Ch 11 - Jeff Standen

The psychodynamic model
The psyche
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if Psychoanalysis
By the fourth therapy session, I realised that he had never
mentioned his father. It seemed as if there wasn't and
never had been a father. I asked myself: How could it be
that this man who is so unhappy and has so many
problems fails to even mention his father? I guessed that
he was either so ashamed of his father that he couldn't talk
about him or he harboured so much anger toward him
that consciously or unconsciously he couldn't deal with it.
I decided to wait and see what would happen rather than
push the client in the direction of talking about something
that was very sensitive for him.
During the ninth session he told me about a dream he
had had the night before. A large dark man sat at a table
and a small child watched from a corner as the man ate
great quantities of food and ordered a small, frightened
woman to bring him more and more. After he ate each
helping, he would raise a gun and shoot down a few
people who were standing in a row against the wall.
The client reported how frightened he had felt during
the dream. As we discussed his associations to the dream, it
became clear to me that the man in the dream represented
his father. After several more sessions, he told me he felt
very angry with me because I constantly told him what to
do and verbally cut him down. After pointing out that in
reality I had said almost nothing, I asked him if I seemed
like the man in the dream. Finally the dike burst. For the
rest of the session and the next one, all of his seething
hatred toward his father came out. He blurted out that
when he was a child he had seen his father strike his
mother several times. When he saw this happen, he had
wanted to kill his father.
Adapted from Sarason & Sarason, 1996
Questions
1 a) Identify the Id, Ego and Superego in Item A.
b) Suggest how they may come into conflict.
2 Use the psychodynamic model to explain the client's behaviour in Item B.
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