Unpacking Depth Sport Psychology

Case Studies in the Unconscious

Tom Ferraro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781000863390
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book utilizes a wealth of case studies to demonstrate the importance of using depth sport psychology to explore and understand athletes' unconscious feelings and fears, and provides the knowledge needed to help athletes deal with pressures faced throughout their sporting career.

Applying the theories of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Margaret Mahler, Melanie Klein, Heinz Kohut, Donald Winnicott, and Christopher Bollas to explain the dynamics within the athlete's mind, this useful resource will help develop a better understanding of athlete's repressed feelings and psychological states. It looks past the cognitive behavioural techniques currently used to aid athletes, and instead focuses on the many ways the unconscious subtly influences athletes, offering an important a paradigm shift. Covering a range of different athletes within various sports, each chapter demonstrates how the psychoanalytic techniques of free association, the working alliance, analytic interpretations, confrontation, dream analysis, transference/counter transference and resistance analysis are used with athletes. Case studies cover such topics as the treatment of anxiety, yips, anger, guilt and perfectionism in the athlete, the influence of birth order, psychological defences used by athletes including gamesmanship, dissociation and humor, and the psychology of injury.

Unpacking Depth Sport Psychology is the ideal resource for students, the educated athlete, parents, professors, sport psychologists, and coaches who hope to improve the athletes' performance.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Prologue
• 2. Psychoanalytic Theories Applied to Athletes
• 3. Psychoanalytic Techniques Used with Athletes
• 4. The Athletes’ Motivation Viewed as a Repetition Compulsion
• PART I: Case Studies of Anxiety in Sports
• PART II: Case Studies of Athletes with Guilt
• PART III: Case Studies of Depressed Athletes
• PART IV: Case Studies of How Athletes Use Psychological Defenses
• PART V: Case Studies of The Way Birth Order Influences an Athlete’s Performance
• PART VI: Odds and Ends
• PART VII: Conclusion
• Index