1st Edition
Unpacking Depth Sport Psychology Case Studies in the Unconscious
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.
1. The Freudian Playbook
2. Psychoanalytic Theories Applied to Athletes
3. Psychoanalytic Techniques Used with Athletes
4. The Athletes’ Motivation Viewed as a Repetition Compulsion
Part 1: Case Studies of Anxiety in Sports
5. The Cause and Cure of a Golfer’s Chipping Yips
6. Mediocrity and the Fear of Success
7. Serving Yips in Tennis
8. An Olympic Swimmer who Froze in the Blocks
9. Anxiety, Overthinking and Loss of Flow in a Hockey Player
10. The Tennis Player who Choked because of Guilt
11. A Boxer with Mind-Numbing Anxiety
Part 2: Case Studies of Athletes with Guilt
12. The Championship Boxer with Too Much Guilt
13. A Long-Distance Swimmer with Survivor Guilt
Part 3: Case Studies of Depressed Athletes
14. Narcissistic Collapse in an Athlete
15. Depression After Winning the Rookie of The Year Award in Major League Baseball
16. Depression used as Defense in Basketball
17. Unresolved Grief in a Tennis Player with the Serving Yips
Part 4: Case Studies of How Athletes Use Psychological Defenses
18. Regression in Sports Teams or Why Players Act like Children
19. How Athletes Use Psychological Defenses in Sports
20. Dissociation and The Zone
21. Choking and The Repression of Aggression
22. Gamesmanship and The Use of Projective Identification
23. Sublimation, Creativity, and Fun in Sports
24. Joking, Laughter, and Banter as Helpful Defenses in Sports
25. Using ‘Identification with The Aggressor’ to Overcome Anxiety
26. Altruism and Sportsmanship
Part 5: Case Studies of The Way Birth Order Influences an Athlete’s Performance
27. The First-Born Child, The Scars of Dethronement and Fear of Failure
28. The Middle Child Syndrome in a Baseball Player with The Throwing Yips
29. A Tennis Player Who Was Youngest in The Family and Who Took Pity on Weaker Opponents
30. The Influence of Twinship on Personality and Performance
Part 6: Odds and Ends
31. An Athlete’s Dream Analysis
32. Focus and Learning Problems in Athletes
33. The Psychological Causes of Sports Injuries
34. Resistance to Sport Psychology: What are Athletes so Afraid of?
35. The Self-Conscious Golfer Unable to Handle Fame
36. What it is like to Work with A Super Star and The Problem of Countertransference
Part 7: Conclusion
37. The Coming Paradigm Shift in Sport Psychology
Biography
Dr. Tom Ferraro is a Psychoanalyst and Sport Psychologist living in New York, USA and working with professional athletes, Olympians and professional teams in a variety of sports. In addition, he is an award-winning writer whose work has been featured in The New York Times, The London Times and The Wall Street Journal and is a frequent guest on national television shows.
"This book is another step forward in the science of sport psychology and the even newer initiative of Depth Sport Psychology. Routledge are now leading publishers in the field and Dr. Tom Ferraro has utilised his considerable experience to put together a unique collection of insights and intriguing case studies, which provide a window into the mind of the amateur and professional athlete. Dr. Ferraro writes with and attractive style which is easy to read, and easy to understand. He explores new subjects in the field such as the relevance of birth order as well as a fascinating section on psychological defences (yes, players really do sabotage themselves!). In an age which has provided so much technological advance, statistical analysis and data it is time for any progressive scientist involved in sport to look at the opposite, the soul, the spirit and the unconscious of the athlete."
Dr. David Burston, PCH Treatment Center, USA, and author of In Depth Sport Psychology: Reclaiming the Lost Soul of the Athlete (Routledge, 2019).
"Tom Ferraro understands what it really takes to improve in athletics. He’s watched the best in the world try and fail and try again until they beat their demons and succeed. This book will give you an appreciation for what that takes. It will open your eyes.
Bob Carney, Golf Digest Contributing Editor and Co-Author of How to Feel a Real Golf Swing.
