Assignment

From these short statements, develop some ideas about Jack’s case from a Freudian and an Adlerian perspective.  Imagine that Jack is an only child, from a white, middle class family in the Midwest. He is 23 years old and in graduate school in counselor education.  His drug use is somewhere between a recreational user to a more socially involved user.  He exhibits certain narcissistic traits and his depression is mild.  He is your client in individual therapy as part of his internship training.  (Use your imagination to create scenarios that are not readily ascertained from Jack’s few statements.)

Your essay should beat least 1 page long, with 1&Mac218;2 the focus on a Freudian approach and 1&Mac218;2 the focus on an Adlerian approach.  Obviously, you cannot cover too much theory in such a short analysis, but try to capture key issues in an abbreviated style of writing.  Go back over the power point slides on Freud and Adler and be sure to address several key theoretical issues in your analysis.  I want you to apply their theories, not simply to comment on what you would do or say to Jack if you were talking to him.

 

The Case of Jack
(afraid that he is empty inside)

“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, as 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, something I have always resisted.”

“My parents divorced when I was 16, and without parental control, I began a life of permissiveness in my relationships with women and in my use of psychedelic drugs and marijuana.”

“On graduating from college, I rejected my father’s wishes to purse 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 a despoiler of women, a drug freak, and a cold bastard.  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.”