Topical Blog Week #13 (Due Wednesday)

1a) State what your topic is.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.

The topic that will be discussed is Benjamin Rush. This topic relates to Chapter 12 because this chapter’s main focus is the mentally ill and Rush is known for treating the mentally ill. I am interested in Benjamin Rush because of his different treatments for mentally ill patients. I found some of his treatments quite severe and “out there” so I wanted to find out more about him. I also wanted to find out why he got so involved with the mentally ill and if his different techniques were accepted at that time or if there were criticisms.

2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.

Benjamin Rush is known for being the “father of American Psychiatry”. He attended college at a young age and ended up attaining a medical degree as well. He began his medical training in London where he met Benjamin Franklin who then influenced his decision to study among French physicians and researchers in France. After moving back to Philadelphia he began to practice medicine. Rush mainly helped the poor because of the lack of contact he had with the upper class. At this point in time some would say this is where his treatment for the mentally ill began. Rush also was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Penn State around this time. Rush’s recognition led him to be chosen as a less conservative party in which he was to sign the Declaration of Independence along side the other founding fathers.

A year or so later Rush became the surgeon general for the Continental Army. This is where he realized his dissatisfaction with the army’s hospitals and superiors. He ended up resigning from the army and making a life long enemy with George Washington. After resigning from the army Rush began practicing medicine again and serving as a surgeon at the Pennsylvania hospital where he helped the psychiatric patients and began his treatment for the mentally ill.

Rush began implementing some of his treatments on the mentally ill several years later in his private practice. This was during the time period of the yellow fever and many people were ill with severe symptoms. He held theories regarding therapeutic bloodletting and the tranquilizer chair. Bloodletting involved giving the patient purgatives along with bloodletting and applying cold water. The tranquilizing chair was in place to reduce muscle tension and block blood flow. However, these treatments are only a few of Rush’s therapeutic methods and the more frequently used. Both of these treatments were criticized for there effectiveness. Although we known today that his treatments were not effective Rush is known as a heroic figure for helping the mentally ill during the yellow fever because many physicians had fled the area and he stayed to help.

Even though Benjamin Rush’s theories of treatment were not as effective as he had thought them to be, he made some great contributions to the medical field. As well as, he was a huge advocator for the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, and helping fund the first Negro church. Although Rush was criticized for this treatments and had a few major enemies he stood by his beliefs and helping people. Especially the people who needed help the most.

3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.

http://www.archives.upenn.edu/people/1700s/rush_benj.html
I chose this website because it by far had the most useful information. It was super detailed and told me a lot about Rush’s life and contributions. As well as, it was easy to read and wasn’t confusing. It also seemed like a reliable source to use for this blog post.

http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/paharc/features/brush.html
This site wasn’t as detailed about Rush’s whole life but it gave more detail regarding his two treatments. I chose this site because it gave me more detail about bloodletting and the tranquiller chair.

http://desperadophilosophy.net/tag/tranquilizer-chair/
I chose this site because it gave me some interesting information about Rush and his treatments. It gave me a more inside look at Rush’s’ books he wrote and how he really felt about his treatment and the mentally ill.

Topical Blog: History of Clinical Psychology

This relates to the chapter because the chapter was all about clinical psychology. I found this interesting in that there was a lot of different, and what I find to be crazy, treatments that took place before Clinical psychology was truly developed.

Clinical psychology uses clinical knowledge, science and theory, to understand, prevent, treat and relieve distress or dysfunction that is psychologically based. The field of clinical psychology originated in 1896, however it had been used in university laboratories from 1850-1900. The first example of this being used to help those in trouble was when Lightner Witmer, a scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, successfully treated a boy that had difficulty with spelling. The university was then known for treating those with learning disabilities. Witmer was also the very first to create a journal in clinical psychology. He called it the Psychological clinic. It explained his work of the last ten years and why the new term “Clinical Psychology” was needed. It also illustrated his clinical method and how to “teach to weakness.” Or in other words, help those with learning disabilities.

A few of the other treatments used would be the following. Trephany was thought of as a cure to help release evil spirits from one mind. This was done by drilling and chipping away at the patient’s skull. Ancient Egyptians believed that cures could also be found through medicine and magic spells. Another form of dealing with mental illness, or psychologically disturbed, was that of torture. The Romans believed this would heal them and if not then the Catholic Church would order an execution. This was done during the Inquisition and thousands of executions were ordered by the church during this time. They also used burning at the stake as another way to deal with mental illness, or madness. In medieval Europe, prayer, exorcism, and repentance were thought of as the proper treatments. Mental illness, in medieval Europe, was thought to be the result of either a physical ailment caused by an imbalance in the body, or a punishment from God.

The military turned to clinical psychology when World War II broke out. Clinical psychologists were used to treat soldiers that were “shell shocked” or suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Additionally the National Council of Women Psychologists was formed. This was to help the communities deal with the stress that war had put upon their families. Because of the war the field of clinical psychology was caned and how the world used clinical psychology. Today clinical psychology is a robust academic and professional field. There are three times as many clinical psychologists as there were in 1970. Besides learning disabilities and war related problems, the field of clinical psychology has grown to include problems in criminal justice system, sports, gerontology, and health.

http://www.psych.upenn.edu/history/witmertext.htm
I chose this site because it not only talked about the history of Clinical Psychology, but it also gave some information on Lightner Witmer. I found all of this information interesting which is why I decided to use this site.

http://www.clinicalpsychology.net/resources/the-history-of-clinical-psychology/
I chose this site because it looked very professional and had a lot of good information about the beginnings of clinical psychology. I also liked how it integrated World War II and the changes in this area of psychology. It also talked about the doctoral degree and the profession, which I found to be interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AITCldz4q_Q
I am a visual learner and always like to have a video for these blog posts. I found this one to be interesting. I could not find any videos that focused solely on the history of clinical psychology, but I did like how this one focused in on different types of psychological treatments they had back in the day.

Ego Defense mechanisms
This topic relates to the chapter as it includes plentiful amounts of information on Freud. Freud came up with the idea of ego defense mechanisms. I am interested in this topic because after reading this section in the chapter it made me wonder what kind of ego defense mechanisms I use and I wondered if people use multiple defense mechanisms.

As noted above, Sigmund Freud wrote down some ego defenses that he refers to in his works. Then his daughter Anna went on to further develop these ideas and added five of her own. There have also been many psychoanalysts to add further types of ego defense mechanisms. At this point, one may ask what exactly are these defense mechanisms? They are the manners in which we behave or think in certain ways to better protect or defend ourselves.

According to Freud, we only have sex and aggression as our motivation. However since those two do not always work, we have ego defense mechanisms to turn to. Another way psychologists look these defense mechanisms as a way of seeing how people distance themselves from the situation by not taking full awareness of unpleasant feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. More recently, psychologists have also found a way to categorize these defense mechanisms based on how primitive they are. The pattern is more primitive a defense mechanism, the less effective it works for a person in the long-term. On the other hand, these more primitive mechanisms are usually very effective in the short-term.

The primitive defense mechanisms can be broken into seven different ones. The first is denial- refusing to accept reality or fact. Second, is regression- which is the reversion to an earlier stage of development in the face of unacceptable thoughts. Acting out is the third, which is used to express feelings that one is incapable of expressing. Fourth, dissociation- which is the person loses track or time or person finds another representation of their self to continue. Then there is compartmentalization, which is a less extreme form of dissociation. This is where parts of the self are separated from awareness of other parts and behaving as if they have separate sets of values. Sixth, is projection or the misattribution of a person’s undesired thoughts and feelings going onto another person who doesn’t have them. Finally, the seventh primitive ego defense mechanism is, reaction formation- converting unwanted or dangerous thoughts, feelings and impulses into their opposites.

One may be curious at the trend of who uses these primitive mechanisms? They are usually preferred by a lot of people, as they are effective in the short-term. Children also use these mechanisms as they are first learned when one is at a young age. Adults that never learn how to cope with traumatic events or stress may also fall into using such defense mechanisms.

After primitive ego defense mechanisms, the following of the most common mechanisms are categorized into less primitive, more mature mechanisms, and mature mechanisms. The less primitive, more mature include: repression, displacement, intellectualization, rationalization, and undoing. Then the mature ones are broken down to sublimation, assertiveness, and compensation. Many adults use the less primitive, more mature mechanisms and are okay, but these are not as ideal to use as the mature ones are. The mature ego defenses are the most constructive but require the most effort and practice to be used everyday.

It is important to note that like all topics involving Freud, these mechanisms are used unconsciously. We use them to protect ourselves from feelings of guilt or anxiety that arise from feeling threatened. They are normal and natural but when they get out of proportion, neuroses such as anxiety, phobias, hysteria, or obsessions may develop. On the flipside, if one lacks these defenses, they can often lead into problems. Also, sometimes people use the wrong defense at the wrong time or overuse them, which is just as destructive.

http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-defense-mechanisms/0001251?all=1
I liked this website because it included the most common defense mechanisms and categorized them into primitive, less primitive, and mature. It also helped me gain a better understanding of who tends to use certain mechanisms and why they use them.

http://allpsych.com/psychology101/defenses.html
I thought that this site was useful because it also broke down the defenses into different categories and gave examples of them. It also discussed that these mechanisms are unconscious and healthy to use if used correctly.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/defense-mechanisms.html
I enjoyed this site because it talked about how Freud and his daughter played a role in creating these mechanisms and explained why people use these mechanisms.

For this weeks blog post I decided to research hypnosis. This chapter talked an awful lot about hypnosis in regards to the history and development of it, but did not give an explanation of how or why it works. I was interested in the topic because it seems to be an area that everyone knows about, but they don’t know anything about what is actually happening during hypnosis.

Common belief of hypnosis is that some guy will dangle a watch in front of someone, who will then zone out and be without conscious thought operating solely on the influence of the hypnotist. The dangling watch may be useful, but it not at all necessary. Entering the trance state of hypnosis is done by extreme focus on one thing and shutting out all other distractions or stimuli. Hypnosis researchers have likened this trance state to an athlete’s extreme focus on the game at hand or a driver who zones out on the long drive home. This is why attentiveness on the watch may be helpful, and why Braid found that people could enter the trance state through fixating their vision at a point on the wall. When in the trance state, the hypnosis itself is known for the lack of free will had by those in the trance. The Liebeault-Bernheim theory of hypnosis labeled this the concept of suggestion. It was believed that suggestibility was just another personality trait like agreeableness or extraversion. Researchers have found a link to a gene that may be responsible for the level of suggestibility. A significant association was found between the COMT (Catechol-O-methyl transferase) genotypes and hypnotizability. A common variation of the gene contains a mutation that switches a valine (Val) protein to a methionine (Met) protein. People with the Val/Val genotype are most susceptible to hypnosis and suggestibility, whereas people with the Val/Met genotype rank lower and people with the Met/Met genotype rank at the lowest. The Val variant catabolizes dopamine up to four times the rate of Met allele alone. Therefore it can be inferred that the levels of dopamine in the brain directly influence one’s ability to enter the hypnotized state.

It is hypothesized that the hypnotized state is actually an entirely different state of consciousness and people under the effect of hypnosis may be able to do things that normal people cannot. Under hypnosis, participants show heightened activity in the theta band and increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The ACC is linked to perception of contradictions. Theta activity is associated with states of quiet concentration, such as a student taking the GRE. This led to the theory that people could preform better in certain fields if under hypnosis. However, a study found that executive functioning is impaired in participants under hypnosis, so it would be best to not expect to perform better on standardized tests or anything of the sort. Many studies still need to be done to increase our understanding of hypnosis and the hypnotic state, but we have discovered a lot. This is a topic that I find very interesting and enjoyed researching.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207141003760827?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3dpubmed&

This study identified the link between the COMT gene and susceptibility to hypnosis and suggestion. It was important for finding a biological basis/ predisposition for the phenomenon.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-hypnosis-a-distinct-form

This link talked about the common misconceptions about hypnosis and about the concept of it being a different state of consciousness

http://www.hypnosisandsuggestion.org/neuroimaging.html

This link talked about the brain science behind hypnosis and the ways of measuring it. It also led me to the COMT study.

I decided to write about hypnosis because the chapter talked quite a bit about it without explaining how it really worked. I wanted to find out what changes occurred in the brain and what kind of state the person is in. I have never been hypnotized before but I have witnessed it on a few different occasions. I particularly liked reading about how it was used for surgery.

Despite conventional belief, hypnosis is not accurately described as a sleep-like state, but rather a hyperactive, concentrated state of mind where an individual's subconscious mind is very open to the suggestions of the hypnotist. However, the individual still exerts free will because the hypnotist cannot make them do anything against their morals or values. Sometimes we fall into a trance ourselves when we are so focused on reading a book, or on a long drive that we do not hear other things around us and completely lose track of time. Personally, I wish this I could make this happen to me every time I go driving for an extended period of time. Interestingly enough, the hypnotist is more like a coach rather than the causation of hypnosis. The subjects allow themselves to be hypnotized and are still aware of their environment, they are just more susceptible to suggestion.

Hypnosis has been used to treat individuals with dementia, chronic pain, arthritis, or help decrease pain. When a patient is hypnotized, they will believe the suggestion that they will not feel pain when they experience normally painful externalities such as being cut open during surgery or having a limb in an ice-cold bucket of water. The person still experience the sensation of the touch, however, they do not feel the pain or emotional reaction that typically comes with it. This is because certain parts of the brain are being activated more intensely and others are turned off, such as the pain network. In another study, hypnotized and non-hypnotized subjects were told they would see images in color, but were presented with a gray-scale image. Those under hypnosis reported seeing more color, and the portions of their brains involving color processing were activated.

Though hypnosis still isn't highly regarded in the scientific or medical fields, its simplicity and effectiveness is fascinating. It won't help you magically be able to remember everything for a test or give you amazing athletic abilities, but it can help enhance performance. There isn't anything magical about it, nor does a hypnotist have any special talent. It is all in the individual's ability to focus all of one's concentration onto something, and let the human mind do the rest.

http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/a/hypnosis.htm
This site talks a little about how hypnosis works and also ways to use it medically.

http://news.psu.edu/story/141251/2005/10/03/research/probing-question-does-hypnosis-work
This link describes what individuals experience during hypnosis and debunks some myths about it.

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/04/neuroscience-reveals-the-effects-of-hypnosis.html
This provides scientific evidence for changes in the brain that occur when someone is hypnotized.

1a) State what your topic is.
The tranquilizer chair

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.

This relates to the chapter because it was one of the methods that was used to treat individuals who were suffering with a mental illness.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in this topic because, even with the time age in mind, it seems very harming to the patient who would be receiving this treatment. It is hard to believe that this ideal was believed to be helpful, so I wanted to look more into the thoughts and ideas that lead up to using this method of treatment.
Benjamin Rush was the first individual to believe that mental illnesses are a disease of the mind and not the result of demonic possession. This newfound idea led him to design the tranquilizer chair. He also contained the belief that the individuals who were in charge of taking care of the patients should control them through fear and/or intimidation. It was believed that the “madness” was an issue of inflammation of the brain. The chair was supposed to control the blood flow to the affected area and lessen muscular action/ reduce motor activity, apparently this method of treatment did no harm and no good. When looking at Benjamin Rush’s attitudes towards the “mentally insane” it isn’t that far fetched to see how he could come up with such a torturous way of treating the ill.

http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/paharc/features/brush.html

This link contained good/ brief information

http://cantonasylumforinsaneindians.com/history_blog/tag/tranquilizing-chair

Has information that helps understand how and why the use of the tranquilizing chair began getting used.

http://www.archives.upenn.edu/people/1700s/rush_benj.html
I chose this link because there was a good amount of information present.

For this week’s topical blog, I was really interested in learning more about dream analysis. This topic has always been really interesting to me but I have never really looked into it. Dream analysis was discussed in this chapter because it was a big part of Sigmund Freud’s work. He used this method of looking into the unconscious along with free association. I feel that dreams and dream analysis is a big part of psychology and I am interested in learning more about it. Everyone has dreams, but it would be interesting to see how they all differ and why they differ. I think it is also interesting to look into the meanings of dreams, and if what people say about them really does work and make sense for each individual.
Sigmund Freud was born on May 6th 1856. His name at birth was Sigismund Schlomo Freud and he was born to the parents Jacob and Amalia Freud. Freud was born in Austria and he was also born with a caul. A caul is when the baby is born with a piece of membrane covering his/her face or head. This is not harmful at all to the baby and the caul is removed right away after birth. Cauls occur very rarely in childbirth and because of this, Freud’s mother took this as a positive sign for little Sigmund’s future. Freud grew up with seven brothers and sisters, and a few more half siblings. It was clear from the beginning that Freud was intelligent and that he would have many great ideas in the future. He graduated from high school with honors and continued on to college at the University of Vienna. From there he earned his master’s degree and went on to practice medicine at the Vienna General Hospital for a couple of years. Freud had studied philosophy before but he soon became very interested in psychology and how people worked. In 1886, Freud set up his own private practice and thus began his career as one of the most known psychologists around the world today.
One of the theories that Freud came up with deals with free association and dream analysis. Freud started off using hypnosis with his patients to further learn about their unconscious thoughts. I thought this was interesting because hypnosis was one of my other topical blogs. I think it is interesting how prominent this idea was throughout the years for psychologists. Freud started realizing that he did not need to put a patient under hypnosis to get them to talk about their most inner thoughts. This is when he came up with the idea of free association. Freud then abandoned the use of hypnosis and started working strictly along the lines of psychoanalysis. Through psychoanalysis and free association, Freud started looking into his patients dreams. He believed that dreams were where people could focus on and preserve their wishes that would otherwise awaken them. Freud believed that there was a way to interpret a dream and that if done correctly, one could find out the physical structure of the dream and that would have significant meaning and functioning in the mental activities of the awakened life for that person.
Freud found that there are two different parts to everyone’s way of dreaming, and to a single dream in general. Dreams have both manifest content and latent content in them. The first, manifest content, is another way of saying what we remember. Everyone has woken up from a dream and been able to remember what it was about, but maybe not everything or all the details. The manifest content of a dream is what an individual can consciously remember about it. These can be actual images, content, or thoughts within the dream. For Freud, the manifest content was just the tip of the iceberg. He thought that everything else, and there was a lot of everything else, is underneath the water. The manifest content is just what we are able to see, the rest we cannot see and do not know how much is even there to begin with. I find this to be very interesting because it makes me wonder what really is behind what people see in their dreams.
The second part of a dream is called the latent content. This is the part of the dream that illustrates the dreamer’s hidden unconscious thoughts, feelings, and desires. Freud believed that the unconscious mind was able to hide the actual meaning of a dream or desire through its latent content and that by uncovering these hidden motivations and deep desires could help an individual successfully understand and resolve their internal issues, only to ease and distress the person in life. The latent content, if we put it in a picture, is the part of the iceberg that is underwater. The latent part of a dream is everything we do not see, and the part of the iceberg that holds the most information.
There were five processes that Freud used in dream analysis. These were displacement, projection, symbolization, condensation, and rationalization. In displacement, the person dreams of their desire symbolized by something or someone else. Projection is when the person dreaming projects their desires onto another person. Symbolization is when the person dreaming allows their repressed urges and desires to be metaphorically acted out. Condensation occurs when the person dreaming is hiding their feelings, desires, or urges in a short dream image or event. The last one, rationalization, happens when the dreamer’s mind organizes a complicated dream into a logical one that the person dreaming can understand. I find all of these different ways of looking at dreams really interesting and it makes me think about my dreams and which of these processes I use most while dreaming.
Freud believed that a lot of what happened in dreams were sexually related. He found circular images and jewelry to reflect a female’s private parts while a male’s were represented by oblong objects or the number 3. He also believed that things such as riding a horse were sexual in their nature and many of his other interpretations of dreams related back to sex. I find that many people are interested in dream interpretation today so I decided to look up a couple common dream themes and see what research has described for their latent content now-a-days.
Many people, as we see in television shows and movies, are portrayed as commonly being seen naked in public. This means that the person dreaming is feeling vulnerable and exposed. This can also mean that someone feels like they have been caught off guard. If the dream takes place in a classroom or work, it could show that the person is unprepared for an event or assignment. Dreaming that you are naked could also mean that you are proud of your own body and are feeling free.
Another common dream I find is people dreaming they are being chased. I know that I sometimes have dreams like this so for me it was an interesting one to look up. Dreaming that you are being chased could have many different meanings. One of them could be that you are experiencing anxiety about a certain event. Another meaning is that a person may feel like they are vulnerable or being attacked.
I feel that many dream interpretations give themselves many different meanings. For me, this is like the fortune cookie idea, that you can always find some way to relate these examples and experiences to yourself and your own life. I find that dream analysis could be helpful to someone who has reoccurring dreams, but for most other people, it just seems like a day-to-day interesting topic to learn more about and have fun with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
This website was very helpful to me in writing my blog post for chapter 12. It gave me a lot of information on Sigmund Freud and helped me understand his history, background, and the work he did throughout his life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_(Freudian_dream_analysis)
This website was very good at describing the way that Freud used the dream analysis theory. It provided a lot of information on the topic that I used in my blog post.

http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/
This final website gave me information on how dreams are interpreted today. I used it mostly towards the end of my blog post, but it also gave me some information on Sigmund Freud that I used in the beginning of this post.

1a) State what your topic is: My topic for this week’s blog is Dorothea Dix.

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter:
This topic relates to the chapter because Dix was a person who helped reform how the mentally ill were treated in America. She is mentioned in the chapter, but only briefly.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it:
I wanted to learn more about what motivated Dorothea Dix to seek reform of the hospitals and asylums that housed the mentally ill. These people were often mistreated and abused. This had to be a monumental task to take on for any person, but for a woman during the time period it would have been that much more daunting. I haven’t even mentioned that she was quite ill herself but still managed to travel thousands of miles seeing thousands of patients.

2) Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine on April 4th, 1802. Her parents had to flee Hampden with her shortly after her birth when the British took over the town. Her parents had two more children, both boys. Her father was a Methodist preacher who taught her to read and write. That’s about it for the positive side of her childhood.
My main reason for researching Dorothea Dix’s life and career was to see what the driving force was behind her passion to improve the lives of the mentally ill. It didn’t take me long to discover what that motivation was. Dix’s father was abusive and an alcoholic. Her mother suffered from an unknown mental illness. There was much fighting and yelling in front of her and her brothers. She grew up fast and took care of her younger brothers, teaching them to read and write. She said, “I never knew childhood.”
The trio of siblings eventually went to live with their grandmother in Boston. Their parents were deemed unfit to raise children. Dix had developed a fear of marriage, once even turning down a man’s proposal. She thought that her marriage would end up like that of her parents. She would use the skills she learned from teaching her brothers and became a teacher, teaching for fourteen years.
In March of 1841, something happened to Dix that would send her down a path of speaking for the mentally ill. Dix started teaching Sunday school to women inmates in a jail. These inmates ranged from criminals to the mentally ill. She quickly found that the inmates lived in unheated, unfurnished, and foul smelling quarters. When she asked about the horrible conditions she was told that “the insane do not feel heat or cold.”
Her experiments at this jail spearheaded her journey around America to observe the living conditions of the mentally ill. She found cases of abuse and neglect. By bringing to light this human suffering, she caused an influx of new hospitals being built to help those in need of mental help. By doing this, she was able to reverse a commonly held belief. Most people at this time believed that mental illness was incurable. Dix observed that people inflicted with mental illness improved when they lived in better conditions.
One of her last projects in America was to lobby Congress to set aside five million acres of land to be used for the care of the mentally ill. The House of Representatives and the Senate both approved this bill. Unfortunately, it was vetoed by President Pierce. Dix also traveled to Europe and different countries, replicating the work she had done in America. She fought for all the mentally ill in the world; not just in her little corner of it.
I found that as of the 1980’s, her achievements were only mentioned in 5 of 53 texts that covered the subject of Psychology History. With the inclusion of her in our textbook, hopefully that has changed. One possible reason for her exclusion is that she was a very humble woman who never brought attention to herself and her fight for the rights of the mentally ill. Regardless of the reason why, she should be included in all psychology history textbooks so students can learn about her life and career.

3) This is a news story which talks about abuse of the mentally challenged that is ongoing and still happening in today’s world, in the state of Iowa:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/01/jury-awards-240-million-to-32-mentally-disabled-iowa-turkey-plant-workers-for/

This website is a good overview of Dorothea Dix’s life:

http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/dorotheadix.html

I found this site interesting, as it has a collection of quotes from Dorothea Dix, showing her intellect:

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/dorothea_dix.htm

B.H.
My topic is hypnosis and it relates to the chapter because it was used by many psychologists and philosophers to treat mental illness. Mesmer’s work was the most notable even if he didn’t mean to stumble upon it in the first place. I was interested in this topic because I have an addiction to chewing tobacco and I have heard from numerous friends that it works. When the time comes I would like to quite and hypnosis could be an option.

Hypnosis or medical hypnosis has a long history as a controversial treatment for psychiatric and physical ailments. Many popular medical figures, like Mesmer experimented with putting patients into trance states for healing purposes. But is this new medical treatment a hoax or actually realistic? King Louis XVI commissioned a panel of experts, including Benjamin Franklin, to look into Mesmer’s claims. In 1784, the Franklin commission released its report finding that mesmerism to be utterly fallacious and without merit.

It has taken a long time for medical hypnosis to regain its credibility and validity. In regards to numerous articles, today there is a general agreement that hypnosis can be an important part of treatment for some conditions like phobias, addictions and chronic pain. Hypnosis can be used as a tool to better understand the brain, including its response to pain. Hypnosis removes the emotional experience of pain while allowing the sensory sensation to remain. Hence, you notice you were touched but not that it hurt.

Certain myths about hypnosis still persist, such as the belief that it is a truth serum, that it causes patients to lose all free will, and that hypnotists can erase their patient’s memories of prior sessions and current ones. Hypnosis though is something most of us have experienced in our everyday lives. If you have ever been totally engrossed in a book or film and lost all track of time or didn’t hear someone calling your name, you were experiencing a hypnotic trance.

Hypnosis creates a hyper-attentive and hyper-responsive mental state in which the person’s subconscious mind is highly open to suggestion. This does not mean that the subject’s free will or moral judgment is turned off. It has been proven that people are actually better problem solvers under hypnosis.
Some people are more easily hypnotized that others, no one is clear to understand the reason why. Perhaps everyday readers who are more relaxed in day-to-day activities are prone to be hypnotized more easily. But yet hypnosis has no correlation to certain personality traits or abilities.

Through certain studies on hypnosis, researchers have learned that 95 percent of people can be hypnotized to some form of extent. Numerous studies have been done and no matter what retested subjects and new subjects were presenting the same scores of hypnotic responsiveness. Hypnosis requires decoding the unconscious mind to deliver an exact understanding of the mechanism.

http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/a/hypnosis.htm
This website provided me with information on hypnosis, how it works, its effects, and other aspects of hypnosis.

http://www.newdayrisinghypno.com/hypnosis-studies-articles/
This website provided me with numerous articles relating to the study of hypnosis and provided me with credibility and validity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Mesmer
This website provided me with a biography of Mesmer and what treatments he all did for hypnosis and important life events of his.

1a) State what your topic is.
Franz Anton Mesmer
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Mesmer was covered in numerous sections within the chapter, he came up with the theory of animal magnetism as well as hypnosis.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
At first I was interesting in hypnosis and his research with magnetism until I read more about the man and the road he took to get to his research and I was instantly interested. He was a man of many talents and was able to give psychology man tools still in use today.
2)
Franz Anton Mesmer was a German physician who was lived from May 23, 1734 – March 5, 1815. Mesmer received his degree from the prestigious University of Vienna in 1766. Mesmer married Anna Maria von Posch in January 1768, Anna a wealthy widow, helped Mesmer establish himself as a physician in the Vienna. In the summers he lived on an impressive estate and became a fan of the arts, even befriending a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Not only was a he a physician but he also had an interest in astronomy and psychology. Mesmer is mostly known for theorizing that there was a natural energetic transference that occurred between all animated and inanimate objects that he called animal magnetism, also referred to as mesmerism. He became fascinated by the new developments of the time like electricity and magnetism and began to believe magnetism affected humans directly. Mesmer believed good health was the consequence of properly aligned internal magnetic forces and illness was the result from disharmony of forces opposing each other. He began giving his patients medications with high doses of iron and then moving magnets over their bodies. During these treatments, his patients would go into a trance-like state and emerge feeling better. After using magnets for a while to cure patients he discovered he could produce results without using magnets, which led him to believe he had magnetic powers. The psychological truth of Mesmer’s approach went unrecognized, just as the trance-inducing and suggestion techniques that were the real reason for his success lay undiscovered beneath the layers of the animal magnetism. Mesmer and animal magnetism wasn’t just a blip in psychology’s history, it actually paved the way for hypnosis.
3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Mesmer
This was helpful in giving some insight into his personal life and also his relationship with Mozart.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/05/09/psychologys-history-of-being-mesmerized/
Informative about his theory of animal magnetism and how he believed it worked.
http://www.historyofhypnosis.org/franz-anton-mesmer/
Detailed how mesmerism became hypnosis.

1a) State what your topic is. My topic is the history of asylums in the 18-19th century.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter. This topic was discussed at the beginning of the chapter.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it. I am interested in this topic because asylums were in my opinion prisons for people with disabilities and I think it is interesting how they have evolved over the years.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
During the nineteenth century, people with disabilities or any abnormality were sent to asylums. These places were meant to confine and imprison them and keep them away from the rest of the population. They were not friendly places, nor were they caring or compassionate for their patients because treatments were very inhumane and the patients did not get the care they needed. Long before these hospitals, anyone suffering from a mental disorder was treated by Quakers, but later a hospital was built in Pennsylvania and offered a separate wing for the mentally ill. Years later, there was a hospital build solely for the purpose of treating mentally ill patients and was known as “Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds”. Many of the patients in this facility were treated very poorly because instead of being treated as a patient, they were treated as if they were prisoners. They would be chained, confined, beaten and much more. Phillipe Pinel (mentioned in the book) believed in moral treatment. He believed that these patients needed to have better nutrition, better hygiene, and better living arrangements. These changes would bring structure to the patients’ everyday lives. From one of my sources, there were pictures of previous asylums and even just looking at them it gives me chills. The pictures in my opinion show a cold, unwelcoming building meant for torture. I cannot imagine being a patient under those conditions, especially when you cannot control having a disability. Regardless of a disability or not they are people and deserve to be treated as such. I cannot imagine that if I went to a hospital for a cold, they treated me as if I needed to be quarantined and removed from contact with others. It would be scary and then to be treated poorly would only make it worse. I work with people with disabilities daily, and I cannot imagine sending them off to be caged like an animal, rather than trying to help them and improve their quality of life. I have seen firsthand how these institutions have changed. Some have improved greatly because they offer humane forms of treatment and there are now programs that are offered to people suffering from disabilities.
3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://danaleighton.edublogs.org/2006/05/18/a-diary-written-by-a-19th-century-asylum-inmate/
This site was a diary of a patient during the time of nineteenth century asylums. It discussed the experience and treatment she endured over the time spent there.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/09/08/asylum-christopher-payne/
This site had pictures of asylums from the nineteenth century. The pictures helped to imagine what it might have been like for a patient. It also gave you an ominous feeling because some of the pictures look like they were out of horror film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychiatric_institutions
This site talked about some background information about the topic.

J.P.

For week 13 topical blog I thought that I would do it on the idea and concept of hypnosis. Hypnosis is related to the chapter because it was talked about in the start of curing mental illness in patients and has evolved from then on. It has taken so many different paths in helping all different situations, people, and even habits. It talked about how they would use hypnosis on the patients to try to cure them of their mental illness. This was not a cure, but rather a strategy of trying to help them in any ways that they could per say. I’m interested in this because I’m still iffy on the whole idea of hypnosis, but have known from personal experiences that it has helped people in multiple ways. I guess I’m weary of it, but believe in it at the same time. My mom was hypnotized when she was in her younger years to quit smoking and it worked because she hasn’t had a cigarette in almost 15 years. I also think it can be very helpful when it comes to uncovering memories that we have suppressed for some reason or another. I truly feel like it can be helping in helping a person realize their past events, good or bad. I don’t understand it fully, but I’ve been leaning more towards believing that it works. So, I wanted to learn more about it.
Hypnosis is something that has caused many people to question, criticize, discredit, and even disapprove upon. It is something that can and cannot be proven to work because it really depends on the person on if it will work or not. So, because of this, there are certain psychologists and doctors that use this method and some that do not. For the people who practice this type of treatment has been known to help with a variety of everyday issues. Some include personal phobias, bad habits like smoking or chewing, pain control, underlying past issues, and much more. It doesn’t work for everyone because everyone is different and that is why people are so spectacle on this type of treatment. It was said in some of the articles I read that it’s about 90% who are actually able to be hypnotized which seems like a lot. Some people think that when it works its only because it’s in that persons head, rather than actually working. To me if it works then it works! Hypnosis is when a trained physician creates a responsive and attentive mental state that opens the patients to certain suggestion. They ask questions that should trigger certain issues or allow your brain to turn off to certain behaviors. It is like a mind trick in a way. Hypnosis is a treatment that can allow people to better understand the human brain and how it works. What I did find out though is that a person who is more open to the idea of this treatment has a higher rate of it actually working compared to someone who is closed minded about it. Hypnosis isn’t a way of making someone say or think something it’s a procedure which allows a human brain to recall or correct certain things. Patients feel differently just like sometimes its works on some and not others. Some patients report to it feeling like extreme relaxation or a sense of detachment from the real world.
Websites:
1. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-hypnosis-a-distinct-form I liked this website because it described in patients terms what hypnosis was per say. It gave expert opinions about this topic and about surveys regarding thoughts about hypnosis. It allowed me to dig deeper on how people actually feel about hypnosis.
2. http://www.minddisorders.com/Flu-Inv/Hypnotherapy.html This one was my favorite website because it gave me the most information. It talks about what it is, the purposes, the myths, the precautions, the history, and so much more. It let me get the pros and the cons and factual information about hypnosis.
3. http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/a/hypnosis.htm I really liked this website because it right to the point and it gave personal experiences and opinions of hypnosis which I thought gave me a bigger idea on how and what hypnosis is in regards to the feelings about it.

A.S.

1a) State what your topic is.
Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Freud was a pioneer involving psychoanalysis and is one of the most widely known psychologists. Mental illness was a big mystery and people began wondering how to cure these illnesses. People were suffering from hysteria and behaviorism was a subject in psychology that had a lot of attention. Freud and others were interested in curing these mental illnesses and he came up with psychoanalysis in which he would interpret dreams.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Freud was interesting to me because of how well-known he was. He was intrigued by the unconscious and how it was the place where we retained all our memories, thoughts, and feelings. Many people that were interested in the unconscious were afraid of the topic, but Freud was determined to figure it out.

2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it.

Freud popularized the idea of the unconscious, introducing the notion that defines and explained the workings behind our ability to think and experience. Hypnosis seemed to have been treating patients with mental illness, but Freud was eager to use his new knowledge. The first instance of intensive psychotherapy as a treatment for mental illness was the case of Anna O. Freud and his colleague Joseph Breuer popularized a method of psychological treatment based on the idea that many forms of mental illness were the results of traumatic experiences that had occurred in the patient's past and were now hidden away from consciousness. They believed to have found a way to release the repressed memory from the unconscious, allowing patients to consciously recall the memory and confront the experience. They disagreed and parted ways. He believed that when ideas, memories, or impulses are too overwhelming or inappropriate for the conscious mind to withstand, they are repressed and stored in the unconscious alongside our instinctual drives where they are not accessible by immediate consciousness. The unconscious silently directs the thought and behavior of the individual. The difference between our unconscious and conscious thought creates psychic tension that can only be released when repressed memories are allowed into consciousness through psychoanalysis. To get to that unconscious mind, Freud used a unique method called dream analysis in which he would interpret patient’s dreams. He was a pioneer, with radical thinking, but his research is considered groundbreaking.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/freud/
This website gave me information about insight to
Freud's thoughts, a critical evaluation, and his psychoanalysis theory.

http://www.biography.com/people/sigmund-freud-9302400#controversial-publications
This website gave me information about Freud's early career and his lasting legacy. He also was very controversial involving sex with everything he research and explains some of his controversial publications.

http://psychology.about.com/od/sigmundfreud/p/sigmund_freud.htm
This website gave me more information about Freud's life and major theories along with his patients.

1a) Philippe Pinel
1b) Pinel was one of the first men to investigate mental illness in greater depth. The entire chapter focuses on mental illnesses and the treatments coming into play when dealing with them. Interestingly enough, Pinel spoke of a more nonmedical treatment and here we discover that medicine is not the only way to contain a mental illness. Science began to unravel and be more contributing to mental illness treatments and institutions holding people who suffered from a mental illness.
1c) Philippe Pinel seemed like an interesting man who had concerns about the institutions in place. He criticized them as taking away all the freedom of the individual and instead these people are truly suffering. I wanted to know more about his views especially because quite a bit of the time mentally ill people are not recognized as well as they should be. People don’t always agree they have a problem and they definitely don’t always help. Even today, there are problems with how we take care of people with a mental illness.

Known as the father of psychiatry, Philippe Pinel contributed to the mental illness realm and how treatments based on nonmedical techniques can be helpful. During the Enlightenment era, Pinel was located in France where he was attempting to make an impact on those who were suffering from a mental illness. Not only was he trying to help these people physically, but he was criticizing the way these people were being taken care of. Pinel focused on bettering these people’s nutrition and even their living conditions. The institutions these people were in tended to be taking away from a person’s freedom. However, Pinel was suggesting behavior modification approaches where these people would be either rewarded or maybe even punished for their actions. Moral treatment was Pinel’s solution. Moral treatment consists of an approach based on humane psychosocial care. It was based on concerns for the patient. The treatment was mainly the beginning of the reform during the Enlightenment era on the institutions themselves. Instead of holding down patients with not much freedom, the treatment focused on more emotional and social interactions as being beneficial for a patient to take part in. This treatment began a movement. Not only was this occurring in France because of Philippe, but in England William Tuke was also making room for the reform. The term ‘occupation’ was also used within the moral treatment movement. Occupation focused on the physical aspects and allowing a mental person to be helped by painting, music, or even just taking part in exercise. Finding the inner emotions of a person was the goal. It wasn’t until the 1840s that the treatment came to America and flourished. Even though this movement made a large impact at first, it was almost forgotten. The Civil War took away from so many people and the ideas of the movement and treatment seemed to be put on the back burner. However, Susan Tracy allowed the movement to continue on. Because of the treatment coming to America, we have changed our institutions and are still altering them today.

This website gave a little history of occupational therapy and who first started it. Also, it contributed to William Tuke.
http://www.angelfire.com/ut/otpsych/history.html

This website talked about the Moral Treatment and Occupation and how the America’s had the pleasure of using it too.
http://www.sensory-processing-disorder.com/history-of-occupational-therapy.html

This website spoke about moral treatment and what it consisted of. This treatment was coined by Philippe Pinel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_treatment

1a) Hypnosis
1b) How does it relate to chapter? Hypnosis was mentioned in the section of the chapter that detailed the beginning of mesmerization and hypnosis as treatments for the mental illness that was called hysteria. It relates to the chapter in a less literal sense in that it was recognized as a treatment for mental illnesses and is still used as an alternative treatment today.
1c)Why interested? I became interested in hypnosis for the first time after learning about it as a method of relaxation while taking the health and personal wellness class here at UNI. Before this I really had no idea that hypnosis was still used, or as widely popular, today as it was in the past. After poking around Youtube however it became obvious to me that hypnosis was still very much alive and in practice. I decided to use this topic for this assignment in order to find out a little bit more about the difference between hypnosis and more legitimately recognized treatment, and also to learn why it has had such staying power over the years.
2) Synthesis.
One of the definitions of hypnosis is simply an altered state of consciousness, if we look at hypnosis from this perspective the history of hypnosis reaches as far into the past as ancient Egypt. Many other ancient cultures made use of these states of altered perception for healing and spiritual enlightenment. In more recent history Dr. Franz Mesmer was the first to use an altered state of consciousness for the methodical treatment of mental illness that he believed were caused by imbalances of magnetic fluids in the body. Dr. James Braid was the one who created the term ‘hypnosis’ to describe the state, but later tried to rename it in an attempt to distinguish hypnosis from sleep. Now hypnosis is used by a wide variety of professions such as psychologists, dentists, and teachers for many different reasons. In regard to the legitimacy of hypnosis I was very surprised to find that it actually has quite a bit of empirical support in certain aspects. In providing help with the improvement of the symptoms of depression and anxiety, and reducing chronic pain there have been numerous studies that have shown that hypnosis makes a significant impact. However, there are certain things commonly attributed to hypnosis that have been shown to not be scientifically accurate. Many programs like ‘stop smoking now hypnosis’ and similar offer relief from addiction as a result of hypnosis, but are not supported by science and usually ineffective. Another controversial use of hypnosis that has been disproved is the ability of hypnosis to help people recall memories that they have repressed, this has been shown to cause false or unreliable memories. While hypnosis is gaining popularity and credibility, even having its own APA division, it has not been very accepted by the academic community and is not often taught at universities. Hypnotherapists hope to change this by standardizing the teaching and practice of hypnosis.

Sources:
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/01/hypnosis.aspx
I chose this source because it gave insight from a perspective that I trusted (the APA) about hypnosis without skewing the data and provided information about various myths surrounding hypnosis and on what it can and can’t help with.
http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/treatment/hypnotherapy
Yet again, I wanted to use a source that was not overtly advocating for hypnosis and so I chose this article about Hypnotherapy from the University of Maryland Medical Center website. This article provided a lot of information on hypnosis from history to what to expect in an actual hypnotherapy session.
http://www.nzaph.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=10
I thought it would be important to included one source from the perspective of those in favor of hypnotherapy, so I read this article on the origins of hypnotherapy from the New Zealand Association of Professional Hypnotherapists. It discusses important figures in the history of hypnosis.

1a) State what your topic is.


My topic is treatment methods in asylums.

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.

My topic relates to the chapter because this chapter capitalizes on mental illness and its treatment. Asylums were a place in the 1500s to early 1900s that housed mentally ill patients. The first of the asylums primarily focused on separating those patients from society. After asylums started to evolve, they began using the most commonly used treatment methods at that time. By the end of their life in society, the treatment asylums gave to the mentally ill were a better illustration of how hospitals and other appropriate facilities treat them today.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.

I am interested in asylums because of the treatments methods performed there. I read a plethora of treatments that with a presentism view seem inhuman and unjust. It is sad how much patients that were locked up in these facilities were faced with on a daily basis. Most of these treatments would make a person without mental illness, mentally ill. I also read about three people who helped the asylums build a healthier environment for their patients to thrive to get better. I was pleased with this topic, and believe that it has been my favorite so far.

The first asylums were established in the 1500s. They were primarily created to separate the mentally ill from the outside world, and were staffed by untrained and highly unqualified individuals that treated the patients like animals. A case study performed in the La Bicetre Asylum in Paris found a copious amount of inhumane examples of how these patients were treated during this time period. In this particular asylum, patients were shackled to the walls, the metal cuffs that secured their wrist only allowed the patients enough movement to feed themselves. They did not allow enough elasticity for the patient to lay on the ground, so patients slept upright. The cells were dark and cramped. They were never clean, and the patients never showered. They were essentially stripped of their humanity. The only person they were not isolated from was the person who brought their food. As heartbreaking as the La Bicetre asylum must be, this is what the majority were like in the 1500s to mid 1800s.
The most famous asylum of all time was Saint Mary of Bethlehem. It was located in London, England, and was a monastery turned asylum. The transformation was completed in 1547, when Saint Mary started receiving patients. This particular asylum displayed their extremely violent patients for show in exchange for one penny. The less extreme patients were put on the streets to beg for money.
A vast array of treatment options were displayed in asylums across the globe. The most popular of those treatments were bloodletting and purging. Many different physicians tried inventing their own methods of healing patients. Sometimes staff would soak patients with either hot or cold water to try and shock their minds into normalcy. They also believed in intimidation as a method to cure their patients. They believed that patients should choose to be “normal” over insanity. They inflicted this treatment with straightjackets, threats, restraints, and medication to exhaust the patient. Dr. Boerhaave created another treatment option in the mid 1700s that he called, the gyrating chair. This aimed to shake up the blood and tissues in the body to restore equilibrium. This device often found to knock the patients unconscious, and never proved any positive results.
While asylums exhibited a harsh range of treatments, they did start to improve in the mid to late 1800s. One reform of a popular asylum was displayed in Devon, England. Before the reform, staff used opium, leeches, and purging in an attempt to heal patients. After the reform, Devon, England took the restraints off of their patients altogether. Another example of reform that took place within asylums was done by Philippe Pinel in 1792. He took the La Bicetre asylum that was mentioned in the case study, and formed the treatment around the idea of treating patients with kindness and consideration. La Bicetre found a vast amount of success with this method. William Tuke was another person who helped asylums evolve into more humane environments for the patients. He created a place for the mentally ill that was centered on a domestic lifestyle. He believed that patients should have the responsibilities they would have it they lived a domestic lifestyle. Asylums eventually evolved, and died out around the 1900s. Many lessons of medical care and patient care were learned in the early asylum days, which helped shape present facilities that hold mentally ill patients.

http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/283/2/the-history-of-mental-illness-from-skull-drills-to-happy-pills
This article gave me information on the treatment options asylums used before they were reformed.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/03/asylums.aspx
This article gave me information on specific asylums that were popular in history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychiatric_institutions
This website was helpful to me because it provided me with background information on asylums

1.
a. Ego Defense Mechanisms
b. This topic relates to the chapter because the chapter is targeted mainly towards mental health and this is a huge factor in one’s mental capacity. This term explains how people mentally deal with tragedies as well as what coping mechanisms to reduce anxiety and mental issues.
c. I am extremely interested in this topic because I have severe anxiety and I am always interested in how the mind works, especially when I have a personal motive.
2. According to Wikipedia, a defense mechanism is the act or technique of coping mechanisms that reduce anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable or negative impulses. Between the years of 1894 and 1896, Sigmund Freud introduced this topic into the world of psychology. According to Freud, these defenses are a completely unconscious action of the mind enabled by our ego in order to satisfy the id and the superego. (All concepts previously introduced by Freud). As a little refresher Freud divided the psyche into three different structures; the id, superego, and ego. The id is described as the devil on your shoulder (pleasure), the superego is described as the angel on your shoulder (morals), and the ego is the part that rationalizes and acts as a mediator between the two. When there is a conflict out of the range of the ego’s mediating, these defense mechanisms act as an aid to the ego. The repercussions of this can either be positive or negative, depending on the issue of concern. All defense mechanisms are results of anxiety and how the un/subconscious handle stress in a situational context. The event that happened when you were 6 years old that had such detrimental effects on you that you think you’ve gotten over and forgot about, is definitely not erased, it’s stored in your subconscious by the use of defense mechanisms and can still be triggered and harmful to you and your behavior today. There were ten defense mechanisms that appeared in the work of Freud: Repression, Regression, Reaction formation, Isolation, Undoing, Projection, Introspection, Turning against one’s own person, Reversal into the opposite, and Displacement. Aside from these 10, there are 5 that have gotten the most attention and tend to be the most common. Repression, the act of hiding or suppressing emotions, Regression, when one reverts back to a previous mental or physical state, Projection, when one aims his emotions to another person, Denial, not believing something that is true, and Displacement, which is taking out feelings on a less threatening target (e.g. throwing your phone). Although these mechanisms may be misused and one may not think this is a very important study in the history of psychology, but without defense mechanisms or lack of can lead to emotional distress, depression, anxiety.

http://allpsych.com/psychology101/defenses.html
This website gave me the background information on Freud’s three structures of the psyche, as well as their importance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms
This website gave me very detailed information about the 10 defense mechanisms, as well as the ones most commonly used.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/defense-mechanisms.html
This website gave me information about the early studies of Freud and why and how defense mechanisms come into play and why they are important to have.

1a) State what your topic is.
Collective Unconscious

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Coined by Carl Jung, an ex-member of Freud's collective who had followed Adler out, had talked about collective unconscious in relation to Freud's opinions of the unconscious.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I wanted to know more about Carl Jung, and instead of going for a huge overview of his life, I wanted to specialize in one specific topic.

2) Collective unconscious is an attempt at making sense of the structure of the unconscious psyche. It is found in all forms of life that include nervous systems is a system of organizing experiences via using each member of the same species as vessels for collecting information, and sharing this information through inheritance. Jung makes the distinction between personal unconscious and collective unconscious, stating that personal unconscious is a unique and individualistic stock of experience. Through inheritance, the collective unconscious assumes different forms such as the Shadow, the Anima and the Animus, and the Wise Old Man.

The Shadow is the repressed form that the conscious does not recognize, similar to how we try to ignore and forget about the most negative parts of ourselves. Jung states that the Shadow lives within all of us, and the less present it is in an individual's life, the blacker and denser it is. It most commonly finds itself weaving into the conscious as a form of a psychological project, as the individual perceives a moral deficiency in someone else, despite residing in the individual himself.

The Anima and the Animus, contrasting appears in males as the feminine inner expression of the Anima, and in females the masculine inner expression of the Animus. It's cause is due to the rising repression of male sensitivity in society, influencing his interactions and perspective of women. To contrast, the Animus' creation is due to the rising repression of female masculinity in society, and also influences her interactions and perspective of men. The Anima and the Animus go through developmental levels of progression, achieving distinct levels that come with heightened intuition, creativity, imagination and empathy towards themselves and others.

The Wise Old Man, is the heightened and final form of the unconscious where it no longer remains disconnected from the conscious, as the problems of the Anima, Animus, and the Shadow are all settled and the unconscious works with the conscious as a guardian in the background. It is often represented in cultural interpretations and many literary works, such as Gandalf the White from the Lord of the Rings, Merlin from the Knights of the Round Table, Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series, and Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star-Wars.

3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious
Explanation of collective unconscious with side links to specific archetypes and forms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAgIdXjawks
Brief speech discussing Jung's creation of collective unconscious and brief history with Freud

http://www.carl-jung.net/collective_unconscious.html
In-depth history of the creation of collective unconscious

1a) Eastern State Hospital
1b) A major section of this chapter is about the Asylum movement, and the Eastern State Hospital was major part of that movement. Dealing with mental illness and treatment of mental illness is what this chapter is about, and that is what the Eastern State Hospital tried to do.
1c) I am interested in this topic because it was the first hospital for the mentally ill in the United States. I am curious how it was found and how it operated.

2) The Eastern State hospital was built in 1773. It would become the first hospital to treat the mentally ill here in America, and is still running today. The hospital was built due to Governor Francis Fauquier, he urged people that his should be done. He had a strong belief in science, and that it could cure. In 1766, Francis spoke to the House of Burgesses, and wanted them to open up a facility to help the unfortunate people, and have doctors that can help assist them, and “restore” them. Many of the questions being asked were what about crime, economics, geography, and medicine used. It was battle to convince the House to set this up. “On June 4, 1770, the legislators adopted an act to ‘Make Provision for the Support and Maintenance of idiots, Lunatics, and other Persons of unsound Minds’” (history.org). Francis would die in 1768,before the hospital was built, but he would remain the true inspiration for the project. During this time a person was deemed mentally ill by being judged by 12 citizens. The jury would determine the person as being a criminal, lunatic, or an idiot.
During this time period the “insane” were committing crimes, and they saw this as a good way to separate them and protect society, but also to do this for their own good. The treatment for these patients was comprised of restraint, drugs, shock water treatment, bleeding, blistering creams, and elctro-static shock. Into the 1800’s treatment for the patients began to change and moral management was used. This was using encouragement, self-control, work therapy, leisure activity, and kindness. This technique was brought about and used by Dr. Galt. The hospital was continually growing, and additions were being made constantly. The Civil War was a destroyer of the facility. Dr. Galt, was the head of the hospital, and the therapeutic community he created was demolished. The hospital was captured during the war on May 6, 1862. About a week after the capturing of the hospital Dr. Galt died. Many believed his death was due to depression and that he might of committed suicide by overdosing purposely.

Dr. Galt was a revolutionary figure to mental illness during this time. He brought the moral management treatment to the hospital. He had the belief that the mentally ill might differ from us but not in kind, and that the mentally ill do have human dignity. He became the first to promote and voice the idea that the mentally ill should be deinstitutionalized and have community based mental health care. Galt was alone on this, and was very ahead of his time.

3) http://www.esh.dbhds.virginia.gov/History.html - this website was great for finding out the background of the hospital, treatments used, and critical individuals
http://www.history.org/almanack/places/hb/hbhos.cfm - this website was great for researching how the hospital was found and the overall background.
http://www.resnet.wm.edu/~jjwack/history.html - this site was great for finding out how the hospital was founded and back story, and the impact of the hospital.

For week’s topic, I chose to discuss the early years of the mental institution, and its formation. Since the week’s chapter covers mental illness, this topic comes up. Where people who are unable to function within society go is a question that at one time had no answer. I chose this topic because while mental illness has always been interesting to me, mental institutions in the early ages interest me more.
While mental institutions didn’t always exist, mental illness has. While most people suffering from mental illness are able to function in society, some are not. But where do these people go? Long ago they lived with their families, but often time ended up in prisons and homeless shelters. As settlement disbursed, and populations increased, a need arose for a place for people unable to live among the community because of their mental health. In 1752 the basement of a Pennsylvania hospital was dedicated to those with mental health issues. It quickly filled up and a new section was added onto the hospital to help compensate. Near a hundred years late in 1856 the Pennsylvania House for the Insane opened and was the first hospital to be devoted entirely to mental health. Over the following 35 some years every state opened at least one mental institution for the public.
Treatments taking place in medical settings are much different today than that of 150+ years ago. Psychiatric medicines were not yet available, and many conditions were seen as incurable. People were admitted and not expected to leave. Some of the various treatments given over the years are hypnotism, lobotomies, electric shock, bloodletting, and art therapy. While art therapy doesn’t seem so aversive, others left some patients different for life, or even dead. Many treatments as well as how they were treated wasn’t exactly considered ethical to today’s standards. The patients seemed to be treated more as prisoners, including using chains attached to the walls. The care changed once a man known as Philippe Pinel started what is known as ‘moral treatment’, which is this crazy notion that patients should be treated like people. As population increased however, moral treatment was unable to be obtained. State ran hospitals were large and the number of patients compared to staff made it difficult to do anything but give people a place to hide away. Change occurred when a woman named Dorothea Dix intervened. After seeing the awful conditions in a jail when going to teach Sunday school there, she immediately felt she needed to help make a change. She then visited every jail, almshouse, and mental institution to document the conditions where the mentally ill are housed. She terrible things she saw including abuse and neglect pushed her towards helping open 32 mental institutions, and 15 schools for the feeble minded. While population has increased, the number of state ran facilities have decreased. We are now back at square one 150+ years ago asking ourselves, where do these people go?

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/diseases/early.html
timeline of events was important for my topic to be able to accurately give dates.

http://news.discovery.com/human/life/slideshow-history-mental-asylum.htm
focused on some of the important details of mental institutions over the years

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/02/17/the-birth-of-the-mental-asylum/
overall history of mental institutions

http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/dorotheadix.html
Dorothea Dix, stood up for change in the conditions of the hospitals, pushed for new institutions.

This week my topic is going to be Joseph Breuer. I have heard him mentioned in several classes as well as texts but I don’t ever really remember much about him except for Anna O case, which was fascinating. I would like to know more about what else he did.

Breuer was born in Vienna in 1842. His father taught the Jewish religion in their community. Breuer’s mother died when he was young. Since the beginning, he was interested in medicine. He graduated from the Akademisches Gymnasium of Vienna in 1858. He then went on to study at university for one year before enrolling in the medical school of the University of Vienna. When he graduated, he was a brilliant physician who soon owned his own private practice.

Breuer is famous for many discoveries. He is known for the Hering-Breuer reflex, or the reflex reactions of the lungs in accordance to the vagus nerve. He is also known for the Mach-Breuer theory, a theory that attempted to explain the reactions of the vestibular organ within the ear. However he is most known for his Breuer’s theory. Breuer’s theory states that “the symptoms of built-up or suppressed affections and psychic traumas cannot be dealt with through recalling and working on one’s feelings in conversations.” This is the work that inspired Sigmund Freud. If Freud is the “father” of psychoanalysis, then Joseph Breuer is the “grandfather” of psychoanalysis. Freud and Breuer published “Studies on Hysteria” together in 1895 which talked about many case studied that they had encountered.

Breuer’s most memorable case what that of Anna O. Anna O was the codename given to a young female patient of Breuer’s named Bertha Pappenheim. Bertha began to see Breuer because of an odd range of symptoms. She had symptoms that ranged from a persistent cough, mood swings, amnesia, partial aphasia, tunnel vision the inability to accept food from anyone other Breuer, to paralysis in half of her body. Breuer believed that the symptoms were a result from her caring for her dying father, as before she became his primary caretaker, Bertha showed no such symptoms. It was peculiar to Breuer that Bertha’s symptoms seemed to be similar to that of her dying father but she did not die of them herself as they came and went. Through what Breuer called catharsis, he found that he was able to alleviate her of the symptoms. Bertha spent so much time in treatment with Breuer that, she had spent around a thousand hours with him in the span of a little over a year. When Breuer was under the belief that she was no longer in need of his help, she began to develop other symptoms. This time they were similar to that of a pregnant woman such as nausea and a swollen belly. It turns out that these symptoms stemmed from Bertha’s romantic feelings for Breuer. She was imaging what it would be like to be pregnant with his child, so her body began to mock these symptoms

http://hugesponge.blogspot.com/2008/04/exceptional-josef-breuer-1842-1925-and.html
This website talks about anything and everything relating to Breuer.
http://www.freudfile.org/breuer.html
This source gives a good background for Breuer without going into unnecessary detail.
http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/6/465
This article was all about the Anna O, case which is one of the most famous publishings of Breuer.

1a) Anna O
1b) The topic relates to the chapter because she was a person who helped influence psychoanalysis, a new treatment for the mentally insane of this time period.
1c) I am interested in her because I have heard about her before but I didn’t know much of the details of her life.
2) Anna O was born Bertha Pappenheim in Vienna in 1859, Anna O came from a fairly wealthy family and was raised Orthodox. Anna O received a good education having many opportunities to learn everything from music to different languages and she was very intelligent in all areas. The problem though was the isolation that she experienced, because she was alone a lot she began to create her own fantasy world. It was in 1880 that Anna O showed her first symptoms of what doctors and psychologists deemed hysteria. It was in 1880 that her father feel ill and the illness was fatal. Around this time Anna began a horrible cough, claiming that she was sick and actually believing that she was; this was the first time that her hysteria was apparent to others around her. It was later that Anna began “in rapid succession" an impressive array of symptoms: pain in the left side of the occiput, blurred vision, hallucinations, various contractures and anesthesias, trigeminal neuralgia, "aphasia" (from March 1881 she spoke only in English), split personality and altered states of consciousness ("absences") during which she threw tantrums that afterwards she could not remember” (www.psychologytoday.com). It was then that known psychologist Josef Breur began his visits with Anna. Breur was interested as to where hey symptoms were coming from and even began to visit her every day. Breur discovered that when he removed the sad stories from her fantasies her health would begin to improve, so the more that he created happiness in her stories the better she seemed to be. Once her father died though it was very apparent that her hallucinations were real to her, because that tragedy alone in her life left all of the work that they had done go away. After a violent encounter with Breur following her father’s death Anna was sent to a hospital ran by Dr. Hermann Breslauer. Upon removing her from her home she seemed to improve, her fantasies began to disappear and instead it was apparent that her hallucinations stemmed from things in her life that tended to bother her or annoyed her. After a marathon treatment and reliving the death of her father Anna was finally able go back to some of her behavior prior to her diagnosis of hysteria. She was able to remember the German language and was more clam then ever before. It was found that hypnosis worked will with Anna because when her mind was clear all of her symptoms appeared to disappear, when she would go into her fantasies she would pull away and would mumble to herself. Breur had discovered earlier in her treatment that Anna really benefited from talking about her problems but after years of working together the relationship between Breur and Anna changed. Anna came to have feelings for Breur and it complicated everything, which is where Freud stepped in. Freud was developing is method of psychoanalysis and now he had a patient that he could test his theory on. Anna was one of the first people that Freud used psychoanalysis on, a form of therapy where the patient would just talk and the therapist remained silent the whole time.
3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freuds-patients-serial/201201/bertha-pappenheim-1859-1936
I used this site because it was a detailed history of Anna O from prior to her hysteria to when she began treatment.
http://www.freudfile.org/psychoanalysis/annao_case.html
I chose this site because it went more into what Freud learned when dealing with Anna O. and partially what happened while she was working with Breur.
http://psychology.about.com/od/sigmundfreud/p/anna_o.htm
I used this site because it was a summary of Anna’s life as well as what she was like while suffering from hysteria.

The topic I chose to research about from chapter 12 was the creation of the asylums.

Chapter 12 was about mental illness and treatment and the beginning of the chapter focused on the early treatment of mental illness. Asylums relate to this chapter because they were one of the earliest forms of institutionalized treatment. Asylums became the most popular way to house and treat individuals with mental illness until its decline in the mid 1900’s.

I chose to research asylums and their creation because I wanted to see if they were always known as the creepy places scary movies and the media have them pegged out to be. I feel like they probably had a reasonable motive and intent to treat mentally ill and I want to know how long that lasted. I also wanted to find out how effective the asylums were at treating those with mental illnesses.

Early on before the mental hospitals those who were mentally ill were cared for by their families out in rural areas. This was not a problem until industrialization which brought in waves of people who then saw those with mental illness as a threat to society. The first mental hospital or asylum was created in Philadelphia in 1753. The father of modern psychiatry worked at the hospital and is known for his famous treatment of mentally ill patients. He performed bloodletting which stems from ancient civilizations in where it was thought that removing blood from the body would help ease the tension. Indeed this seemed to be an effective treatment almost immediately because the patients calmed down, little did they know it was due to the amount of blood loss that caused the patients to become very weak. The first mental institutions were created with the goal to offer individualized care and to follow in Philippe Pinel’s footsteps. Pinel created a program called moral treatment which emphasized improving patients living conditions and use simple forms of behavior modification. He believed that mental illness was curable. Early on in these institutions the superintendents knew each one of their patients and their backgrounds. The goal was to be able to see every patient once a day which was achievable due to the low numbers of patients at the time. Soon though the institutions were seen as housing for the mentally ill and instead of housing a few patients they were now housing hundreds. This meant that superintendents couldn’t see their patients every day, and the goal of individualized moral treatment went out the door. It was now all about housing the mentally ill and dealing with them rather than treating them. Many patients grew into chronic cases which meant not many were leaving the asylums. This in turn made asylum conditions dirty, nasty, and inhumane. Word soon got out of the deplorable conditions in these mental institutions. Dorothea Dix decided to travel around the U.S. and visit asylums to see for herself how bad these places were. She found patients put in closets, chained to walls, barely fed and beaten often. After finishing her observations she went to the Massachusetts legislature who began the wide range of reforms necessary to improve the inhumane conditions. Interestingly enough not all mental patients were living in these mental institutions. It has been argued that these asylums were meant for the poor because those who had money could afford better mental healthcare in small private institutions. Those who could afford private care received much better individualized mental treatment, it was seen as a retreat rather than confinement.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/03/asylums.aspx
I used this website to gather information on asylum conditions for patients rich and poor.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/02/17/the-birth-of-the-mental-asylum/
I chose to use this website to gather information on asylum reforms, as well as early mental health treatment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychiatric_institutions
I chose to use this website to gather information the creation of asylums and why they were created as well as conditions of treatment.

I’ve decided to do my topic on Freud, as he had a big role in the chapter and is one of the most well known (for better or worse) psychologists in today’s society. He is often brought up when I tell people i’m a psychology major and they ask me if i'm psychoanalyzing them or they will say “oh like that Freud guy”. I am personally biased to not like Freud due to how his research (mostly lack of) is often used as an example of how Psychology is a “soft science”. If we want psychology to be taken seriously we as a community need to cast out theories that are not supported by empirical research.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
The aspects i would like to briefly touch on in this blog are those pertaining to Freud’s thoughts (notice the word thoughts, not theory or findings) on the unconscious, psychosexual development, and the triple split of the psychic .
3)
Sigmund Freud is one of the most recognized names in psychology today, be that among those in the field or those outside psychology. He is best known as the father of psychoanalysis. “With Sigmund Freud, there are always two ways to begin. Here’s the first: Sigmund Freud was the genius of the twentieth century, without whom we would not know ourselves as intimately as we do. And here’s the second: Sigmund Freud was a colossal fraud who ruined innumerable lives”(my favorite quote from Sigmund Freud, the Never-Ending Storyteller) Among those in the field of psychology there are those who support his findings, and those who refute them due to non-empirically supported evidence, which is key to any sound psychological theory today.
For better or worse Sigmund Freud’s contributed to the field of psychology, through his theories that culminated into psychoanalysis. He left a major footprint and a basis for a lot of psychological theories today, though “Freud often derailed thoughtful inquiries by others in order to maintain his own superiority”. Why would he not, i mean if people actually poked holes at his thoughts on things they would see that is all they were, thoughts and hot air elocuted into the false facade of a theory. It was probably a fear of Freud’s that someone would see past his vibrato and into the nothingness that he pulled all of his thoughts from.
The goals in Freudian thoughts are aimed at bringing repressed thoughts, memories, feelings, and ideas to consciousness, in hopes that it will elevate the patient’s emotional state/suffering. Sigmund Freud’s practice encouraged patients to talk freely or recall memories and voice ideas as they came; he would later term this “free association”. Freud theorized that one’s dreams also skimmed into their unconscious thoughts and also gleamed ones memories that were repressed by their psychic (which he thought facilitated symptom formation). By 1896 Freud had begun to refer to his clinical method as psychoanalysis.

Freud believed that throughout our lives we were driven by sexual energy, he turned this into his thought of psychosexual development. In order those stages are known as Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, and Genital. Later he hypostasized the Oedipus/Electra complex that often is taught side by side with psychosexual development and his other thought of penis envy or castration anxiety. Though, many in the psychological community today believe these theories to be over sexualized and misogynistic. “The area of Freud’s thought that most challenged his contemporaries was his claim that sexuality was central to understanding what it is to be human” . Imagine the way Freud would see the world today in its highly sexualised media, and all the sexual orientations and lackthereof (which lacking one blows his thought out of the water right there). He would probably be so overwhelmed and not know where to start.

One of Freud’s other thoughts which is somewhat harder to refute is that of the triple split of the psychic into the id (unconscious), ego (conscious), and superego (preconscious). In this the id is the childlike part of an individual’s personality. The id is the part that seeks instant gratification, and relies on the pleasure principle. The id is extremely impulsive and self-centered. The superego is the id’s counterpart; it is like a moral compass that takes no concern to extenuating circumstances. These two are monitored by the ego or conscious of an individual, in that the individual keeps them in balance nether displaying too much self-centeredness from the id, nor too much altruism from the superego. This, if i actually had to pick a favorite of Freud's contributions to psychology, would be the one that i pick. In part because it is the only one i like and it lacks his normal misogyny and sexualization that is so prevalent in Freudian psychology.
All of these and a few more are Freud's legacies in psychology. A legacy based on no research, Misogyny, and Sex (also some drugs, but didn’t talk about that). Freud did however spark a whole school of thought on the unconscious and what drives humans.

4)
http://www.vqronline.org/nonfiction-criticism/2014/06/sigmund-freud-never-ending-storyteller
I chose this sight because it is always an awesome standby when i am writing about Freud. It holds my favorite quote ever about Freud and the ways to look at him.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-8315.12137/abstract
This article shows how Freud shot down those who dared to question his thoughts on anything. How defencive he was (likely due to there being no suport to his theories.
https://www.oneworld-publications.com/sites/default/files/books/extracts/freud-on-the-couch-9781780742625.pdf
This one shows how even Freud’s colleagues questioned his thoughts and saw them as over Sexualized and misogynistic.
Freud, psychoanalyzing, unconscious, psychosexual development, triple split of the psychic, repressed thoughts, memories, feelings, free association, sexual energy, Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital, Oedipus/Electra complex, penis envy, castration anxiety, id, unconscious, ego, conscious, superego, preconscious, gratification, moral compass, altruism

1a) after reading the chapter and looking up some other information the topic that I chose for this weeks blog is Sigmund Freud. he fits into this weeks chapter with the founding of Psychoanalysis and the role that it played in the early treatment in the field of psychology. I am also interested in Freud because he is always mentioned in other psychology classes at some point. in this blog I will talk about Frued's life in general as well as the locations that he was known to work and the concepts of psychoanalysis.
2/3) Sigmund Freud was born in Frieberg, Moravia in 1856 but when he was four years old him and his family moved to Vienna. in 1938 the Nazis annexed Austria and Freud who was Jewish was allowed to leave for England. Freuds interest and professional training was very broad. he most of all considered himself a scientist who always wanted to extend the compass of human knowledge. to this extent he enrolled at the University of Vienna in 1873. he originally focused on biology doing research in biology, doing research in physiology for six years under the great German scientist Ernst Brucke and after that specialized in neurology. he received his medical degree in 1881 and was to be married in 1882 so due to this he took up a financially secure and stable job as a doctor at Vienna General Hospital. six years later he set up a private practice for the treatment for psychological disorders which gave him most of his materials that he based his theories on. he spent most of 1185 and 1886 in paris where he was very impressed with the work of French neurologist Jean Charcot who was using hypnotism to treat hysteria and other abnormal mental conditions. once he returned to Vienna he experimented with hypnosis but found that the affects did not last. working with Breuer, Freud developed the idea that many neuroses have their origins in deeply traumatic experiences that had happened in the patients past but are now forgotten or hidden from consciousness. the treatment for this would be to bring the experience to consciousness, to confront it and then to discharge it. shortly after the two split ways because freud placed the emphasis on sexual origins for neuroses. however even after the split freud continued to develop and refine the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. when it was acknowledged it was usually by people who were scandalized by the emphasis placed on sexuality. it was not until the first international psychoanalytic congress was held that his importance began to be recognized. freuds psychoanalytic theory was not well received initially. in 1909 he was invited to the united states to give lectures on psychoanalysis. it was after this point that his fame grew.
freud is the founding father of psychoanalysis. a form of treating mental illness and a theory that explains human behavior. psychoanalysis is often known as the talking cure because freud encouraged his clients to talk freely regarding their symptoms and to describe exactly what is on their mind. in this theory he came up with concepts of the human mind. on the surface is the conscious mind. this consist of the things that are the focus of our attention now. there is also the preconscious which is all of the memory that can be retrieved at this instant. the third part is the unconscious which makes upmost of the mind and is the cause of most of our behavior. he found that the process of repression occurred where things or memories that were to painful to talk about were kept in the unconscious. the overall goal of psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious in fact become conscious. he also gave the mind a structural model which consist of the id, the ego, and the super ego. the id operated for pleasure or instinct. the ego was a persons reality or what is really happening and the super ego was what made up a persons morals. in this theory there were also psychosexual stages as a person developed. the stages are as follows in this order. oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital. overall psychoanalytic theory consist of many different things and is very interesting but these are some of the main things that make up the core of psychoanalytic theory.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-Freud.html
on this site I found information on psychoanalytic theory.
4) http://www.iep.utm.edu/freud/
on this site I found lots of information about Freud's life in general.
http://www.biography.com/people/sigmund-freud-9302400
on this site I also found information about his life.

1) The topic that I decided to look more into this week is hypnosis and the power of suggestion. The reason why I chose this topic is because the subject of hypnosis has always been interesting to me and I’ve never really quite understood how it completely worked. While the chapter was mainly focused on Freud and his psychoanalytic theory, the discussion on hypnosis stood out to me, and I remember learning in another class that Freud had started out by looking into hypnosis with another psychologist so I decided that it was an important topic to look into. I wanted to go more in depth on the subject than what the book mentioned about hypnosis so that I could a better understanding of it.

2) The three aspects that I wanted to discuss about my topic are where how Freud was involved in studying hypnosis, the power of suggestion, mesmerization and how these have been used in therapies. These characteristics are important to look into because understanding where these ideas came about, and what exactly they are, can help expand my knowledge on the subject as well as be able to answer any questions that I had previously. I’m also curious to see how the definitions and practices of hypnosis have changed from back then to today.

3) The term mesmerization originated from Franz Mesmer and is about the transfer of energy between the mesmerist and client to instate a special trance state. In doing this it is possible for the mesmerist to use energy as a means of healing or to reconcile issues within the client. Franz referred to this as animal magnetism and used it to treated neurotic patients using iron magnets and hypnosis, which later became an accepted psychotherapeutic technique.
Mesmerism and hypnosis are not the same thing and true mesmerism is all about energy transference. It is about all the things we can not see but still affect our consciousness. Mesmerism is like hypnotizing someone without even talking.
On the other hand, induction of hypnosis is generally preceded by the establishment of suitable rapport between hypnotist and subject who must be willing, cooperative and trust the hypnotist.
Usually the hypnotist engages the subject's attention while uttering monotonous, repetitive verbal commands. There are different degrees of hypnotism, ranging from light to profound trance states, and characterized by a high level of suggestibility. Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness, wholly dissimilar to either wakefulness or sleep, during which attention is withdrawn from the outside world and is concentrated on mental, sensory and physiological experiences.
Later on after the knowledge of hypnotism spread, Sigmund Freud studied about it in France and was impressed by the therapeutic potential that hypnosis had for neurotic disorders. When he returned home, Freud then used hypnosis to help neurotics recall disturbing events that they had apparently forgotten. As he began to develop his system of psychoanalysis, theoretical considerations, as well as the difficulty he encountered in hypnotizing some patients, led Freud to discard hypnosis in favour of free association, which still accesses the unconsciousness but without using the hypnotic techniques.
One thing that scares me about hypnosis is the way that hypnotized individuals follow instructions in an uncritical, automatic fashion, without having a say of their own. During hypnosis a person’s perception of the real world is defined by the hypnotist's suggestions alone, and are literally followed, no matter what the person may have thought before. Many people describe hypnosis as a "dream-like state", suggesting a regressive mental functioning of the individual who is hypnotized. The fact that someone can just make another human go and do anything they want them to really freaks me out. It’s like having control over someone else like they are a toy robot or something.
However frightening it is, when used in therapy, hypnosis can be a very good thing. Hypnosis is usually considered an aid to psychotherapy, because the hypnotic state allows people to explore painful thoughts, feelings, and memories they might have hidden from their conscious minds. In addition, hypnosis enables people to perceive some things differently, such as blocking an awareness of pain. The two main types of hypnosis therapy are suggestion therapy and patient analysis. Suggestion therapy is using the hypnotic state to make the person better able to respond to suggestions. Therefore, hypnotherapy can help some people change certain behaviors, such as stop smoking or nail biting. It can also help people change perceptions and sensations, and is particularly useful in treating pain. The patient analysis approach uses the relaxed state to explore a possible psychological root cause of a disorder or symptom, such as a traumatic past event that a person has hidden in his or her unconscious memory. Once the trauma is revealed, it can be addressed more in psychotherapy.

4) Links:
http://www.adultsonlyhypnosis.com/blog/what-is-mesmerism-a-how-is-it-different-to-hypnosis
This link helped me understand what exactly mesmerism is and how it differs from hypnosis.
http://www.freudpage.info/freudhypnosis.html
This link helped me understand how Freud was involved with hypnosis and gave more in depth information about what hypnosis is.
http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/mental-health-hypnotherapy
This link helped me understand the benefits to using hypnosis in therapy

Terms: hypnosis, power of suggestion, mesmerization, Franz Mesmer, Sigmund Freud, psychoanalytic theory, therapy, free association, animal magnetism, unconsciousness

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
-The topic that I have selected is defense mechanisms of the ego that Sigmund Freud and his daughter built off of. It fits into this chapter since it ties in with the subject of the evolution of psychoanalytic theory. It also ties in with the Freudian concept of the ego, superego, and the id. Due to these structures of personality, defense mechanisms occur if the ego is attacked. I find this interesting since it can help explain why people become so defensive and different ways they do so. I like to learn about things that can be applied to my own life, and it then helps with my own understanding of the topic. I also have written a paper over her and her contributions of the relationship between anxiety and defense.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
-The first aspect covers exactly what ego defense mechanisms are and why they occur. The second aspect is a list of what the most common defense mechanisms are. The last aspect is snippet of Anna Freud’s background information since this topic is the result of her work rather than her father’s.

3)
-This topic of defense mechanisms was aided by Freud’s daughter Anna, and this is the result of much of her own work. She wrote the first book of defense mechanisms in The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense. She introduced the principle of inner mechanisms that defend the ego in that book. She developed these ideas and elaborated on them, even adding five of her own aside from her father’s. Many psychoanalysts have also added further types of ego defenses. When the ego is attacked, anxiety occurs so it responds through defense. Neurotic and moral anxieties are generated internally. So since it is internal, the form of the ego defense mechanisms arise. The first part of this process is to understand that eros is the life instinct in sexual motivation, and thantos is the death instinct in the form of aggression. Freud believed that human behavior has only these two drives, sex and aggression. These drive the ego. One must understand though how the ego works. There are three personality structures, the ego, superego and the id. The ego is the partly conscious and unconscious, is the center of personality. The id is the instinctive drive of sex and aggression, and needs to be satisfied. The superego is the person’s learned moral values. The ego mediates the other two to maintain a proper balance so neither one has too much control and causes anxiety. Anxiety is an unpleasant inner state that we want to avoid feeling. There are three types of anxiety according to Freud. Neurotic anxiety is the unconscious worry that we will lose control of the id's urges, resulting in punishment for inappropriate behavior. Reality anxiety is fear of real-world events. Moral anxiety involves a fear of violating our own moral values. To deal with these anxieties, this leads to the different types of ego defense mechanisms. The most common form of defense is repression. It is when unwanted impulses are forced from conscious, to unconscious. Projection is when someone cannot accept their own faults so project them onto the other person. Sublimation channels the instinctive urges into activities that are of positive social value, like using aggression in sports. Denial is an outright refusal to admit or recognize that something has occurred or is currently occurring. Displacement involves taking out our frustrations, feelings, and impulses on people or objects that are less threatening. Intellectualization works to reduce anxiety by thinking about events in a cold, clinical way. This defense mechanism allows us to avoid thinking about the stressful, emotional aspect of the situation and instead focus only on the intellectual component. Rationalization is a defense mechanism that involves explaining an unacceptable behavior or feeling in a rational or logical manner, avoiding the true reasons for the behavior. When confronted by stressful events, people sometimes abandon coping strategies and revert to patterns of behavior used earlier in development, this is regression. Reaction formation reduces anxiety by taking up the opposite feeling, impulse or behavior.

4)
-http://allpsych.com/psychology101/defenses/-This site was helpful for my understanding outside of the text of the foundation and basis of the ego defense mechanisms. This helped with explaining my first aspect. It seemed pretty credible as well, since I can check the resources at the end of the page.
-http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/ss/defensemech.htm#step12- This site helped with my knowledge of the most common and known defense mechanisms and what they are. The text only stated three of them, so this helped cover about seven more. This helped explain the second aspect of my topic. It seemed pretty credible as well, since I can check the resources at the end of the page.
- http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_annafreud.htm- I chose this site since it is always a good resource to use, especially for my last aspect of knowing more of Anna Freud. The text did not discuss much about her, so this was a good way to learn more about her.

-Sigmund Freud, ego defense mechanisms, repression, Anna Freud, psychoanalytic theory, ego, id, superego, eros, thantos

What we would like you to do is to find a topic from what we have covered in this week's readings that you are interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find youtube clips that demonstrates something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. But use at least 3 sources (only one video please and make sure it adds to the topic).
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic is Sigmund Freud. I picked him because he came up with many different theories that contributed to psychology and I find it interesting to always learn more about him.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
• Early Life
• Psychoanalytic Theory
• Is it still applicable today?
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Freud was born in what is now known as the Czech Republic. He moved to Vienna when he was 4 and stayed there a majority of his life since. He graduated with a medical degree in 1881. He set up a private practice of treating psychological disorders. He considered himself a scientist over a doctor and wanted to understand the human knowledge and experience. When working with a friend, Freud found that original traumatic experiences that had happened in a person’s past had been hidden from consciousness until brought up. When asked to recall they got emotional. He believed that one could get rid of these symptoms. Freud and friend published these theories calling it Studies in Hysteria.
When it comes to the psychoanalytic theory, it is based on the theory of personality and is made up of the id, ego, and superego. It places a good importance on how conflicts of the mind shape behavior and personality; most of which are unconscious. It all starts with childhood where a child is shaped by the psychosexual stages of development. During the stages, a child has a conflict with biological drives and social expectations. This helps to mature a person’s personality. The id, ego, and superego come into play later in a person’s development. The id is acting upon ones emotions. The superego takes more consideration, often times the little voice in your mind telling you right from wrong. Ego is the compromise made. It takes the good and the bad into one. Today, the psychoanalytic theory has ben modified some and is developed more so on relational point of view. It is still used, but others have used human experience to integrate the Freudian concepts into the new perspectives as well.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.biography.com/people/sigmund-freud-9302400
This site gave me a good look at how Freud was raised and what his home life was like. It covered his accomplishments. I liked this site because it gave me a holistic look. It covered so much information
https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/personality-16/psychodynamic-perspectives-on-personality-77/freudian-psychoanalytic-theory-of-personality-304-12839/
I chose this site because the information was bulleted and easy to read. It gave a good look at the psychoanalytic theory and how it was developed.
http://www.apsa.org/content/psychoanalytic-theory-approaches
This site gave a look at how psychoanalytic theory is still used today. It helped to see where it was applicable in order to fully understand the theory.
Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
• Sigmund Freud
• Psychoanalytic theory
• Studies in hysteria
• Psychosexual stages
• Unconsciousness
• Id
• Ego
• Superego

1) This week I am going to talk more about hypnosis. Hypnosis and mesmerism was used in the past to put people in a trance in order to perform medical functions on them. It created some problems during that time for those who believed in it working. I am interested in this because I think it is cool how hypnotism is used for fun and shows more now where in the past it was used for medical purposes most of the time.

2) Three aspects I am going to talk about this week are how hypnotism came about, what hypnosis is used for today, and some criticisms of it.

3) Hypnosis was helped developed by Sigmund Freud and his idea of psychoanalysis. The idea of hypnosis, or sometimes called mesmerism, came about from Franz Mesmer about 200 years ago when he came up with animal magnetism. The word hypnosis was the last word that was used to explain the phenomenon after neurypnology. Mesmer worked with psychiatric patients when trying out hypnosis. His most famous case was when he studied Miss Paradis. Miss Paradis had a vision disorder which eventually made her blind. Mesmer would work days on end with her to enhance her vision with hypnosis. It is actually reported that she began to be able to see motion, certain colors, and daylight. He was so proud of himself, but then Miss Paradis’ family demanded her back so they could claim the benefits and Mesmer was left with no proof of his accomplishments. At that time there were many people who ridiculed him on his ideas but lately the use of hypnosis has been increasing.

Today hypnosis is used for many different occasions. The most common form of hypnosis that people think about is leisure. It is known by many that hypnosis is used in many schools for fun and entertainment to kind of show what can happen with it. Other forms of use are medical related like pain control, depression, and anxiety. Hypnosis being used medically has been dated all the way back to the Civil War when Army surgeons would hypnotise injured soldiers before amputations occurred. Certain studies have concluded that hypnosis is beneficial instead of using anesthesia during surgeries because it decreases the post-surgical pain, nausea, fatigue, discomfort, as well as the overall money spent per patient. It has also been used to recall certain memories from individuals who are unable to recall them. Hypnotists are able to ring them back to practically that situation and let them see what was happening during that exact time so they can remember. Another use of hypnosis includes the elimination of phobias as well as the elimination of smoking.

Even though there are many different ways that hypnosis can be used there are some criticisms of it. One criticism of hypnotism is that it can be easy to learn how to hypnotize someone because there are many different ways and classes that will teach you how to do it. You can practically do it on a weekend and the school will teach you as long as you pay the tuition. The use of clinical hypnosis is growing but if it is that easy to obtain the ability to know how to hypnotize someone then it makes people think if they actually know how and are experienced or if they are doing the minimum. A second criticism of hypnosis it is validity and accountability. It has been used to recall memories from the past but studies have shown that it is not all that accurate. When hypnotized the mind is very suggesting to the outside experiences, for example other sounds and people in the room. Memory recall by hypnosis had been used in the criminal justice system in the past but it has been shown to be inadmissible in court after it was proven that they had convicted many people based off of hypnosis that were later proven innocent. One last criticism that hypnosis has is the idea of hysteria. Hysteria was made known by Jean-Martin Charcot and is a disorder that essentially stems from being hypnotized.

4) https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/the-trouble-hypnosis - I chose this URL because it talks a little bit about how hypnosis became so big today, what some uses for it are and some of the criticisms it has. It helped me learn a lot about the topic.
http://www.abouthypnosis.com/history-of-hypnosis.html - I chose this URL because it helped me learn more information about how hypnosis came about and what it is used for.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/01/hypnosis.aspx - I chose this URL because it talks about what hypnosis is used for today and hints at some criticisms of hypnosis.

Terms: hypnosis, Franz Mesmer, animal magnetism, mesmerism, neurypnology, suggesting, hysteria, Jean-Martin Charcot, Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis

The topic from chapter 12 that I am going to be discussing throughout this essay is the early treatment of the mentally ill. This is how chapter 12 begins. It fits into this chapter because psychiatrists and physiologists of the era are trying to figure out ways to treat the mentally ill. I am interested in this, because I want to work with severely mentally ill people with my psychology degree. Knowing a history about how psychiatrists and physiologists back in the 18th century, on up to how we do things today, would be great experience and provide me with a good background knowledge for what I may be doing someday in a career.

The three aspects that will be discussed in this essay are how the mentally ill were treated during the enlightenment period, how they were treated in the 19th century, and how they were treated in the 20th century.

The mentally ill were first treated during the enlightenment era. Phillipe Pinel and William Tuke both took on similar roles in two different places during this time. Each of them set out to treat the mentally ill in a more moral and appropriate way. Pinel started a program called Traitement moral, which translates to Moral treatment. In this program, he set out to make improvements in the places that were keeping the mentally ill locked in chains. The way that he did this was by giving the mentally ill better nutrition, hygiene, and general living conditions. He also gave an early form of behavior modifications, including punishment and rewards in accordance with how they behave. Tuke did very similar things. He founded the York Retreat, which was a rural place in North England, set on a hill. The mentally ill were taken here, and given good nutrition, hygiene, a great view, and work. Thanks to Tuke and Pinel, the mentally ill were being treated a lot better, and more importantly being treated like the humans that they are.

In addition to moral treatment, during the enlightenment era, there was a psychiatrist named Benjamin Rush who was trying to find a medical approach to treating the mentally ill. Rush came up with a couple different ways to medically treat the mentally ill. The first way was bloodletting. Rush believed that hypertension in the brains blood vessels was the cause for mental illnesses. He thought that if you drained some of the blood out of the blood vessels, it would calm the patients down, and they wouldn't act so aggressively. His hypothesis wasn't wrong, however it was probably due to the fact that the patients just lost two pints of blood and were too weak to act in any sort of way. Rush also came up with the tranquilizer. This was a chair with straps on it, and a box to go over the head. The patient would be strapped to this, and their face would be covered, and this would allow the patient to settle down, lower their heart rate, and take on a more calm behavior.

After the enlightenment era, steps were taken towards asylums as a center for treatment towards the mentally ill. A Quaker named Thomas Kirkbride was the leader of this asylum movement. In the mid 19th century, Kirkbride started making plans on how to make treatment centers for the mentally ill to go to. He based his ideas off of Tuke's York plan. He had several points that he wanted each one of his asylums to have. The first one was that it should be on a rural hillside, like Tuke's, so that patients could have a nice, relaxing view, of the countryside. The next requirement was at the center of the asylums, there should be a place for administrative offices and parlors for families to visit their mentally ill relatives. Next, on each side of the main center, there should be wings coming off of it. One wing will house the males residents, and the opposite wing will house the females residents. The wings should be set back in a "shallow v," so that all patients can look out their window at the countryside, and get sunlight and fresh air. The corridors should be plenty wide so that patients can use them to exercise in when they can't get outside. Also, these asylums should be three to four stories high, with the best behaving patients getting the upper floors, with the better views. Lastly, there needed to be a couple smaller separate buildings for the patients that are loud and behave poorly, so that those patients don't disturb the patients that are behaving well. Kirkbride had only intended to have up to 250 patients in his asylum, but by the time the 19th century had ended, he had 600 patients in his asylum. He had made a wonderful contribution to the treatment of the mentally ill, and again the mentally ill were beginning to be treated morally, as they should.

In the 2oth century steps had been taken by Dorthea Dix to make conditions for the mentally ill even better. She toured around the country, racking up about 60,000 miles worth of traveling to different places that housed the mentally ill. In each one she was less than displeased with the way that the mentally ill were treated. They were being chained up, abused, and neglected, and Dix set out to fix that. She presented her findings to the Massachusetts Legislature, and that led to a series of reforms, including an increase of funds to improve the asylums. In addition to this, a man named Clifford Beers had been put into one of these asylums for attempted suicide. He was released after three years, and when he got out, he wrote a book about how terrible he and all the others in the institution were treated. Due to the fact that Beers was living proof of the poor ways that patients were treated, more actions were taken to treat the mentally ill better. Beers promoted Mental hygiene as a way to better the mentally ill, and spent his remaining years telling the world how to prevent mental illnesses, and enhance mental health, and lobbying for the creation of mental hygiene clinics.

As one can see by these three different eras, treating the mentally ill has taken tremendous steps over the last couple hundred years. They were not perfect by any means, but that is also looking at it with a presentist view. In those days people who were mentally ill were not seen as equals, and therefore didn't need as much attention as people who were considered "normal." Regardless, improvements were made, and the people of this essay got us going in the right direction on how to treat the mentally ill.

Terms: Dix, Kirkbride, Tuke, Rush, Pinel, Beers, asylums, elinlightenment, mentally ill, bloodletting, moral treatment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_treatment
This cite helped me to get information on Rush, Tuke, and Pinel

https://www.mccarter.org/Education/mrs-packard/html/6.html
This cited gave me information on Dorthea Dix, and told about some of the things she did.

http://www.kirkbridebuildings.com/about/kirkbride.html
This cite gave me information on Kirkbride, and talked about the buildings and asylums that he designed.

1) The topic I chose to research was the early treatment of the mentally ill. This chapter discussed the reform of treating mentally ill people and also the moral treatment of patients became an issue that lead to the reform. I found this topic to be interesting because reform is something that always becomes necessary at some point with almost every system whether it be the treatment of the mentally ill or the education system. It is important for the growth of society.

2) The three aspects of this topic I want to discuss are:
different views towards treating the mentally ill
why the asylums closed
What asylums were like before the reform

3) Some people believed that mental illness was a moral issue that could be fixed through humane care and instilling moral discipline. This was done by hospitalizing and isolating the mental ill, and discussing the individual's wrong beliefs. Lobotomies were used to disrupt the brain circuits that might have caused the unwanted symptoms. It was even used for patients suffering from depression and anxiety. Another early treatment of mental illness was called trepanation. This was done by putting a whole in the skull and top of head in attempts to "cure" the patient of mental illness. In the 1600's and english physician Thomas Willis used vomitting, purging and bleeding to try and fix people with mental illnesses. He thought this would be effective because he believed that chemical imbalances in the body were the cause of most ailments including mental illness. Others believed that the mental illness could be cured by exorcisms and prayer. This was because they did not know much about mental illness and say disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder to be signs of demonic possession. In the 18th century moral treatment started to become an issue, physicians used restraints and ice baths to try and get rid of certain symptoms of mental illness. Asylums became popular because isolation was something widely used to treat mental illness not only for the patients but to get them away from their families and communities. There was a lot of overcrowding in asylums though so the actual quality of the treatment for their patients came in to question. In the 1930's the use low blood sugar coma's became popular because they were thought to rewire the brain. The use of induced seizures was used but found to be ineffective. But the use of induced seizures led to the effective use of electric shocks and ETC. In Austria, doctors started inducing fevers in their patients that were supposed to cure some symptoms of mental illness.

A main reason for asylums closing is because they became too large to provide quality care for the patients which allowed for abuse to get into the system. Another reason for the closing of asylums was the government stopped funding renovations of them because of the advancement in the treatment of mental illness that made it possible for standard hospitals to provide care and advancements in medications made it unnecessary for patients to be under 24-hour care/supervision. The passing of the Mental Health Act in 1983 was another reason that asylums closed. This gave people committed to mental asylums their full rights back giving them the ability to appeal their certification in the asylums.

Before the reform of asylums patients were not treated well by any type of moral standards. They were locked in tiny cells to take shame away from their families. Straight jackets and masks were put on the patients. Women were also treated better than males, but they generally had separate institutions.

4) http://www.everydayhealth.com/pictures/worst-mental-health-treatments-history/#11
I used this in my discussion of different tactics for the treatment of mental illness.

http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/283/the-history-of-mental-illness-from-skull-drills-to-happy-pills
this also had information talking about the treatments of mental illness

http://thetimechamber.co.uk/beta/sites/asylums/asylum-history/the-history-of-the-asylum
This had a lot of good information on why asylums were closed.

Terms: asylums, moral treatment, Dorothea Dix, Clifford Beers, lobotomies, Mental Health Act, hospitals, treatment,

This week, the focus of my research was on a man by the name of Alfred Adler. He was mentioned in this chapter in relation to Freud. Although he was originally a strong supporter of Freud’s ideas, he eventually broke off and formed his own theory under what he called individual psychology. I wanted to know more about Adler and his theory, so I set out to find more on his name. I discovered that Adler had many contributions to the field of psychology which were not mentioned in the textbook. He was one of the first to discuss the importance of birth order and its influence on one’s personality. Adler also defined a set of personality “types” which were based on a person’s social interests and activity. Finally, I found that Adler’s techniques are still at use in what is known as Adlerian therapy. All three of these ideas I will attempt to describe here.

The position of a child in their family, the order in which they were born, was seen as extremely important to Alfred Adler. Although he recognized that many other factors including the spacing of children, number of children, and parental influences could have an effect on a child’s personality, it was birth order which he focused most heavily on. Of course, there are many potential scenarios when considering birth order. We have the first-born children which tend to be competitive, conscientious, responsible, and relatively high achieving. However, these children are also the guinea pig of the family and may feel an extreme amount of pressure placed upon them. In addition, if a second child is born, the first born child may become jealous and lonely as they cope with the loss of their parents’ undivided attention. The child may then have a strong sense of what Adler called superiority striving in which the child focuses on achievement, superiority, to regain their parents’ attention. Of course, if they fail to receive this attention, they may feel as though they aren’t achieving enough to warrant their parents’ attention and develop an inferiority complex. Middle children have a rider range of personality types. They tend to be high achieving as they try to catch up with their older sibling, but they often feel left out or forgotten. On a high note, middle children are often the mediators of the family and often find themselves with many friends as they are more down to earth, even-tempered, and loyal. Then, of course, there is the youngest child, the baby of the family. This child is often spoiled which could lead to dependence and unselfishness, both of which pose a problem as the child becomes an adult. This child is often entertaining and outgoing as well. Still, we have several other situations to consider within a family two of which I will discuss next. We must think about the case of the only child. They can have characteristics of both a first born and youngest child. Although they are often spoiled and have the undivided attention of both parents, only children also figure out things on their own and learn to depend on themselves; they are used to being alone. Finally, there is the possibility of twins. Usually one of the twins will assume the first born characteristics while the other exhibits the personality of the youngest child. Twins do well together and are extremely close which can cause problems later in life when making other friends and as the two go their separate ways in adulthood. Overall, the order in which one is born can play an important part in their personality characteristics.

Beyond birth order, Adler also came up with his own personality types. This is not like the Type A or Type B personalities we often think of based on various individual characteristics, but instead a ranking based on one’s level of social activity and social interest. Those who are high in both social activity and interest are known as the “socially useful” type. They have a balance between activity and interest and are involved with others but not too much. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have individuals who are low on both social activity and interest, the “avoiding” type, or recluse. Thus, they keep to themselves, are extremely introverted, and tend to avoid all aspects of life. This can naturally lead to mental disorders if one completely retreats into oneself. The two other personality types Adler developed were the “ruling” type and “leaning” type. The ruling type has high social activity but low social interest. Therefore, they tend to be aggressive and dominant and will fight to get ahead of anyone in their way, yet they tend to care little for others. If these “rulers” are unable to find an outlet for their aggression and will to dominate others, they may turn those feeling on themselves and develop addictions or self-harm. The “leaning” type is just the opposite of the “ruling” type; they have low social activity but high social interest. Thus, they are sensitive and compassionate towards others but tend to build walls to shelter themselves from others. Even so, they rely heavily on others for energy and support. This type is more likely to develop phobias, anxiety, or OCD. Although defined by Adler, a person may seem to fall into more than one personality type over time, so these types are not in any way concrete but rather a general guideline for different levels of social activity and social interest.

Although we might not hear about Adler much today, some of his ideas do still exist in the form of therapy. Adlerian therapy focuses on an individual as a whole rather than individual parts and also relies heavily on values and experiences of early childhood which are said to determine a person’s perception of themselves later in life. Thus, this type of theory focuses on identifying those defining characteristics of a childhood and how one sees themselves now and then redefining those perceptions through a series of four steps. The first step, engagement, is simply the development of a trusting relationship between the therapist and their patient. Assessment is the second step and includes recalling those childhood memories, feelings, and values. This helps a patient identify what Adler called a lifestyle pattern, a way of thinking and behaving, which originates in early childhood. Thus, the patient comes to better understand themselves and their situations. In the third step, insight, the therapist helps the patient come up with new ways of thinking about themselves and their situations; they attempt to change the way a person perceives themselves which can be causing various issues. Finally, the patient enters the reorientation step where they are encouraged to engage in actions which reinforce this new way of thinking. This process can be extremely helpful to individuals especially those with high intelligence and verbal skills. Yet, it does require the patient to recall a great deal of information and to develop certain insights about themselves and their situation which all individuals may not be ready to do. So, Adlerian therapy is in no way meant for everyone.

http://www.d120.org/assets/1/staff_assets/rhalbur/Alfred_Adler_-_Birth_Order.pdf
This site gave me information on Adler’s idea of birth order.

http://journalpsyche.org/alfred-adler-personality-theory/
From this site, I gained information about Adler’s personality types.

http://www.goodtherapy.org/adlerian-psychology.html
This site gave a great explanation of Adlerian therapy techniques.

Terminology: Alfred Adler, Sigmund Freud, individual psychology, inferiority complex, personality type, Adlerian therapy

1) This week I am going to cover Franz Anton Mesmer and mesmerism. This week’s chapter talked a little about Franz Anton Mesmer and how he would use his methods to cure people of sicknesses and other stressors. I wanted to discuss this because I thought it was interesting how people used to believe in these stores that Mesmer would tell, and we still have people telling similar stories today.
2) For this assignment, I would like to talk about how Mesmer discovered his “talent” and what he used it for. Then I would like to talk about his successes and failures with his shows. Finally I would like to talk about how mesmerism came to America and how it was received here.
3) Franz Anton Mesmer first studied law and theology and then switched his studies to medicine. He was unhappy with the medical practices at that time- bloodletting, opiates, and purgatives -so he wanted to find a new way to help people. He believed that good health came from magnetic forces that were properly aligned. He called this animal magnetism. Mesmer would give his patients medicines with large amounts of iron in them. He would then move a magnet over their bodies. The patients would be in a trance-like state, and when they woke up, they would feel better. Eventually he came to believe that he didn’t need the magnet, and that he had magnetic forces inside of himself that he could manipulate and control to help heal his patients. He would also massage patients who were feeling distress in certain areas.
Mesmer began his practice Vienna, however the medical community there soon fired him from his spot on the faculty of the University of Vienna and they forbid him from practicing medicine in Vienna ever again. Mesmer packed up his belongings and moved to Paris where he quickly became a hit with the elite. He soon had to begin group sessions to fit everyone in. He held these group sessions in his fancy clinic and would be very dramatic while mesmerizing his patients. He often wore a violet flowing robe to impress his patients. His patients would be sitting in a circle, touching each other or holding hands. In the center of the room would be a tub holding various chemicals and iron rods. These iron rods would then be touched to the patient’s affected areas. The patients would influence each other by making noises and swooning when Mesmer would perform an act on them. Eventually a royal commission was appointed to investigate Mesmer. This commission was made up of people such as Benjamin Franklin and John Guillotine. They determined that Mesmer was misleading his patients, and he left Paris. He continued to work without great crowds until he died.
Charles Poyen was one of the people who brought mesmerism to America. In America, mesmerists began to use the power of suggestion to help people deal with everything from family problems to health problems. These patients also felt like they had been cured and some even felt a spiritual awakening within themselves after they had been under the power of suggestion. Mesmerism was not just a mistake made in psychology’s history, though. It paved the way for hypnosis and began many different movements such as the New Thought movement and mind cure philosophy.
4) http://everythingaboutpsychology-rohitgurung.blogspot.com/2011/11/mesmerismfranz-anton-mesmer.html I chose this website because it discussed Mesmer’s following and practice. I used this website to talk about Mesmer’s successes and failures.
http://www.historyofhypnosis.org/franz-anton-mesmer/ I chose this website because it gave more details about what Mesmer did and why people thought it worked. I used this website to talk about what Mesmer did and why he did it.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/05/09/psychologys-history-of-being-mesmerized/ I chose this website because it told how other paitents helped Mesmer and how mesmerism came to the US. I used this website to discuss Mesmer’s practice and how the movement came to the United States.
5) Franz Anton Mesmer, mesmerism, bloodletting, animal magnetism, John Guillotine, Charles Poyen, hypnosis,, New Thought movement, mind cure philosophy.

1) My topic is about schizophrenia. It relates to the class because it was briefly discussed within the chapter we just read. I find this topic to be really interesting because I’m really curious about this particular mental disorder the most.
2) The first aspect I’d like to talk about is the history of schizophrenia. The second part of this topic I’d like to discuss is who discovered this mental disorder. The last aspect I’ll discuss is what we know today about schizophrenia.
3) Schizophrenia’s first name was dementia praecox. It was renamed much later by a man named Paul Eugen Bleuler in 1908. The word schizophrenia derives from the greek words schizo, meaning split, and phren, meaning mind. This new name was meant to clear the mental illness more clear in meaning. People were still getting the wrong impression about what schizophrenia was. However, dementia praecox was discovered by a different man; Emil Kraepelin. Kraepelin was the first to distinguish what schizophrenia was compared to other types of affective psychoses in 1887. He created the Compendium der Psychiatrie which classifies mental disorders. This inspired the DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and the ICD, International Classification of Diseases. Kraepelin believed this only only occurred in younger people and caused mental deterioration. Bleuler believed this was wrong and he also believed it didn’t cause mental deterioration. He did, however, believe that schizophrenia led to a heightened consciousness of memories and experiences. In ancient times schizophrenia was thought of as madness and even demonic possession. Many believed it was a punishment from God or the gods. One of the first documented occurrences was in the Hindu Arthava Veda in 1400 B.C. There were also documentations in Chinese texts. They described schizophrenia in much the same way; supernatural and demonic. Greeks and Romans were similar in their views as well but some poets were inspired to create prophets. Institutionalization and formal detentions started appearing in the medieval era. Some were cared for in monasteries and even fools towers. Ancient treatments consisted of trepanning, blood-letting, purging. There were also punishing ‘treatments’ for those that felt the patient had angered the gods, like starvation and flogging. There were more modern ‘treatments’ before medicine. There were treatments like insulin shock therapy, injections of sulphur. Lobotomy became a very popular treatment. Today, however schizophrenia is regarded much differently despite the stereotypes of this disorder. We still don’t know the causes of schizophrenia. There are more humane ways of treatment. Medications called antipsychotics. There are more benefits from this, there are less side effects, it’s more effective. There are a higher percentage that are recovering and improving. There is an even less percentage that are being hospitalized and committing suicide. There is a downfall to the medication, it is a really lengthy process trying to find the right dosage of the right medication.
4) https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201209/brief-history-schizophrenia
This website gave the early information about schizophrenia, discusses Kraeplin and Bleuler.
http://historycooperative.org/divine-madness-a-history-of-schizophrenia/
This gave an in-depth discussion about schizophrenia in antiquity.
http://www.world-schizophrenia.org/disorders/schizophrenia.html
This gave information on current medications. It gave the names of medications that are offered.

TERMS:
Kraeplin
Bleuler
Schizophrenia
antipsychotics
dementia praecox

1. Psychoanalysis Mental structures
a. What I enjoyed about this theory and what interested me the most was that the topic was on Freud, which is a household name, and really just because I hadn’t heard of this theory. I’ve never done any research papers or informational digging on Freud but from media I’ve heard that Freud was a sexual fiend and addicted to cocaine. That alone is pretty awesome. So that stimulated another big interest that I had. But when I really think about why I wanted to write about this was that as I was reading I found that I was questioning what of the three components of the mental structure, was the biggest and if I would be classified as healthy as I can think of a dozen people who I would say aren’t healthy.
2. 1. ID, 2. Super Ego, 3. Ego
a. ID
i. What I focus on when I want to discuss this aspect would be that this is a pleasure orientated aspect. Everything that this has to do with is pleasure. No consequences just pleasure at all costs. Everything here is “want, want, want” The next thing that I want to discuss is that in this structure of the mind we really look at what our instincts have shown us. It’s really primitive when you want to think of it. We do what we feel like doing because it’s naturally good. It can even be naturally pleasurable. When I think of this I think of a fart. You get gassy and you want to relieve the pressure, our instincts are going to say let it loose why hold it in? The final thing to tie this together is that it is unconscious. This doesn’t mean that we can’t understand it, it just means that there’s nothing that we can do for how it feels. If we have gas or ID is going to want to relieve it every time no matter what.
b. Super Ego
i. This isn’t really the exact opposite but it does conflict with the ID. This structure is all about the rules. All about how others will feel for what we do. Not only that but about the rules of things. It’s all about the morality of things even at times surpassing the legality of things. Next I want to discuss that this concept is based on the Social implications. And these social implications may not be the most pleasurable outcome. In most cases actually it isn’t. But nonetheless the super ego structure wants nothing else but social implication. And finally this is also mostly an unconscious act. Unconsciously the Super Ego is always wanting to do what is best for the social perspective. When I compare the ID with the Super ego I think of the ID as things that we do in first person perspective, we look at things about what is good for us what makes us happy. As you look at the super ego it’s a 3rd person perspective. It looks at what you do, it sees you as a judgmental aspect of society. Therefore we do what is best for society. Using the farting example super ego says don’t fart people could smell it and not like it.
c. Ego
i. Finally the Ego. When we look at this the main component is the Reality Principle. This principle brings us to a balance. We weigh the choices and put a weight on which structure has the best argument. This is the judge of the structures. We decide if the rules are needed to be followed or if the rule qualifications are met or not. This is found in the consciousness we are aware of the functioning and we have to analyze it. Using the farting example the Ego says “there’s no one around we don’t need to follow the social rules”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-28fWuBIpoA
This YouTube is a great source of learning It covers the Psychoanalytic Approach with real world use and application. I used this to get a demonstrative perspective of the analysis that Freud developed. This however did not give insight to how Freud developed this analysis.
The Next source that I used was the book itself pages 352 to 364.
Within these pages we learned about how Freud found not only psychoanalysis but psychology as a scholarly perspective. New they took his life and pinpointed the medical experiences that he had that contributed to the psychoanalysis theory. What really got the ball rolling was his interest in sex and the connection to pleasurable things. From this they talk about the unconsciousness and consciousness that developed. Finally at the end of the pages they talk about his life and his contributions. They talk about why some people choose not to buy into some of his views. Especially overtime why his theories have been unaccepted.
https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/personality-16/psychodynamic-perspectives-on-personality-77/freudian-psychoanalytic-theory-of-personality-304-12839/
This site gives the basics and tells about the structure of the theory more than anything. The beginning is a brief and I mean very brief history of Freud. Then the article discusses the skepticism and why you could be skeptical.
Terminology: Freud, Psychanalysis, ID, Ego, Super Ego,

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
The topic I would like to discuss in more depth is hypnosis. The topic is a fun one because most of us have had an experience with hypnosis in one way or another. Whether it is from going to a hypnosis show, losing track of time while driving down a monotonous stretch of road or we ourselves or someone we know have used hypnosis in some way to improve their lives whether it be through quitting smoking, weight loss or other sorts of therapies. It fits into this chapter because we learned about the origins of hypnosis in this chapter.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
The three aspects of hypnosis that I would like to discuss are the areas where hypnosis can be used such as: entertainment, medicinal, and with therapy.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Probably the most common form of hypnosis the most of us are accustomed to is the kind used for entertainment purposes. From Chris Angel the infamous illusionist that has been known to hypnosis entire rooms full of people on television to hypnotists show most of us have probably attended over the years, there is a set pattern they follow. They have participants who have volunteered to be hypnotized come up on stage and focus on an object while he chants at them that they are getting more and more sleepy and soon enough he seems to have them under his command. Aside from this sort of hypnosis that people go out in search of, most of us probably have hypnotized ourselves quite regularly. Every time you drive down either a particularly boring or familiar stretch of road, which is easy enough to do in Iowa, and suddenly you realize you do not recall driving for the past five minutes, that is because you had put yourself in a hypnotic trance. Day dreaming is another form of a trance that many of us experience quite regularly, and is another way that hypnosis enters into our every day lives. While the entertainment value of hypnosis has made many people skeptical of its actually abilities, the medical field has even been known to dabble into the field of hypnosis. Hypnosis can be used to calm patience before painful or stressful procedures or exams, and has even been recorded to help with moderate pain, hot flashes, behavior changes such as with wetting the bed, insomnia or smoking. However in healthcare there are much more regulation with what can and cannot be done with hypnosis, Mayo clinics warns against negative reactions such as: headaches, drowsiness, anxiety or even the development of false memories. Hypnosis can be found even more so in the area of therapy. In therapy hypnosis can be used on patience to bring them into a calm state where they may be able to recall memories that have slipped from their conscious mind either to protect them or ones they have simply forgotten. There are two forms of hypnosis used for this purpose; suggestion therapy which is used in order to aid patients to stop a bad habit, such as nail biting or over eating. The second form of therapy that uses hypnosis is called analysis which is used to aid patients in remembering past traumas in order to discuss and work through them in a healthy manner rather than repressing them. However this is where false memories can occur if the hypnotist, hopefully a licensed therapist as well, is giving the patient, who is in a suggestible state, the wrong prompts or questions that can lead to the patients forming memories that did not exist before entering into the hypnotic state. If done correctly hypnosis can do wonder for patients in helping with a variety or issues such as: sleep disorders, depression, and addiction. While it is true that hypnosis does not work on every person, this should not invalidate its worth in the field of medicine or mental health. While yes, there should be limitations on what hypnosis is used for, it can be a useful tool in helping patients find inner peace and alleviation from physical ailments. Just as with drugs, the same affects will not be seen in every person, and for some people, it may not work at all.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/hypnotizing-yourself.html
This website talked about how hypnosis is used for entertainment purposes.
http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/mental-health-hypnotherapy#1
This website informed me on how hypnosis was used in mental health
http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hypnosis/basics/why-its-done/prc-20019177
This website informed me on how hypnosis was used in the field of medicine.
Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Mesmer, hypnosis, trance, suggestion therapy, analysis

1)
My topic today is hypnotism. I was interested in the early mesmerism and the Neurypnology suggested by James Braid so I decided to research further into it to get some more information.

2)
The three aspects that I wanted to cover in this paper are first, basic structure of neurosis, hypnotic color perception and finally, hypnotism and crime.

3) There are early theories of hypnosis that try to describe its process in a systematic way. Older theories are less systematic and speculation based. The first, Animal Magnetism theory, states that there is a basic connection between the inductor and the inductee where the inductee is basically a pawn for the inductor to control. I would say that this is consistent with the public perception of hypnotism as portrayed by the media in today’s society. The next theory is that of neurosis which is fundamentally the idea that certain mental diseases allow the susceptibility to hypnotism. This idea is relevant to early scientists who hoped to use hypnotism to treat mental diseases. Similarly, Doctor Jean-Martin Charcot proposed that hypnotism would only work on patients suffering from hysteria. Finally, the most accurate theory of hypnosis is the theory of suggestion. Based on the Liebeault-Bernheim theory, the theory of suggestion essentially states that we are all susceptible to suggestion to some degree, but that we must reach a state or a trance to be at our peak of suggestibility. Which leads into the idea that there are levels of suggestibility that are supposedly through dependant on different traits and monitored on various scales. I have read that very few members of the population can be hypnotized, in terms of percentage, and I have heard the opposite as well. I have also read that susceptibility is based on traits and that it is cognitively based, but that would probably just be representative of the type of psychologist that you talk to. However, one study from the Stanford University School of Medicine suggests that they are close to finding a brain signature for the type of person who is able to be hypnotized. This is good news for those looking to see more of a cognitive based style of susceptibility over that of any personal factors. These scientists claimed to have found areas of the brain capable of differentiating the levels of susceptibility. There are different symptoms that have been noted as common amongst people in a hypnotic state. Amnesia is very typical to occur after hypnosis has ended. It is said to occur like a dream eludes your memory; although some psychologists suggest that by simply suggesting that the participants will remember the events, that they may very well. Hypnosis has effects on voluntary muscles in that the suggestion allows the voluntary ability to extend to the inductor. Hallucinations and delusions are also typical amongst these participants when the circumstances have been suggested; furthermore, sensations can be created and ignored during this trance as well. Another common symptom of hypnosis is the ability of suggestions to project onto the inductee well after the conclusion of hypnotism. Previously suggested acts can be induced, as well as a similar state of hypnosis, upon either intervals of time or the occurrence of a stimulus. The next aspect of hypnotism that I have researched is hypnotism and color theory. Researchers at Harvard University were interested in how hypnosis can affect the brain. In order to find out, the researchers had individuals lay down in a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner and were shown images of colored blocks and gray shaded blocks (separately) and were asked to drain the color from the colored blocks (to see gray) or to add color to the gray blocks (to see color). Researchers asked participants to do this both while they were hypnotized and not hypnotized in the PET scanner and found that different areas of the brain were active while participants were hypnotized than when they were not. When given instructions while not hypnotized, the right side of a participant’s brain would become active. They were able to imagine color where there was gray or gray where there was color, although they could not actually see the color/gray itself. Once hypnotized, the change in color could then be perceived and the left side of the brain also became active along with the right side. Researchers theorized that since the left side of the brain is known for logic and reasoning, hypnosis stimulates the left side differently, allowing the perception of color change. When hypnotized, the left side could register what the participants were told to see, whereas, the right side registered what the participants were told to see whether they were under hypnosis or not. What this shows is that the brain and conscious experiences change while under hypnosis in ways that cannot be changed when someone is not. Color perception involving hypnosis could start a path to other hypnosis benefits. Finally, I will be discussing hypnosis as it relates to crime. From the early concern of the possibilities of hypnotism arose critical questions on the nefarious capabilities. People were worried of the possibility of those who would use hypnotism to convince others into committing crimes. From what I have found, hypnosis and the strength of the trance and suggestive abilities derive from the amount of time spent with the inductor doing suggestive practice. The level of hypnosis that would convince someone to commit actions that are out of their moral bounds is simply too complex. One would not be able to get this level of suggestibility out of someone without much suggestive practice. Furthermore, implications of the use of hypnosis in court settings became an important topic. The use of hypnotism to proclaim innocence, as a lie form of polygraph, or to bring about memories of crimes were considered questionable. It is argued that one can’t reach a state of hypnosis on the first introduction in a court hearing, that it is hard to tell if one is actually in a hypnotic state and that the information coming from a hypnotic state can be implanted and as false as the delusions they are capable of seing.

4)
http://psychclassics.asu.edu/James/Principles/prin27.htm
I chose this website because it came from a university, which puts its credibility on the line with all of the information it puts out. I got most of my basic information on hypnosis from here.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2012/10/not-getting-sleepy-research-explains-why-hypnosis-doesnt-work-for-all.html
I chose this website because it came from a university, which puts its credibility on the line with all of the information it puts out. I got most of my basic information on inability to be inducted into hypnosis from here.

http://www18.homepage.villanova.edu/diego.fernandezduque/Teaching/PhysiologicalPsychology/Articles/PosterSampleHypnotism.pdf
I chose this website because it came from a university, which puts its credibility on the line with all of the information it puts out. I got most of my basic information on color perception from here.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/08.21/hypnosis.html
I chose this website because it came from a university, which puts its credibility on the line with all of the information it puts out. I got the rest of my information on color perception from here.

http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Munster/Witness/hypnotism.htm
I chose this website because it came from a university, which puts its credibility on the line with all of the information it puts out. I got most of my information on crime and hypnosis from here.

Hypnotism, Neurypnology, James Braid, Animal magnetism, mesmerism, hysteria, Jean-Martin Charcot, suggestion, Liebeault-Bernheim theory

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.

I studied psychoanalysis. It fits into the chapter because the chapter discusses mental illness and treatments and psychoanalysis is a way to treat some mental illnesses. I was interested in it because it is something that still exists today, and I wanted to know more about why it lasted.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?

I would like to discuss these three things:
What psychoanalysis is
The benefits of it or suspected benefits
The criticisms of it

3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.

Psychoanalysis is the theory and practice of bringing unconscious thoughts and actions to the conscious mind. This theory was developed by Sigmund Freud. One case helped Freud develop this theory, Anna O. This was the case of a girl with hysteria, physical symptoms with no physical cause. Freud hypothesized that physical symptoms could be developed from repressed conflicts. From here, psychoanalysis was developed. As a practice, psychoanalytic psychologists will have clients freely speak about whatever they chose. The therapist will analyze the importance and meaning of the client's words.

The benefits of psychoanalysis include the potential to treat anxiety and depression. How do we know it works? Psychoanalysis has survived since 1856. It has survived the test of time. Based on this is must have a significant success rate, or perceived success. The lasting of psychoanalysis has also provided time for psychoanalysis to be criticized.

Criticisms of psychoanalysis include the commitment to therapy. It is very time-consuming, and results do not arrive quickly. Clients must be committed and open and motivated to share their thoughts with the therapist. Therapy does not work for everyone or for every mental illness. The recalling of repressed memories may cause more distress than healing. These all important when considering the validity of psychoanalysis.

4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-Freud.html
This site was helpful because it gave me a background on Sigmund Freud before I read in more detail of psychoanalysis. It also provided a brief explanation of the Anna O. Case.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/psychoanalysis.html
This site was incredibly beneficial because it explained thoroughly what psychoanalysis is and then provided criticisms.

http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/beystehner.html
This site was helpful because it also thoroughly explained what psychoanalysis is, benefits, and criticisms of the practice/theory.

Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Psychoanalysis
Anna O. Case
Sigmund Freud

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic for this week is hypnotism and mesmerism. It was talked about in this weeks chapter thoroughly because this was something that could be used to treat illnesses, mental or otherwise. Hypnotism interests me because it seems to be still not fully understood, even by those who call themselves hypnotists and perform this practice.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
Three aspects I would like to elaborate on more are what happens to a person under hypnosis, surgery under hypnosis and what it is used for today still besides entertainment for a person's peers.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
After some research I found that even today we still don't fully understand hypnosis. When asking what exactly happens to a person under hypnosis, science can explain parts of it but why it works is still somewhat a mystery. What we do know is that it is a state of hyper-focus. A sign that a person is actually hypnotized is a decrease in involuntary eye movement. This may make it seem as though the person is not paying attention when all actuality they are so focused in some instances they must be reminded to blink. The active areas in the brain during hypnosis are the same areas that are active when a person is focused on mental imagery except for one, the precuneus. The precuneus is active during activities involving an awareness of the self and one's surroundings. This explains why people can be hypnotized into thinking they are freezing in an 80 degree room. This website also states that many scientists believe that our experiences are shaped more by our expectation or idea of a stimulus than the stimulus itself. It also states that there are ten times as many nerve fibers going from the brain than going to the brain. In other words the brain has ten times as much input as it does output which could be largely responsible for why people actually believe they are doing the suggested activities or are in a suggested environment. Scientists also believe that the subconscious sort of jumps in the drivers seat under hypnosis and the conscious takes the back. This explains why under hypnosis you won't do anything you wouldn't do when in a fully aware state of mind.
The text talked about James Esdaile's research on mesmerism-induced anesthesia and how it had an astonishing mortality rate of 5% when the average mortality rate of the time was 40%. This got me interested to see if this practice is still used today. With the research I did I found that hypnosis is still used in surgeries but this is more so to deal with the anxiety and almost always (depending on the surgery) paired with a local anesthetic. I did however find the story of a 66 year old man who has apparently undergone six separate surgeries with self-induced hypnotism as his only sedation. The sixth surgery was a replacement of Alex Lenkei's ankle joint. Lenkei was reportedly awake and aware during the surgery, asking how it was going and even commenting on the noise of the saw cutting the bone. There is no explanation for this but I can only theorize that Lenkei has an extraordinary control over his brain. As earlier stated the brain has ten times as many nerve cells going to the brain than going away from it. Perhaps he somehow sends false messages from his brain to his ankle which overwrite those painful messages going from the ankle to the brain.
However, not all of us can use hypnotism as Mr. Lenkei can. This leads me to the question, what is hypnotism still used for today besides entertainment? I found that this list is very long so I will focus on a few that may be surprising. Hypnotism has been used in obstetrics or in other words, in the delivery room. Although most likely not asked for by many patients it is said that hypnotism can help with the anxiety, pain and does not adversely affect the mother or child how some medicines can. It also can allow the mother to recover faster because she does not have to wait for any chemicals to wear off or be flushed out of her body. This website shows many other examples including hypnosis in dentistry and hypnosis in orthopedics. It also theorizes that all symptoms and all diseases have a mental aspect to them, therefore hypnotism could be useful in any medical practice or procedure imaginable. Again, the only thing I think backs this information is that our brain is powerful enough to give itself a name, perhaps it is powerful enough to reshape our entire perceived world. This claim makes hypnosis and brain-power seem limitless.

4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://io9.com/5891504/what-hypnosis-really-does-to-your-brain
This site gave me some information on what happens that we do know and also made a very interesting fact that I think could have a lot to do with it.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/hypnotist-puts-himself-trance-surgeon-2232873
This website provided an example of a man who uses and prefers self-induced hypnotism to modern medicine and anesthesia. It didn't explain how he did this but that is because it is mystery anyways how this would work.
http://www.triroc.com/sunnen/topics/medap.htm
This website had an endless list of medical applications for hypnosis at the very end stating any medical procedure can benefit from hypnosis.
Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Terminology: Hypnosis, Mesmerism, Conscious, Subconscious, involuntary eye movement, mental imagery, precuneus, self-induced hypnotism, mesmerism-induced anesthesia,