoped to initiate the studying of children in a scientific way. Binet as well as many other members of the society were appointed to the Commission for the Retarded. From there in Binet's life the question then became "What should be the test given to children thought to possibly have learning disabilities, that might place them in a special classroom?" Binet made a goal to establish the differences that separate the normal child from the abnormal, and to measure such differences. The book "Experimental Studies of Intelligence" was the book Binet used to describe his methods and it was published in 1903. The development of more tests and investigations where brought about with the help of the medical student Thedore Simon. Simon had nominated himself a couple of years before as Binet's research assistant and helped him work on the intelligence tests that Binet is known for, which also mutually share Simon's name. In 1905, a new test for measuring intelligence was established and it was just called the Binet–Simon scale. In the year 1908, they revised the scale, leaving out, modifying, and adding tests and also arranging them in accordance to age levels from three to thirteen. In 1904, a French professional group for child psychology, La Société Libre pour l'Etude Psychologique de l'Enfant, was asked by the French government to design a commission on the education of retarded children. The commission was asked to produce a mechanism for identifying students that could use the additional help through alternative education. Binet, was an active member of this group and he found a big need for the development of his mental scale here. Binet and Simon, in creating what historically is known as the Binet-Simon Scale, had created an assortment of tasks they thought were representative of typical children's abilities at different ages. This task-selection means was established from their many years of researching children in natural settings. They both decided to test their measurement on a sample of fifty children, ten children per five age groups. The children chosen for their study were recognized by their school teachers as being average for their age. The gist of this scale mentioned here of normal functioning, which would later be revised twice using more strict type of standards, was to compare children's mental abilities relative to those of their normal peers. Interestingly the scale was made up of thirty tasks of increasing difficulty. The less difficult of these could be completed by all children, even those who were severely retarded. For an essential use of determining educational placement, the results on the Binet-Simon scale would identify the child's mental age. Binet was upfront about the limitations of his scale. Binet emphasized the incredible diversity of intelligence and the subsequent need to study it using qualitative, and not quantitative, measures in his view. "Binet also emphasized that intellectual development progressed at variable rates and could be influenced by the environment; so intelligence was malleable rather than fixed, and could only be found in children with comparable backgrounds" (Siegler, 1992). H.H. Goddard, a influencer of the eugenics movement, brought the Binet-Simon Scale to the United States and translated it into English. Following Goddard in the U.S. mental testing movement was all about Lewis Terman who took the Simon-Binet Scale and standardized it using a large American sample. The new Standford-Binet scale was no longer used strictly for promoting education for all children, although that was Binet's objective. So "a new objective of intelligence testing was illustrated in the Stanford-Binet manual with testing ultimately resulting in "curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness and in the elimination of an enormous amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency (p.7)" Terman, L., Lyman, G., Ordahl, G., Ordahl, L., Galbreath, N., & Talbert, W. (1916). The Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Scale for Measuring Intelligence. Baltimore: Warwick & York.(White, 2000).
In the years between 1905 to 1908, Binet and Simon produced a test primarily for kids ages 3 to 15 that would compare their intellectual capabilities to other children of the same age. Binet conducted a lot of trial and error testing with students. Binet researched groups of “normal” children, in addition to children who were mentally challenged. Binet had to find out for himself which tasks each group of students was able to complete, and what would be considered standard in the groups. Binet had published the third version of the Binet-Simon scale right before he died in 1911. Still, the Binet-Simon scale was and is largely popular all over the world, mainly because it is easy to give and is rather brief.
Binet also studied sexual behavior, coining the term erotic fetishism to describe individuals whose sexual interests are in nonhuman objects, such as articles of clothing. And Binet also researched the abilities of Valentine Dencausse, the most famous fortune teller in Paris in those days. In writing this blog I think it is interesting to study someone as smart as Binet and who offered so much to education and psychology in his career studies of intelligence.

Today I have decided to blog about Austrian-born American psychoanalyst, most known for his development of Self Psychology an influential school of thought that lies within the psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory. Kohut became an important member of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis when he settled in America after leaving Europe. Kohut was a big proponent of the traditional psychoanalysis view that was most popular in the U.S., which is why he jokingly called himself Mr. Psychoanalysis. Kohut at first tried to remain devoted to the traditional analytic viewpoint that he once became connected to, but Kohut later turned away from Freud's structural theory of the id, ego and superego and Kohut decided to develop his idea related to what he called the tripartite (three-part) self. Kohut believed that this three part self can only develop when the needs of one's "self states", including one's sense of worth and well-being, are met in relationships with others. With difference to traditional psychoanalysis that focuses around drives, internal conflicts, and fantasies, Self Psychology thus placed a great deal of emphasis on the vicissitudes of relationships. Kohut showed his interest in how we develop our "sense of self" using narcissism as a model. So Kohut believed if a individual is narcissistic it will allow him to suppress feelings of low self esteem and by talking highly of himself a person can eliminate his sense of worthlessness. Kohut widened his theory during the 1970's and 1980's, a time which aggressive individuality, overindulgence, greed and restlessness left may feeling empty, fragile and fragmented. Self Psychology is considered to be one of the "four psychologies" that modern therapists and theorists rely on and the others are drive theory, ego psychology and object relations. According to biographer Strozier, Kohuts book, "The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Analysis of the Treatment of the Narcissistic Personality Disorders" helped extend Freud's theory of narcissism where Kohut introduces self-object transference's' of mirroring and idealization; and in other words "children need to idealize and emotionally "sink into" and identify with the idealized competence of admired figures." "They also need to have their self-worth reflected back ("mirrored") by empathic and care giving others." These types of experiences enable them to thereby understand self-soothing and other skills that are vital for the development of a healthy (cohesive, vigorous) sense of self. An example of this process would be, " a therapist becomes the idealized parent and through transference the patient begins to get the things he has missed and the patient also has the opportunity to reflect on how early the troubling relationship led to personality problems." Kohut believed narcissism comes about from poor attachment at an early age and Freud also thought that narcissism hides low self esteem and that therapy will re-parent an individual through transference so to begin to get the things that were missed. Later Kohut added a third major self object theme called the alter-ego twinship, which is about being part of a larger human identification with others. Though dynamic theory tends to place emphasis on childhood development, Kohut believed that the need for such self-object relationships will not discontinue at childhood but be continuous throughout the states of a person's life. So it seems apparent to me Kohut was brilliant in the field of psychology and that his work helped influence a whole lot and the overall structure of some of Freud's theory.

Today I have decided to blog about James McKeen Cattell who was an American psychologist and the first professor of psychology in the USA at the University of Pennsylvania. Cattell was also a long time editor and publisher of different scientific journals and publications. It is believed that perhaps more then any of Cattell's contemporaries that he most help establish psychology as a legitimate science that should be studied at the highest academic levels. Cattell is also remembered for an opposition against American involvement in World War 1 and this view led to his dismissal from the position he had at Columbia University, which was a move that had an influence in many universities establishing tenure as a way to protect unpopular beliefs. Cattell did not come upon his calling until arriving in Germany for graduate studies where he met Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig. Cattell left Germany in 1882 to study at John Hopkins University but returned to Leipzig the following year as Wundt's assistant. Cattell and Wundt from there went on to establish the formal study of intelligence. While working under Wundt Cattell became the first American to publish a dissertation in the field of psychology called "Psychometric Investigation and this dissertation was accepted by the University of Leipzig in 1886. Upon completing his Ph.D. with Wundt in Germany in 1886 Cattell took up teaching at the University of Cambridge in England and became a 'Fellow Commoner' of St John's College, Cambridge. Cattell also made occasional visits to America and gave lectures at Bryn Mawr and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1889, Cattell returned to the United States and worked as a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1891 he moved to Columbia University to become Department Head of Psychology, Anthropology and Philosophy. Cattell also became the President of the American Psychological Association in 1895. So from the start of his career Cattell had worked hard to establish psychology as a field worthy of study as much as physics or chemistry was as well. Interestingly Cattell believed himself that further studies would show that intellect itself could be parsed into standard units of measurements. Cattell also brought the methods of Wilhelm Wundt and Francis Galton to the USA by establishing mental testing efforts in America. Also money he won from his tenure lawsuit was used to create The Psychological Corporation, which is one of the largest mental testing firms in America. Cattell is well known for his involvement in creating and editing scientific journals helping to create the journal Psychological Review in 1894 along with James Mark Baldwin, he also acquired the journal Science and even made it to the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1904, Cattell founded Popular Science Monthly, which later went on to become Popular Science and in 1915 he edited and founded Scientific Monthly. Cattell certainly was an interesting person one way or the other in my view and I think it is amazing to think about perhaps where the field of psychology and understanding intelligence would be without all of his many influential career efforts.

Today I have decided to blog about Karen Horney. Horney was a German psychoanalyst and psychologist. Horney has been often classified as a Neo-Freudian from questioning some traditional views of Freud. In 1920, Horney obtained a position at the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Berlin, a place where she conducted lectures on psychoanalysis for several years. Years later in life Horney and her children immigrated to New York and eventually settled in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn Karen became friends with intellectuals like Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan. While living in Brooklyn Horney developed and advanced her composite theories related to neurosis and personality from her experiences of working in the field of psychotherapy. In 1937, Horney published the book "The Neurotic Personality of Our Time", which became wide in popularity. In the year of 1941, Horney was able to become Dean of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis, a institute she founded from becoming less at terms with the generally strict, orthodox nature of the psychoanalytic community. Horney's disagreements from Freudian psychology influenced her resigning from her post and shortly after she began a teaching job in the New York Medical College. Horney founded a journal called the American Journal of Psychoanalysis and she taught at the New York Medical College and continued her practice as a psychiatrist until she passed away in 1952. Horney looked at neurosis differently from other psychoanalysts of her time. Her deep interest in neurosis led her to compile a detailed theory of neurosis, with data she obtained from patients. Horney believed neurosis was an ongoing process, with neurosis commonly occurring sporadically through out an individuals lifetime. Horney placed a important emphasis on parental indifference towards the child, believing that a child's perception of events as opposed to the parents intentions is essential to understanding an individuals neurosis. In her research Horney named ten patterns of neurotic needs and they consist of the following:
"Moving Toward People
1. The need for affection and approval; pleasing others and being liked by them.
2. The need for a partner; one whom they can love and who will solve all problems.
Moving Against People
3. The need for power; the ability to bend wills and achieve control over others -- while most persons seek strength, the neurotic may be desperate for it.
4. The need to exploit others; to get the better of them. To become manipulative, fostering the belief that people are there simply to be used.
5. The need for social recognition; prestige and limelight.
6. The need for personal admiration; for both inner and outer qualities -- to be valued.
7. The need for personal achievement; though virtually all persons wish to make achievements, as with No. 3, the neurotic may be desperate for achievement.
Moving Away from People
8. The need for self sufficiency and independence; while most desire some autonomy, the neurotic may simply wish to discard other individuals entirely.
9. The need for perfection; while many are driven to perfect their lives in the form of well being, the neurotic may display a fear of being slightly flawed.
10. Lastly, the need to restrict life practices to within narrow borders; to live as inconspicuous a life as possible".
However Horney later decided to fit these ten needs into three broad categories: compliance-a process of moving towards people or self effacement , aggression also called the moving against people or the expansive solution and detachment which is also refereed to as the moving away from or resigning or a detached personality. Towards the end of her career Horney summarized her ideas in "Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization" which was her major work that was published in 1950, which is a summary of work with some additional views upon her theories as well. Interestingly I thought Horney with Alfred Adler came to form the Neo-Freudian discipline. Horney had strove to redesign in a way the Freudian perspective, presenting a holistic, humanistic view on individual psyche, which placed much emphasis on cultural and social differences everywhere. Horney was a proponent of Maslow's view that self actualization is the ultimate sum of human achievement. Through views on the individual psyche Horney came to believe that the self is at the core of ones own being and potential. Believing that if a person has a correct conception of them self, then a person is free to realize their potential and achieve their desires within reasonable boundaries. So Horney believed that self-actualization is the healthy persons way through life, as opposed to a neurotics clinging to a set of certain needs. Horney also believed that we have views of our self, known as the "real self"("who and what we actually are") and the "ideal self" (the type of person a person feels they should be and this is used as a model to assist in developing potential and achieving self actualization". Horney conducted additional research on the real and ideal self and how they interact with each other and influence different emotions. Horney also believed in a "tyranny of the shoulds and the neurotics hopeless "search for glory" which was related to fallacious "perfection" and a manifestation of self dislike; and she believed these ingrained traits of the psyche will halt a persons potential from being actualized unless the cycle of neurosis is somehow broken, through treatment or otherwise. Horney was also a pioneer of feminine psychiatry and was the first female to present a paper regarding feminine psychiatry. Horney believed examining female trends in behavior was a issue that needed more attention. In an essay called "The Problem of Feminine Masochism" Horney felt she showed that cultures and societies all over encouraged women to rely on men for their love, prestige, wealth, care and protection. Horney pointed out in society, that a will to please, satiate and overvalue men had come to exist in her view. Women were regarded as objects of charm and beauty, witch is at difference with all being's ultimate purpose of self-actualization according to Horney.
Horney believed women traditionally obtained value only through their children and the wider family. Horney went further on into this topic in her essay "The Distrust Between the Sexes" where she compares a husband-wife relationship to a parent-child relationship- and in her writing it is one to be of misunderstanding and one which influences negative neuroses.
Horney believed men and women have motives to be ingenious and productive. Women can satisfy this need by becoming pregnant and give birth according to Horney. Men fulfill this need only by the means of external ways; and Horney proposed that the important accomplishments of men in work or some other field can be viewed as a make up means for their inability to give birth to children. Horney had many interesting ideas that I think make a lot of sense to me and I think it is really interesting to see how she has been influenced and worked with other prominent developers of the field of psychology.

Today I am dedicating a blog entry to a fellow I have wanted to for a while on this blog. This would be William James, a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher. James wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism and the philosophy of pragmatism. James also founded the American Society for Psychical Research and he is known to be a champion with alternatives to healing. James challenged his colleagues to not allow a narrow mindset to prevent a honest review of the phenomena he covered upon some research. James spent his full academic career at Harvard University where he also had worked as a professor for different subjects and as chair at a certain point in time. James was one of the strongest proponents of the notion of Functionalism-("a general psychological approach that views mental life and behavior in terms of active adaptation to the person's environment"). James was also a big proponent of pragmatism in philosophy-( pragmatism is the philospshy of considering practical consequences and real effects to be vital components of meaning and truth"). James gained widespread attention with a 1,200 page book called Principles of Psychology: The Briefer Course. James interestingly had defined true beliefs as those that prove to be useful to the believer. James had a pragmatic theory of truth that was combined with a synthesis of correspondence of truth and coherence theory of truth with an additional dimension. James maintained a world view in balance with pragmatism that the value of any truth was dependent upon the use of it to the person who held it. Following the ideas of pragmatism James also believed that the world was a mosaic of a variety of experiences that can only fully be understood in a way through "radical empiricism"-("any philosophical worldview is flawed if it stops at the physical level and fails to explain how meaning, values and intentionality can arise from that"). James's description of the mind-world connection, was explained in terms of a "stream of consciousness"and had a direct and influential influence on avant-garde and modernist literature and art. James also supported an epistemological realism position-(a philosophical position, a subcategory of objectivism, holding that what you know about an object exists independently of your mind"). Upon many of James's important writings I thought it was interesting that in a lecture titled "The Will to Believe" James defended the right to violate principles of evidentalism so to justify hypothesis venturing. James also did a lot of important work in the philosophy of religion. In lectures at the University of Edinburgh he offered a broad ranging account of The Varieties of Religious Experience and he interpreted them according to his pragmatic learning's and some important points he makes in this regard are the following: "Religious genius (experience) should be the primary topic in the study of religion, rather than religious institutions—since institutions are merely the social descendant of genius. The intense, even pathological varieties of experience (religious or otherwise) should be sought by psychologists, because they represent the closest thing to a microscope of the mind—that is, they show us in drastically enlarged form the normal processes of things. In order to usefully interpret the realm of common, shared experience and history, we must each make certain "over beliefs" in things which, while they cannot be proven on the basis of experience, help us to live fuller and better lives." James is also one of the namesakes of the James Lange theory of emotion, which he developed independently of Carle Lange in the 1880's. The James Lange theory can be described as responses to experiences in the world and the influencing of the autonomic nervous system creating physiological events, such as muscular tension, rise in heart beat and so forth. So James thought within the James Lange theory emotions, then, are feelings which stir about as a result of these physiological changes, rather than being their cause. As far as the Philosophy of History goes James also had an interesting view that I think can be explained a little more by a following statement of his: "Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives." He continues, "The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it" and James felt that the great people of history manipulate the thoughts of society. James also conducted research on Spiritualism and published a book called Expériences d'un Psychiste, and it is a book that relates many experiments conducted with a lady named Leonora Piper. I find William James interesting and complex at times and I think clearly he has been highly influential and apparently I am not the only individual to think this James once being ranked in a research study by Haggbloom, as the 14th most eminent psychologist of the twentieth century.

Today I thought I would blog about a more new to me and interesting influential figure in psychology and this person would be Herbert "Harry" Stack Sullivan. Sullivan was born in New York in 1892 and he conducted work with psychoanalysis that was based on direct and verifiable evidence-(versus the more abstract conceptions of the unconscious mind more akin by Freud and his followers). Sullivan was a psychiatrist who was a helpful component of laying the groundwork for understanding a person based on the network of relationships in which he or she is involved in. Sullivan developed a theory of psychiatry based on interpersonal relationships where cultural influences are by and large the reason for mental illness. Interestingly what Sullivan said among his research was that loneliness was the most painful among human experiences. Sullivan extended Freud's psychoanalysis for the treatment of patients with severe mental disorders and most specifically schizophrenia. Sullivan was the first to talk about the significant other in psychological literature and he also developed the Self System. The Self System "is a configuration of the personality traits developed in childhood and reinforced by positive affirmation and the security operations developed in childhood to avoid anxiety and threats to self-esteem". Sullivan also called the Self System, a steering mechanism towards a serious of I-You interlocking behaviors; meaning what a person does is based upon eliciting a particular reaction and Sullivan referred to these behaviors as parataxic integrations. Also resulting miscalculations of a sort in judgement were known and termed by Sullivan as parataxic distortions when other people are perceived or examined based on the patterns of previous experience. Sullivan's research on interpersonal relationships became the foundation of interpersonal psychoanalysis, which is a branch of psychoanalytic theory and treatment that emphasizes the specific exploration of the types of different patient patterns of interacting among others. There is no doubt in my mind Sullivan was a brilliant psychiatrist, delving in and influencing psychoanalysis greatly in his prominent career.

Today I thought it would be interesting to talk about a more contemporary researcher in psychology and his theories, since I recently blogged about more prominent figures in the past. So I thought I would talk about William Glasser and some information about his theory. Glasser is an American psychiatrist who developed Realty Therapy-("an approach to counseling and problem-solving which focuses on the here-and-now of the client and how to create a better future"). Glasser also developed Choice Therapy, which "posits that behavior is central to our existence and is driven by five genetically driven needs which are: survival, belonging/connecting/love, power/significance/competence, freedom/responsibility, and
Fun/learning, much like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs . Glasser also believed in what he called a "Quality World"-(things that are important to us like family or cultural values, etc.). The "Quality World" concept is part of choice theory and Glasser also talked about a "Comparing Place", which is where people compare together the real world we experience with the "Quality World". Glasser believed people try to achieve the best real world experience, consistent with the "Quality World". Glasser believed that total behavior is comprised of acting, thinking, feeling and physiology. The origins of a lot of unhappiness for people according to Glasser are from poor kinds of relationship with close people in our lives. Glasser felt that pleasure and happiness are related, but not wholly synonymous, for example sex could be considered pleasurable, but could possibly for some lead to less happiness, through a later divorce in a sexual relationship for instance. Choice Theory follows the belief that mental illness is the showing of unhappiness and that we are able to learn to choose from alternate behaviors that will be the influence of greater satisfaction and realty therapy helps one to learn and gain a wider perspective of these alternate decisions. I like where Glasser is coming from with his theory, which to me seems to make sense as a way to analyze where a problem might be coming from and focus on what in the future can change for the better. I will just leave this post off here with what is considered the Ten Axioms of Choice Theory:
("The Ten Axioms of Choice Theory
1. The only person whose behavior we can control is our own.2. All we can give another person is information.3. All long-lasting psychological problems are relationship problems.4. The problem relationship is always part of our present life.5. What happened in the past has everything to do with what we are today, but we can only satisfy our basic needs right now and plan to continue satisfying them in the future.6. We can only satisfy our needs by satisfying the pictures in our Quality World.7. All we do is behave.8. All behavior is Total Behavior and is made up of four components: acting, thinking, feeling and physiology9. All Total Behavior is chosen, but we only have direct control over the acting and thinking components. We can only control our feeling and physiology indirectly through how we choose to act and think.10. All Total Behavior is designated by verbs and named by the part that is the most recognizable").

Today I have came upon some further reading of another interesting figure often studied in the field of psychology and this would be Mr. Edward Titchener, who I would like to talk about a little further. Titchener was an English man and a student of Wilhelm Wundt before he was a Professor of Psychology and before he created a psychology laboratory at Cornell University. Titchener was educated in Europe and interestingly he also liked to put a spin on Wilhelm Wundt's work about the psychology of consciousness once Titchener traveled to the United States. Titchener translated and brought into the English the concept of empathy, which had been created and coined in German by Robert Vischer. Titchener tried to classify the structures of the mind and this method became known as structuralism-("structuralism is about analyzing a specific field (for instance, mythology) as a complex system of interrelated parts"). And one last fact for now on this blog, a fun fact as well, was that Titchener's brain was contributed to the Wilder Brain Collection at Cornell. I think Titcheners work makes a lot of sense to me and is it interesting how influential his work has been like coining in English the word Empathy.

Today I have decided to blog again exclusively about another key player in the field of psychology. This person would be Carl Jung the founder of Analytical Psychology, which is also known as Jungian Psychology. Analytical psychology tries to incorporate and apprehend the deep forces and motivations underlying peoples behavior by the practice of an accumulative phenomenology around the significance of dreams, folklore and mythology. Jung has also been been influential to cross cultural movements all over the world and depth psychology-("a broad term that refers to any psychological approach examining the depth or the subtle or unconscious parts of human experience"). It seems obvious to me Jung has clearly had a incredibly interesting life with research travels around the globe, his close and interesting relationship with Freud, living through World War 2 and having his career impacted by evil Nazism and really just his big overall influence in the field of psychology that is even believed to have been an influence in the Alcohol Anonymous organization. Jung was considered to be the first modern psychologist to state that the human psyche is "by nature religious" and he thought it was important to understand this at length. Jung promoted understanding the psyche through dreams, art, mythology, religion and philosophy. Jung was a practicing physician and also a theoretical psychologist but what a lot of his work actually showed was a big interest in Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, the arts, sociology and literature. Interestingly Jung believed it was important to have balance and harmony and to really not fully rely on science and logic and he believed that it is important to incorporate spirituality and the appreciation of unconscious realms. Jung also thought the process of individuation was an important process for a person to become whole. Individuation was a major part of analytical psychology and is a process of a person incorporating the unconsciousness with the consciousness while still maintaining conscious independence. Jung was also importantly responsible or influential for: the concept of introversion and extroversion; the concept of the complex; the collective unconsciousness- ("part of the unconscious mind shared by a society, a people, or all humanity, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science, religion, and morality"); archetypes-("models of a person, personality or behavior"); synchronicity-("the experience of two or more events which are casually unrelated occurring together in a supposedly meaningful manner"); The Myers Brigg Type Indicator-("a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions"); Socionics-("a theory of information processing and personality type, distinguished by its informational model of the psyche"). So clearly just in this short research entry of mine it seems Jung is certainly right far up the totem pole of having a big influence and a robust career with all sorts of significant research that I bet could be read over days.

I am dedicating this blog entry today on some important facts about Herman Ebbinghaus, since lately I have been trying to delve even more deeply into the history of psychology. Herman Ebbinghaus was born in Germany and was a pioneer with experimental memory research. He was known for his understanding of the forgetting curve-("the decline of memory retention in time") and the spacing effect-("humans more easily remember items in a list when they are studied a few times over a long period of time rather than studied repeatedly in a short period time"). Ebbinghaus was also the first to describe the learning curve-("graphical representation of the "average" rate of learning for an activity or tool"). Ebbinghaus was serious about showing that higher mental processes were not hidden away but could be studied through experimentation. Ebbinghaus conducted research on memory interestingly through what he called different nonsense syllables like BOL which sounds like BALL. Ebbinghaus is also renowned for pioneering sentence completion exercises, establishing the Ebbinghaus Illusion, which is an illusion of relative size perception and drafting the first standard research report. So these are just some of the many important influences of the prominent research Herman Ebbinghaus, who was even referred to once by Williams James as someone who had conducted "heroic studies" that were "the single most brilliant investigation in the history of psychology".

Although the study of psychology by philosophical means dates back to ancient times in China, India, Egypt and Greece I have recently been studying a bit more about the very important year of 1879. In 1879 Wilhelm Wundt founded one of the first formal laboratories for psychological research at the University of Leipzig. Wundt is widely regarded as the "father of experimental psychology". Through the creation of this laboratory Wundt looked into matters like the nature of religious beliefs, identifying mental disorders and abnormal behavior and mapping damaged areas of the brain. Through this research in a laboratory setting Wundt helped establish psychology as a separate science from other topics. Interestingly Wundt also helped form the first journal for psychological research in 1881. Part of Wundt's research was influenced by a student name Edward Bradford Titchener who described Wundt's system as structuralism. I think it goes to show how Wundt was really highly influential in different ways as many of his students went onto become prominent influences in the field of psychology like James McKeen Cattell and G. Stanley Hall. And just to let you know why I am blogging particluarly about Wundt today is basically from finding some new interconnected research to Wundt that I came upon; and I then decided it would be necessary to talk more about on this blog somewhere about someone who had such a prominent and influential career like Mr. Wilhelm Wundt.