Reference Support Draft – Psychology Mock Test

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Reference Support - Psychology Test I - IAS (Mains) 2016

1.a. How does Skinner's Radical Behaviorism differ from other versions of Behaviorism?
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Reference:

Psychologists have a long history of ignoring (e.g., Koch, 1964), not understanding (e.g., Rogers,
1964), and/or intentionally misinterpreting (e.g., Chomsky, 1959) behavior analyt ic interpretations
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of psychology. For most psychologists and the lay community, all behavior ism is an overly
simplistic, stimulus-response psychology that mechanistically relates overt responses to

environmental events while denying the very existence of thinking and downplaying the influence
of genetic inheritance (Skinner, 1974). This, however, only neatly applies to Watson's behaviorism
(1913, 1924), at least in its earliest form. This strict or classical behaviorism was abandoned by

most behaviorists long ago. For instance, Hull (1943) and his neobehaviorist colleagues shifted
slightly from some of Watson's ideas by incorporating intervening variables in explanations of
behavior for which there is no immediately obvious contiguous cause (i.e., no apparent

environmental antecedent stimulus). Tolman (1932) offered a different version of behaviorism that
retained the mechanistic explanatory stance of neobehaviorism but sought to identify "a set of
internal acts, states, mechanisms, processes, stru ctures, capacities, and properties" as causes of
behavior in place of the logically deduced intervening variables of Hull (Moore, 2003; see also
Koch). Skinner considered these approaches methodological behaviorism in that they study overt
behavior (i.e., that which can be seen by observe rs) as an indicator of more important processes
occurring at the covert or internal level.

Skinner's radical behaviorism (1945) offered a un ique conceptual framework for explaining human
behavior that had no close brethren in Psychology. Skinner used the term radical to note the stark
contrast between methodological behaviorism (i.e., the behaviorisms of Watson, Hull, and Tolman)
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and his approach. That is, this approach retained overt behavior as an important dependent
variable of psychology while acknowledging the existence and significance of unobserved behavior
(e.g., see chapters 15-17 of Skinner, 1953 Science and Human Behavior addressing self-control,
thinking, and other private events). He did not, however, grant special causal status to such
phenomena. That is, rather than place causal status in hypothetical entities or constructs, Skinner's
radical behaviorism attempted to demonstrate orderly relations between behavior and
environment. This approach is, at its core, a perspective of selection (Donahoe, 2003; Skinner,
1966; 1972). Radical Behaviorism views cause as a complex interaction extending across multiple
temporal scales involving organisms and the environment.

This approach eschews mechanistic cause, accounts for both overt and covert behavior, and
conceptualizes the organism as the locus at which behavior and environment interact (Hineline,
1990; 1992). That is, behavior evolves (or develops) for the individual in a complex manner that
involves three primary sources of influence; genetic inheritance, contingencies encountered during
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one's lifetimes, and the socio-cultural context in which the person evolves. Natural selection at the
phylogenic level operates on the species to produce the structures, reflexes, and predispositions
that make up the individual. A person is the product of natural selection which operates through
contingencies of survival and reproduction with hundreds of thousands of years of history
influencing their bodies and behavior. Selection also affects individual organisms on an ontogenetic
level during the course of their lifetime. For adapting to the dynamic nature of changing
environments, selection by consequences or sensitivity to environmental contingencies allows for
the evolving species to adapt to proximal changes in the environment. Selection by consequences
operates on the behavior of the individual with the environment serving as the selecting "agent"
with the person as the vehicle, so to speak, of behavior interacting with environment (Hineline,

1992). These contingencies shape and establish behavior in interaction with our genetic
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inheritance and the socio-cultural environment in which one is raised. The social context is of
critical importance as the social environment i n which the child develops heavily influences
learning. For example, the language of the social context in which the child is raised determines the
language the child learns to speak. In essence, a person's socio-cultural surroundings bring the
person into contact with the collective experien ces of that culture (see Dawkins' discussion of
memes, 1976).

Skinner’s self-described “radical behaviorist” ap proach is radical in its insistence on extending
behaviorist strictures against inward experiential processes to include inner physiological ones as
well. The scientific nub of the approach is a concept of operant conditioning indebted to

Thorndike’s “Law of Effect.” Operants (e.g., bar-presses or key-pecks) are units of behavior an
organism (e.g., a rat or pigeon) occasionally emits “spontaneously” prior to conditioning. In operant
conditioning, operants followed byreinforcement (e.g., food or water) increase in frequency and

come under control of discriminative stimuli (e.g., lights or tones) preceding the response. By
increasingly judicious reinforcement of increasingly close approximations, complex behavioral
sequences are shaped. On Skinner’s view, high-level human behavior, such as speech, is the end

result of such shaping. Prolonged absence of reinforcement leads to extinction of the response.
Many original and important Skinnerian findings — e.g., that constantly reinforced responses
extinguish more rawpidwly twhan. nintuermmitteenrtloy rneinsfo.wrcedo rresdpopnsrese —s cson .cceron tmhe e ffects of differing
schedules of reinforcement. Skinner notes the similarity of operant behavioral conditioning to
natural evolutionary selection: in each case apparently forward-looking or goal-directed
developments are explained (away) by a preceding course of environmental “selection” among
randomly varying evolutionary traits or, in the psychological case, behavioral tricks. The
purposiveness which Tolman’s molar behavioral description assumes, radical behaviorism thus
claims to explain. Likewise, Skinner questions the explanatory utility of would-be characterizations
of inner processes (such as Hull’s): such processes, being behavior themselves (though inner), are
more in need of explanation themselves, Skinner holds, than they are fit to explain outward
behavior. By “dismissing mental states and processes,” Skinner maintains, radical behaviorism
“directs attention to the … history of the individual and to the current environment where the real
causes of behavior are to be found” (Skinner 1987: 75). On this view, “if the proper attention is paid
to the variables controlling behavior and an appropriate behavioral unit is chosen, orderliness
appears directly in the behavior and the postulated theoretical processes become superfluous”
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(Zuriff: 88). Thus understood, Skinner’s complaint about inner processes “is not that they do not
exist, but that they are not relevant” (Skinner 1953) to the prediction, control, and experimental
analysis of behavior.

Skinner stressed prediction and control as his chief explanatory desiderata, and on this score he
boasts that “experimental analysis of behavior” on radical behaviorist lines “has led to an effective
technology, applicable to education, psychotherapy, and the design of cultural practices in general”
(Skinner 1987: 75). Even the most strident critics of radical behaviorism, I believe, must accord it
some recognition in these connections. Behavior therapy (based on operant principles) has proven
effective in treating phobias and addictions; operant shaping is widely and effectively used in

animal training; and behaviorist instructional methods have proven effective — though they may
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have become less fashionable — in the field of education. Skinnerian Behaviorism can further boast
of significantly advancing our understanding o f stimulus generalization and other important
learning-and-perception related phenomena and effects. Nevertheless, what was delivered was less
than advertised. In particular, Skinner’s attempt to extend the approach to the explanation of high-
grade human behavior failed, making Noam Chom sky’s dismissive (1959) review of Skinner’s book,
Verbal Behavior, something of a watershed. On Chomsky’s diagnosis, not only had Skinner’s
attempt at explaining verbal behavior failed, it had to fail given the insufficiency of the explanatory
devices Skinner allowed: linguistic competenc e (in general) and language acquisition (in
particular), Chomsky argued, can only be explained as expressions of innate mechanisms —
presumably, computational mechanisms. For those in the “behavioral sciences” already chaffing

under the severe methodological constraints Skinnerian orthodoxy imposed, the transition to
“cognitive science” was swift and welcome. By 1985 Zuriff would write, “the received wisdom of
today is that behaviorism has been refuted, its methods have failed, and it has little to offer modern

psychology” (Zuriff 1985: 278). Subsequent developments, however, suggest that matters are not

that simple.
1.b. Where did the Gestalt school of Psychology differed with Structuralism? 10

Reference:
Elements of the mwindw w.numerons.wordpress .com

Titchener's theory began with the question of what each element of the mind is. He concluded from
his research that there were three types of mental elements constituting conscious experience:



Sensations (elements of perceptions)

Images (elements of ideas)
Affections (elements of emotions)

These elements could be broken down into their respective properties, which he determined were
quality, intensity, duration, clearness, and extensity. Both sensations and images contained all of
these qualities; however, affections were lacking in both clearness and extensity.

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Interaction of elements

The second issue in Titchener's theory of structuralism was the question of how the mental
ideas of associationism law of
elements combined and interacted with each other to form conscious experience. His conclusions
contiguity
were largely based on . In particular, Titchener focuses on the
, which is the idea that the thought of something will tend to cause thoughts of things that
are usually experienced along with it.

Titchener rejected Wundt's notions of apperception and creative synthesis (voluntary action),
which were the basis of Wundt's voluntarism. Titchener argued that attention was simply a

manifestation of the "clearness" property within sensation.
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T his received criticism from the Gestalt school of p sychology, which argues that the mind cannot be
broken down into individual elements.
1.c. Explain the role of cultural inheritance in shaping one’s achieving style? Give
examples.10

Reference:
Cultural Influences

There are also cultural differences in achievement motivation and attitudes toward learning. For
example, in contrast to American children, who may display achievement motivation but also are
quite tolerant of failures in performance, Chinese children display achievement motivation and

view failures as personal failures and may be quite ashamed of such failures. Li (2004) found that
such differences are evident as early as the preschool years. Li read stories about learning failures
to 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old American and Chinese children. The children were then asked their
opinions about the story character’s failure and th eir responses were examined. Li found that these
young children differed in their responses. The American preschoolers were more likely to view
learning as a task to be accomplished and they were not critical of learning failures. In contrast,
Chinese preschoolwers wwewre li.kneluy tmo vieewr leoarnnisng. was ao prerdsonpalr veirtsues t o. cbeo atmtain ed and they were
highly critical of failures in learning. These differences are evident in the following example: the
preschoolers heard this story and were then asked questions about the character in the story.

Little Bear watches her Mommy and Daddy catch fish. She really wants to learn how to catch fish by
herself. She tries for a while, but she cannot catch any fish. Then she says to herself, “Forget it! I
don’t want to catch fish anymore!”
American 5-year-old girl’s responses:

Child: She shouldn’t have given up cause then she wouldn’t have, um, done it. Um she could eat the
fish that Mommy and Daddy caught, so um that she can get bigger and taller so that she can catch
fish.
Interviewer: You see, Daddy and Mommy each caught one fish. And they are kind of big, you know?
So maybe they also need to eat the fish themselves. What will Little Bear do?
Child: She can, um, get get something else to practice on.
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Interviewer: Like what?
Child: Like a little stream.
Interviewer: What?
Child: A stream fish live in.
Interviewer: Do you like Little Bear?
Child: Yes.
Interviewer: Why do you like her?
Child: Cause she is so furry and cute.
Chinese 5-year-old girl’s responses:

Child: Daddy and Mommy divide their fish into several pieces, and they eat together. Interviewer:
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But do you see that Daddy and Mommy are big, and they each got one fish. Hm, th ey probably can’t
give their fish to Little Bear. What would she do next?

Child: Mommy keeps a small piece for herself, and she gives a big piece to
Little Bear. Then they eat with their child, and they are happy.
Interviewer: Do you like Little Bear?
Child: No.
Interviewer: Why not?
Child: She does something and stops halfway; she’s got three hearts and two minds [i.e., no
concentration].
Interviewer: What’s wrong with having three hearts and two minds?
Child: You do this thing for a while, then you switc h to another thing for a
while. You don’t even pay attention. You can’t learn good, and that’s not good.

Note that the girls in these examples clearly diffe red in their views of learning and in evaluating
Little Bear in this situation. The American girl saw Little Bear’s attempts as worthy and she looked
for other ways for Little Bear to accomplish her objective. The Chinese girl saw Little Bear’s
attempts to learn as laudable, but she was very dis approving of Little Bear’s giving up, seeing this as
a personal failure. In sum, cultural differences in achievement motivation and views of learning are
clear and evident even in very young children.
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In their book The Achievement Motive, McClelland and his associates (1953) proposed that parents
who stress independence training—doing things on one’s own—and who warmly reinforce such
self-reliant behavior contribute in a positive way to achievement motivation. And research bears
this out (Grolnick & Ryan, 1989; Winterbottom, 1958). However, it is important to note that
successfully fostering autonomy and self-reliance requires far more than encouraging a child to
accomplish objectives alone. Consistent with Vygotsky’s viewpoint on the importance of
collaborative learning, one longitudinal study found that 2-year-olds whose parents had carefully
scaffolded their efforts, thereby allowing the youngsters to eventually master challenges that would
have been impossible without such gentle parental guidance, were the children who felt most
comfortable and most motivated in achievement contexts 1 year later, as 3-year-olds (Kelly,
Brownell, & Campbell, 2000). What’s more, direct achievement training—setting high standards
and encouraging children to do things well—also fosters achievement motivation (Rosen &
D’Andrade, 1959).

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Finally, patterns of praise, criticism, and punishment that accompany the child’s accomplishments
are also important: children who seek challenges and display high levels of achievement motivation
have parents who praise their successes and are not overly critical of an occasional failure. Children
who shy away from challenges and are low in achievement motivation have parents who are slow
to acknowledge their successes (or who do so in a matter-of-fact way) and are inclined to criticize
or punish failures (Burhans & Dweck, 1995; Kelly, Brownell, & Campbell, 2000; Teeven & McGhee,
1972).

We see, then, that parents of children high in achievement motivation possess three characteristics:
(1) they are warm, accepting, and quick to praise their child’s accomplishments; (2) they provide
guidance and control by setting standards for their child to live up to and then monitoring her

progress to ensure that she does; and (3) they permit their child some independence or autonomy,
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carefully scaffolding tasks for young children to allow them to succeed on their own and allowing
older children a voice in deciding how best to mas ter challenges and meet their expectations. Diana
Baumrind calls this warm, firm, but democratic parenting an authoritative parenting style—a style
that she and others have found to foster positive attitudes about achievement and considerable
academic success among grade-school children and adolescents, both in Western societies
(Glasgow et al., 1997; Lamborn et al., 1991; Steinberg, Elmen, & Mounts, 1989) and in Asia (Lin &
Fu, 1990). If children are encouraged and supported in a positive manner as they tackle their

schoolwork, they are likely to enjoy new challenges and feel confident of mastering them (McGrath
& Repetti, 2000). On the other hand, parents can undermine a child’s school performance and
motivation to succeed if they (1) are uninvolved and offer little in the way of guidance or (2) are

highly controlling and do such things as nag continually about homework, offer tangible bribes for
good grades, or harp incessantly about bad ones (Ginsburg & Bronstein, 1993; Ng, Kenney-Bensen,

& Pomerantz, 2004).
1.d. What is the stimulus error? Give an example. How, in Titchener’s view, could the

stimulus error be avoided?
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Reference:

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According to Titchener, the subject matter of psychology is conscious experience as that experience
is dependent on the person who is actually experiencing it. This kind of experience differs from that
studied by scientists in other fields. For example, light and sound can be studied by physicists and
by psychologists. Physicists examine the phenomena from the standpoint of the physical processes
involved, whereas psychologists consider the light and sound in terms of how humans observe and
experience these phenomena. Other sciences are independent of experiencing persons. Titchener
offered, from physics, the example of temperature. The temperature in a room may be measured at
85 degrees Fahrenheit, for example, whether or not anyone is in the room to experience it. When
observers are present in that room and report that they feel uncomfortably warm, however, that
feeling—that experience of warmth—is dependent on the experiencing individuals, the people in
the room. To Titchener, this type of conscious experience was the only proper focus for
psychological research.

In studying conscious experience, Titchener warned against committing what he called the stimulus
error, which confuses the mental process with the object we are observing. For example, observers
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who see an apple and then describe that object as an apple—instead of reporting the elements of
color, brightness, and shape they are experiencing—are guilty of committing the stimulus error.
The object of our observation is not to be described in everyday language but rather in terms of the
elementary conscious content of the experience.

When observers focus on the stimulus object instead of on the conscious content, they fail to
distinguish what they have learned in the past about the object (for example, that it is called an
apple) from their own direct and immediate experience. All that observers can really know about
the apple is that it is red, shiny, and round. When they describe anything other than color,
brightness, and spatial characteristics, they are interpreting the object, not observing it. Thus, they
would be dealing with mediate, not immediate, experience. Titchener defined consciousness as the
sum of our experiences as they exist at a given time. The mind is the sum o f an individual’s
experiences accumwulwatedw o.vneru am lifeetirmoe. nCosn.swciouosnredss panrde msisnd . caroe msimilar, except that

consciousness involves mental processes occurring at the moment whereas mind involves the total
of these processes.

Structural psychology as Titchener envisioned it was a pure science. He was not concerned with
applying psychological knowledge. Psychology, he said, was not in the business of curing sick minds

or reforming society. Psychology’s only legitimate purpose was to discover the facts of the structure
of the mind. He believed scientists should remain free of speculation about the practical worth of
their work. For this reason he opposed the development of child psychology, animal psychology,

and all other areas that did not fit with his introspective experimental psychology of the content of
1co.en.s Dcioo uyso uex tpheirniken Fcree. udian psychoanalysis should be considered scientific? Why? 10

Reference:

Psychoanalytic Theory: A Critique

Throughout the past two chapters, I have tried to sell you Freud. Psychoanalytic theory has much to

offer in understanding important aspects of daily life. The theory is dramatic and insightful, it is
comprehensive, and it even has a certain elegant beauty. Having said that, I still must warn you
against taking Freud too seriously. When a student asks me, “What happens to sexual development
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if a boy is raised by his mother in a single-parent family?” (see Chapter 10), I want to reply, “Hey!
Don’t take this stuff so seriously! Freud has a neat theory, and it’s fun to play around with, but don’t
start using it to evaluate your life.” Psychoanalytic theory is far from being received truth. So,
having praised Freud, let me now bury him for a bit. Psychoanalytic theory has at least five
iEmxcpeosrstaivnet sChoomrtpcloemxiintyg s.

Occam’s razor
First of all, Freud’s theory is highly complex, to put it mildly. A basic principle of science, sometimes
called , is that less is more: All things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best.
Suppose you want to explain why boys take on many of the values and attitudes of their fathers.
One possibility is that they look for guides in the world around them and choose the most obvious
and prominent. Freud’s theory, however, says that boys sexually desire their mothers, but they
worry that their fathers will be jealous and castrate them in punishment, so they identify with their
fathers in order to vicariously enjoy the mother and lessen the threat from the father. This is
intriguing, and maybe it is even correct, but is it the simplest possible explanation? No way. Even
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modern theorists sympathetic to psychoanalysis have moved away from this complicated story
(CWasees tSetnu,d 1y9 9M8e)t. hod

A second tenet of science is that data must be public. The bases of one’s conclusions must be laid
out so that other scientists can evaluate the evidence together. Classic psychoanalytic theory never
did this, and the neo-Freudians and object relations theorists (considered in Chapter 12) have
generally followed suit. Their theorizing is based on analysts’ (including Freud’s) introspections
and on insights drawn from single therapeutic cases, which are (by law) conficdaesnet iastlu. Fdrye umde hthimods elf
complained that proof of his theory lay in the details of case studies that he could never reveal
because of the need to protect his patients’ privacy. The fact that this is
uncheckable meanws thwat iwt m.any bue mbiaseedr. oThnis bsia.ws moayr ardispe orute osf wsh a.tc posymchoanalysts and their

patients (such as Freud’s turn-of-the-century, Viennese patients suffering from hysteria) are like. Or
perhaps the theorist misremembers or misreport s what happens to the patients. Because the data
are private, no one can ever be sure. Psychoanalytic theory’s traditionally dismissive attitude
toward requests for empirical proof could be summarized by the slogan “TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT.”
VOanglyu ree Dceenftinlyi thiaovnes researchers renewed efforts to test some of its key ideas.

operational definition

Another conventional scientific standard is the . A scientific concept should be
defined in terms of the operations or procedures by which it can be identified and measured.
Psychoanalytic theory rarely does this. Take the idea of psychic energy. I mentioned that a bright
student once asked me what units it was measur ed in. There are no units, of course, and it is not
entirely clear what Freud meant by the term: Was he being literal, or did he intend “energy” as just
a metaphor? Exactly how much psychic energy—what percentage, say—needs to be left behind at
the oral stage to develop an oral character? As re pressions accumulate, at what point will one run
out of energy for daily living? And what is the difference, exactly, between denial and repression?
PUsnytcehsotaanbailliyttyic theory does not even come close to providing specific answers to these questions.

disconfirmable
Freud’s theory is also untestable. A scientific theory should be ; that is, it should
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imply a set of observations or results that, if found, would prove it to be false. This is the difference
between religion and science. There is no conceivable set of observations or results that would
prove that God does not exist. God might always just be hiding. Therefore, the existence of God is
not a scientific issue. In the same way, there is no set of observations that psychoanalytic theory
cannot explain—after the fact. Because no experiment can prove the theory wrong, it is unscientific.
Some people have argued that perhaps it should be considered a religion!

Still, no single experiment is sufficient to prove or disprove any complex theory. The theory of
evolution (see Chapter 9) is not testable in this manner, for example. So the real question is not
whether psychoanalysis is testable in a strict sense, but whether the theory leads to hypotheses
that can be tested individually. In the case of psychoanalysis, the best answer is, sometimes yes and
Ssoemxiestmim es no.

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Psychoanalytic theory is sexist; even modern writers who are highly sympathetic to Freud admit it
(e.g., Gay, 1988). In psychoanalytic writing, it is abundantly clear that Freud considers males the
norm and bases his theories on their psychology. He then considers females, when he considers
them at all, as aberrations or deviations from the male model. For example, his Oedipal theory
about why children identify with their same-sex parent is much more coherent for males than for
females, who seem to have been added almost as an afterthought. Freud viewed females essentially
as altered males, rather than as whole persons in their own right. In Freud’s opinion, women spend
much of their lives grieving about not sharing male anatomy. The side effects of being female, in
psychoanalytic theory, include having less self-esteem, less creativity, and less moral fiber. Much of
a female’s life, according to Freud, is based on her struggle to come to terms with the tragedy that
sWhhe yis S ntoutd my aFlree. uIfd t?h at’s not sexist, then I don’t know what is.

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So, with all these acknowledged problems, why stu dy Freud? Several reasons. One is that Freud and
the tradition he initiated acknowledge, and indeed focus on, ideas that are underemphasized or
even ignored elsewhere. Freud was right that people have conflicting motives and that sorting them
out can be a source of confusion and anxiety. He was right that sex and aggression are powerful

forces in psychological life. And he was right that childhood experiences shape adult personality
and behavior in important ways, and that a child’s relationships with his or her parents in
particular form a template that is a basis of relationships throughout life. As I hope you have

noticed while reading this chapter and the previous one, psychoanalytic theory is full of insights, big
and small, that the rest of psychology has tended to neglect, if not completely overlook. Moreover,
psychoanalysis continues to profoundly influence psychology and modern conceptions of the mind,
even though few modern research psycholog ists—including those who teach personality
psychology—consider themselves Freudians. Freud’s influence shows up in many ways. Most
obviously, Freud continues to influence the practice of psychotherapy. One survey indicated that
about 75 percent of practicing psychotherapists re ly, to some degree, on psychoanalytic ideas (K. S.
Pope, Tabachnick, & Keith-Spiegel, 1987). For example, even many psychotherapists who consider
themselves non-Freudians practice the “talking cure” (the idea that talking about a problem helps),
free association (encouraging the client to say whatever comes to mind), and transference (building

an emotional relationship with the client to promote healing). According to legend, Freud also
originated the practice of billing clients for their missed appointments!

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Second, many of Freud’s ideas have entered popular culture and provide a routine—and helpful—
part of how people think and talk about each other, in ways they might not always recognize as
Freudian. For instance, suppose you give somebody an expensive present. The next time you visit
him, the present is nowhere in sight. “Whatever happened to . . . ?” you ask. “Oh,” your friend replies
nonchalantly, “It broke, so I threw it away.” How does his response make you feel? If it makes you
feel bad, and of course it does, one reason might be that you have made a Freudian interpretation of
your friend’s behavior (he has unconscious hostility toward you) without quite realizing that you
have done so.

Sometimes, everyday thought is even more explicitly Freudian. Have you ever heard somebody
hypothesize that, “She only goes out with that older guy because he’s a father figure,” or, “He’s all
messed up because of the way his parents treated him when he was little,” or, “He never dates
because his entire soul goes into programming his computer,” or, “She’s got too much invested in
him [psychologically] to walk out now”? These are all Freudian interpretations.

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So, it is probably the case that you knew a good deal of psychoanalytic theory before you read
Chapter 10 and this chapter, and you may even use it every day. As a result, Freud’s ideas do not
always seem as original as they should. There is an old joke about the person who went to see one
of Shakespeare’s plays for the first time but walked out halfway through. “It was too full of clichés,”
he complained. Of course, much of Shakespeare is full of clichés because so many of his lines (“To be
or not to be”) have made it into everyday speech. Some of Freud’s most original ideas might sound
mundane after all these years for the same reason.
Newsweek
A third consideration is that Freudian thought has undergone a revival within research psychology
(see Chapter 12), and in 2006 Freud even appeared on the cover of (see Figure 11.1).
Psychologists continue to do research and write articles on defense mechanisms (see Cramer &
Davidson, 1998), transference (Andersen & Berk, 1998), unconscious thought ( Kihlstrom, 1990;
Bornstein, 1999b)w, anwd otwher. nclaussmicalley Frroeundiasn .twopiocs r(Wdepstern,e 19s9s8; .Wceostemn, Gabbard, & Ortigo,

2008). Some of these researchers vehemently deny that they are Freudians themselves, even when
researching topics that seem psychoanalytic. Do th ey protest too much?

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