Projectives

Projective (prəˈjektiv/) relating to the unconscious transfer of one's own desires or emotions to another person.

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20151028

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20182981

We’ve talked extensively about attraction. Dating back to 1982, it was acknowledged that human beings are born with an innate psychobiological system (the attachment behavioral system) that motivates them to seek proximity to people who will protect them (attachment figures) in times of need. The operation of this system is affected by an individual's social experience, especially with early caregivers such as parents, resulting in measurable individual differences in attachment security. There are many children psychological disorders and behavioral disorders that come from the unhealthy development of attachment. For example, in the book that we are studying, there was a case where a young premature baby was raised in an incubator. With out human contact or notice, he learned that expressing his needs or communicating was not effective at all. In fact he thought it was totally unnecessary. As a result, he didn't respond to his surroundings and for the first six years of hi his life he was thought to be deaf when he was actually just ignoring the sounds. It took him a while to learn attachment and then his development continued from there because it is an essential step that no one can skip.

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20151021

I supposed I can make comparisons between by internship now and the internship I had this summer. For personal reasons I will not indulge in the details of my summer internship but I explain the nitty gritty details.  I worked at a research lab this summer and I am still processing everything I’ve learned. I was most of the time exhausted because of the long commute and dealing with personal matters and I really tried to not let that get to me at the internship. I am looking at the list of suggestions and I am finding that I did most of these everyday, sometimes deliberately in hopes of maintaining a personal appearance and sometimes they are just things I naturally do. Of course I did make sure to keep my boundaries and limits, in other words, not be a total push over. But perhaps it was because it was such a sensitive time when I admit I was fragile, it was hard when some people completely ignored my attempts or took advantage of it. I was teased for “being too kind” and some of their jokes about it made me feel uncomfortable. When I’d try to be diplomatic in conflicts and still stand for what I need or thought, they made my kindness and my argument seem worthless at times. Most other people either didn’t notice or pretended not to notice which I didn’t mind too much in comparison to the way I was treated before. I learned that kindness is something that should be used on the right people and not the wrong ones.  Right now, I have a feeling that my current internship is the right one. I smile, I get a smile back. I learn so much that I can’t show my appreciation enough. My mentors are so open to any conversational topic and the partner I am interning with is the same way. Here I don’t feel as if my kindness is going to waste and overall it makes me look forward to every wednesday. 

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20151007

Emotional Stability: Emotional stability is crucial at the clinic. Upon hearing cases of other people’s lives it gets really easy for someone to become emotionally invested, not that it is a bad thing. Actually it’s crucial to not only become emotionally invested but also realize and try to figure out why and where these feelings are coming from. They are the most accurate tools in this field in understanding other people and even professionals have a hard time being grounded this way. Therefore it is common for the clinicians to learn grounding techniques or consult others in order to look at their emotions objectively which can only happen if one is emotionally stable. Extraversion: This is a bit of a weird concept when applied to a psychology clinic. Amongst other therapists or the clinical director, sometimes it is good to be friendly and positive. However with a patient I’d imagine that you are trying to see into the other person rather than establish your own persona.  Openness: This is another weird thing in a clinic. Since patient information is important, being too open in expressing this sort of information is something to be wary of. However in a therapeutic setting, it might be the most important to really see who the patient is and what he/she/they are feeling. Agreeableness: This goes without saying it is important in any case of trying to help someone. Not only are you trying to understand them but also make them understand themselves. This requires the other person to listen to you, open up to you, feel comfortable with you. It is almost basic.

Conscientiousness: Now this is one I find to be most significant (although emotional stability is fairly close behind) because it is what you have to be all the time. Being with patients, it is easy to get lost and just interact like you normally do but you have to be deliberate. Every single question, word, action, treatment, idea, must be towards a certain purpose in the overall goal or for the goal itself. Letting something slip can be a dangerous thing especially if it was without thought and therefore no measures to fix it. 

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20150930

am very wary of dress codes, not because I don’t see their purpose, but often times it’s implemented incorrectly. Most of the time, I would respect that there is a certain way to dress in certain kinds of places and dress codes I feel are supposed to help as guidelines for those who may be feeling a little lost. However sometimes, I think that dress codes can be manipulated to be extremely misogynistic. There hasn’t been a time where I’ve seen equal “restrictions” placed on female and male dress codes. I would like to say here that shoulders are simply joints that connect your arms to the rest of your body. Thighs are the upper part of your leg. If some people do not see that but anything else, I think they should read the dictionary or learn some self control. That said, this is a personal opinion and I am fairly happy at the internship that I am working at. I’ve been noticing what my mentor, my coworker’s wear and it has been a lot less formal that I had thought and perhaps it is because being a psychology clinic, the exterior is not very interesting to most people. Part of the reason I think is that dressing casually can help people open up when they talk and not be intimidated by someone else’s outfit.

I wasn’t able to ask the specifics about dress code that day because there was a lot that happened. I think I am getting a lot better at the emotional detachment by understanding what my emotions are saying. I was a part of a social anxiety group therapy session, in which I was allowed to participate. So many interesting stories there. But for patient confidentiality reasons I will not share. Nevertheless, it was intimidating but I look forward doing it again.

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20150923

Yom Kippur there is no school, but I still went to internship, and it was my turn to go into the city. As it being a holiday, there were only a few students there but nevertheless they were interesting. Here, I think I’m starting to get why projective testing is so important and useful. The cases still seem a bit unreal to me, it kind of blows my mind that people in the cases are real and living in society. It seems so hard for these people to hold up the responsibilities that they have but some of them were inspiring and I only hope for their best.

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20150916

Taking NJTransit within NJ was actually a kind of unsettling in comparison to using it to travel into the city all the time, which seems strange. But otherwise commute itself was uneventful and I arrived an hour early and waited a while before going into the clinic a bit before 10:00, the expected time. We had a little less than an hour of orientation, going over what exactly was going to happen. It was really helpful that the clinic had ideas of what to do even though I was prepared to find something to do. Essentially with two of us at the place we are going to alternate between the following:

-Travelling into the city to take part in the class my mentor teaches on psychoanalysis (This is with graduate students so I’m looking forward to it.) -Staying back at the clinic to help edit various documents, read articles, and just help out in general.

After orientation, my mentor sat us down and taught us the basic types of psychoanalysis. I am getting the sense that she really wants to teach us which is reassuring. I took a type of objective test, but I don’t know what exactly my score means. (Although, I did a lot better than I thought.) This week I stayed back and got working on the documents and doing some readings until lunch. Then after lunch, we took part in supervision where a junior psychotherapist talks to my mentor, the clinical director, about various cases and seek advice. (This will be every week.) I wasn’t expecting anything too serious but the case we had today was as bleak as bleak gets. Even though I wasn’t hearing it from the patient him/herself, I felt emotions start to build, which worries me slightly and is something I have to work on. Not that emotions are a bad thing, I just have to be very careful in reading what I’m feeling and not blindly feeling. We finished early and after hanging around to ask questions I left around 4:30 Starting next week, we will see if we will take part in the social anxiety group therapy session which will go until 20:00. Again, we’ll see how objective and grounded I can remain. I still hope to learn a lot.