Angenica Bolastig Oct 15, 2024

MS Psych Professor Peter Resurreccion RPm, RPsy

SIGISMUND FREUD: A CASE STUDY ANALYSIS IN THE LENS OF

SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY

Personal agency

He was taken care of and supported by his mother as a child, which inspired him to pursue
various intellectual activities, reading academic books and poetry and learning different
languages. This academic endeavor was also influenced by the economic condition during his
time, Jews saturating the academic field, majority lawyers and doctors. Due to this, Freud
inspired to pursue and enroll in zoology in Uni of Vienna but freuds aspiration to pursue vocation
related to human nature drove him to study medicine and pursue teaching and laboratory work
to explore his curiosity in human nature.
“I was moved, rather, by a sort of curiosity, which was, however directed more towards human
concerns than towards natural objects’
(Freud 1925a: 190) autobiographical study

Observational Learning: Freud’s career

Much of Freud’s observations is either an outgrowth or learnings from his mentors and
colleagues. For example, Psychoanalysis is a combination of neurology taught by Charcot and
psychiatry taught by breuer.

Sample: Brewers catharsis led to freud’s discovery about free association which is his principal
therapeutic technique. Learned much about hysteria from Charcot then formulated the male
hysteria

Triadic Reciprocal Causation

Action is regulated by their consequence. External stimuli through intervening cognitive process.
While thinking about their action, thoughts influenced how behavior is affected by environment

In Freud’s study of male hysteria which took a long time for him to discover, formulate and write,
when Freud presented his paper, studies about male hysteria are not news anymore as there
were multiple studies published about it in Vienna even before his presentation. Nevertheless,
his presentation is well received by the scientific community as one of his colleagues, Dr.
Brenner reported. However, Freud took this event badly, and included in one of his books that
the Viennese did not receive his presentation well because they are not yet ready to accept
male hysteria. This event drove him to pursue another discovery .

Behavior: presentation and whether to continue or not the study

External stimuli: combination of how will the community respond to his paper and other external
events that affected how he perceived his work, like having mu;tiple studies in the community of
the paper that he thought of his discovery
Cognition: still thinking of his work as great and a discovery and how the audience/ community
responded, (maybe what happened here: some of the audience expressed surmise and that
those are the only personhe focused on)
Reflection: still great, but not accepted to pursue other endeavor

From reinforcement to Self-regulation

At the start of Freud’s career, the main agency for his career mov leans more on extrinsic
reinforcement and is focus more eon external locus of control, basing his next endeavor on how
well the public, especially, his colleagues perceive his works, but as Freud approached old age,
when much of his works were published and gained more popularity, we can say that he
reflected on his past works and career path, and became more intrinsically motivated
optimizing self-reinforcement that led to self efficacy to elaborate and correct the work that he
is doing and continue educating the scientific and academic community.

Locus of control

However, whether Freud had leaned more on external or internal locus of control is still
questionable, because despite looking inward and being intrinsically motivated to continue his
works, his inability to take care of his health, unable to quit smoking and taking cocaine even
though his ordeal in contracting oral cancer and having to go through 34 surgical procedures
before his eventual death in 1939 through euthanasia, suggests that his locus of control may
also e leaning more on external factors. Additionally, he is more susceptible to being depressed
and more vulnerable to stress which is both a cause and an effect of the damage in his
relationships.

Dissecting Freud’s Personality using George Kelly’s Corollaries

Construction Corollary

A person anticipates event by constructing the replication

Freud’s way of handling his relationship always comes to an impending end. When someone
disagrees with him, he argues, and cuts them off. This had always been the way he deal with
disagreements.
Dichotomy Corollary

A person may successively employ a variety of construction subsystems which are inferentially
incompatible with each other

Someone is a dear friend to him, that he admire and encourage, but once a friend made a
comment that is not aligned to his principles, that dear friend will become an enemy in an instant
Instead of seeing a friend in bipolar dimension, he sees it in unipolar dimension

friend= agrees with you

enemy= disagrees with you instead of friend= agrees AND disagrees with you

Moral agency

Since Freud, only desire to use his knowledge and the psychoanalysis to the elevation of
human nature and humanity, there were multiple instances that he refused a 100,000 dollar job
offer as a consultant of a hollywood movie about a serial killer and instead continued to revise
and elaborate on his work and teaching of his discoveries and principles

Additionally, since Freud is known to create scientific group, this is one way to elaborate his
principles, carry out actions that eventually led to fulfillment of the group that he spearheaded,
which is the very definition of collective efficacy

Overall Freud’s Behavioral signature

Adeyemo W. L. (2004). Sigmund Freud: smoking habit, oral cancer and euthanasia.
Nigerian journal of medicine : journal of the National Association of Resident Doctors of
Nigeria, 13(2), 189–195.

Feist, Jess, Feist, Gregory F., Roberts, Tomi-Ann. (2018). Theories of Personality, 9th ed
(9). : McGraw-Hill International Editions.

Engler, B. (1999). Personality theories: An introduction (9th ed.). Houghton, Mifflin and
Company.

Thurschwell, P. (2009). Sigmund Freud (2nd ed.). Routledge.

https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203888063