The crystal structure of lithium sulfide is pictured here.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016 Week 7 : Dreams Freud and the Psychodynamic Perspective - Basic structures of the mind include the id, ego, and superego • Id: literally, the “it”, the most primal, animalistic instincts • Ego: The rational part of our brain that balances the id and superego • Superego: The most moral part of our minds • This implies not just the mental component, but the physical component as well - The “Freudian” unconscious • he believed that the id is the most truly unconscious state • thanatos: believed that the greatest libido pleasure is death. All your needs are taken care of in a way - Dreams-Manifest content / latent content • Manifest content is the content of dreams we can remember upon awakening • Latent content is the closest connection we can establish to the id • The images and stories in the dreams are not the most important, but rather the latent content underneath Dreams serve the purpose of protecting us mentally from the id… The thoughts • show up in the hidden form of manifest content. • OR dreams can simply be playback of the day, mental residue - Libido: Maximize pleasure, minimize pain - Side note: Psychoanalysts try to bypass defense mechanisms to get to the heart of an issue They look for projection onto them • - “I hate you”; You don’t hate me, but you hate someone, so let’s work on that 1 Wednesday, March 23, 2016 Evolutionary Perspective - What do we tend to dream about - When we look at our dreams, we can see that most of them are bad. Nightmares of threats. • Perhaps this could be an “off-line” mechanism which allows us to prepare us for new threats and situations —> indication of how dreams could be adaptive Extra Theories on Dreams - There is evidence suggesting that individuals who are clinically depressed do not experience dreaming - The synthesis model suggest that dreams are simply residual. In other words, your brain stem sporadically fires and your cortex attempts to make sense of it as a story - Consolidation theory: Dreams are “solidifying” memories in the brain (particularly the hippocampus) through playback Concept of Drive - Drive: involves some impulse based on need; due to some lack or deficit - The motivation to self-regulate • This can happen in terms of glucose levels, fluid levels, temperature control, pain - Drives both activate and direct our behaviors with a certain persistence and a certain vigor, which is motivation! - The typical goal for drives is to maintain homeostasis, which is an attempt to keep physical components at a constant level - There are two kinds f drives: • Regulatory Drives: homeostasis, individual survival • Non-regulatory Drives: these may have another purpose (sexual arousal, parenting instincts, social-behavior 2