Please use the APA and ACADEMIC WRITING RESOURCES links located under the Resource tab.

This assignment provides the opportunity for you to demonstrate your ability to apply the concepts covered throughout the course. This assignment MUST be typed, double-spaced, in APA style, 7th edition, and must be written at graduate level English. You must integrate the material presented in the text and cite your work according to APA format.

Culture, Diversity and Legal/Ethical considerations are required. Please integrate factors relevant to culture and diversity in your discussions of each vignette. Identify and discuss legal and ethical issues present in each vignette. [This information can be found in Part I as well as in chapters throughout the course text]. You are also encouraged to use outside cultural resources to enhance your understanding.

Use the Case of Stan and Case of Gwen as a guide to theoretical application, referencing in APA style.

See Sample Vignette Analysis located under Resources

Your response to each vignette should be 1-2 pages per vignette for a total of 5-6 pages for the entire assignment plus a title and reference page.
Do not copy and paste the vignettes into your written response

Vignette One
Jack, a 28-year old man, tells you: “Most of my life I have felt pushed and pulled. My father pushed me into school, sports, and so forth, and over the years my resentment grew for him. He was always directing and controlling my life and beating me when I challenged his authority. My mother always gave me a warm, unconditional love and tried to pull me under her protective wing. My parents divorced when I was 18 and without parental control I began a life of self-will in my relationships and in my use of drugs and alcohol. On graduating from college, I rejected my father’s wishes to pursue a career and returned to school to seek another degree. In some ways, it’s just a place to be that I like. Most of my life revolves around living for today, a hedonistic style that has no concreteness of goals and aspirations, with a lack of definition of `what a man should be.’ I float in and out of people’s lives. They see an image of me as disrespectful to women, a drug freak, and a cold human being. My fear is that I am nothing more than that image, that I am empty inside. I want to be able to open up and let people see the warmer, more sensitive sides of me, but I have terrible difficulty doing that. I have a strong need to become close and intimate with others, yet I never let myself become vulnerable because I fear being dependent on them and trapped by their love.”

Assume that Jack comes to you for personal therapy and that all you know about him is what he told you above. Answer the following questions on how you might proceed with Jack within a Psychoanalytic frame of reference:

1. As a psychoanalytic therapist, do you think that Jack’s current unwillingness to become vulnerable to others out of his fear of “being dependent on them and trapped by their love” has much to do with his mother’s unconditional love? How might this experience be related to his relationships with women now?

2. Jack describes his father as an authoritarian, controlling, and cruel man who apparently had conventional ideas of what he wanted Jack to become. What are the underlying psychological aspects that you see involved with Jack’s rejection of his father’s wishes? How might you use psychoanalytic counseling theory to explain the fact that in many ways he became what his father did not want him to become?

ANSWER

Vignette One

Question 1

To an extent, Jack’s mother unconditional love might have contributed to his current state, where he fears becoming vulnerable to other people. The reasoning behind this is the fact that he is aware that when one is trapped in love for a particular person, they go far beyond limits to the extent that they can do anything for them without any conditions and limitations, just like his mother did. The reasoning can also be related to Jack’s recent experience with women since he finds it quite challenging to have close relationships with them due to the fear of falling in love/becoming intimate, in addition to the fact that he doesn’t want to be dependent on them. This kind of fear and anxiety has altered many processes of his brain, such as being unable to regulate his emotions, which is why he finds it challenging to connect with other people emotionally (Goger et al, 2020). Fear and anxiety have therefore destroyed most of his relationships with women.

Question 2

Jack’s father can be termed as a controlling parent who thought that he was molding good behavior onto his son for a better future through his cruelty. However, this might have caused Jack’s psychological damage, thereby affecting both his mental and emotional well-being. He became more aggressive instead and grew resentment towards him, which was why he even rejected his father’s wishes of pursuing a career in his field of study. Controlling parents exert psychological control on their children, limiting their independence, such as making their own decisions (Liga et al, 2017). Such kids cannot regulate their own behavior, and most of them result in immoral behaviors when they grow up or rather when they are set free to live on their own. This was the major reason why Jack grew up to become a different person from what his father wanted him to be.

References

Goger, P., Rozenman, M., & Gonzalez, A. (2020). The association between current maternal psychological control, anxiety symptoms, and emotional regulatory processes in emerging adults. Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry, 68, 101563

Liga, F., Ingoglia, S., Inguglia, C., Lo Coco, A., Lo Cricchio, M. G., Musso, P., … & Gutow, M. R. (2017). Associations among psychologically controlling parenting, autonomy, relatedness, and problem behaviors during emerging adulthood. The Journal of psychology, 151(4), 393-415