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Case analysis from ego psychology perspectives Essay

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Introduction
This paper, divided into two parts, is intended to understand April’s case in a “thoughtfully eclectic” way from a social work perspective by applying human behavior theories. The first part shows the use of Ego Psychology to illustrate how loss from April’s father’s death interrupted her development by disrupting her ego function. The second part shows the assessment of April’s biological, psychological, and social-emotional development, the ecological factors which affected her development, and the cultural stereotype expectation on normal development.
Question One:
April’s arrival was not expected by her mother; this unexpected pregnancy may have caused stress to the mother (Joy) while she carried April. This was …show more content…

Bowlby pointed out that if children are not given accurate information about a death, they cannot grieve appropriately. The family did not give April a chance to explore and express her grief over the loss. These choices would impact her ego function. Since she could not make sense of the situation, she could not modulate her affect and behavior in order to cope with the pain of loss. She automatically and unconsciously used one of the most important ego functions – defense mechanism – to cope with the trauma. She went into denial, which interfered with her reality testing.
She was told that her father “went to heaven,” which, to her, meant that he was in a distant place. As Silverman, Nickman, and Worden (1992) stated, April, as other children typically display, developed an inner construction of her father that assisted her in coping with her losses and with all of the ensuing changes in her life. She even developed “magic thinking”: a fantasy that her father would return as shown in the picture she drew of her father coming in and out of the house by using the ladder. But with time passing, the reality of her father’s absence becoming increasingly permanent was reinforced. She could not always hold her sadness and fear as shown through her nightmares, crying, or screaming. Sometimes, she regressed to earlier developmental stages, as manifested in her toddler-like behavior, for

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