PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH

• What are 3 key assumptions of the psychodynamic approach?

  • unconscious activity is the key determinant in how we behave
  • we possess innate 'drives' that energise our minds to motivate behaviour as we develop through our lives.
  • humans should be researched ideographically - individual people.
• What are 3 key assumptions of the psychodynamic approach?

  • our 3 part personality - the psyche, is compromised of the ID, eg and superego which shape behaviour
  • childhood experiences have significant importance in determining our personality when we reach adulthood
  • we develop through a number of stages and fixation in a stage shapes behaviour.
• What is the psyche?


  Forms the structure of personality, and has three parts.
• what is the ID?


  Uncoordinated instinctual impulses - gratification and destruction driving us to satisfy selfish urges e.g. eat

  Pleasure principle

  Exists from birth.
• What is the ego?


  Testing reality: mediating between instinctual impulses and social demands

  Acts rationally, balancing ID and superego; also exists in preconscious

  Reality principle

  Years 2-4
• What is the superego?


  Behaviourist ideas - concerned with keeping the moral norms and attempts to control a powerful ID with feelings of guilt

  Internalising voice of parents

  Morality principle

  Years 4-5
• What are ego defence mechanisms?

  Aim to reduce anxiety in areas of significant conflict between the ID and superego by redirecting psychic energy.
• What is regression?


  Burying an unpleasant thought or desire in the unconscious.
• What is displacement?


  Emotions are directed away form their source or target, towards other things.
• What is denial?


  A threatening thought is ignored or treated as if it were not true.
• What are the 5 psychosexual stages?


  Oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital.
• Oral - sucking behaviour: 0-18 months

  Anal - holding or discarding faeces: 18 months to 3 1/2 years

  Phallic - fixation on genitals: 3 1/2 to 6 years

  Latency - repressed sexual urge: 6 years to puberty

  Genital - awakened sexual urges: puberty onwards.
• What is the Oedipus Complex?


  Freud suggested that a boy is unconsciously attracted to his mother in the phallic stage, and is jealous of his father.

  Torn between desire for his mother and fear of his father finding out.

  gives up feelings for mother and identifies with father

  Opposite is the Electra Complex.
• Freud's psychoanalytical theory was based on case studies

  Aim of which was to bring unconscious mental activity to the conscious to release anxiety.
• Techniques to bring unconscious mental activity to the conscious an release anxiety:

  Free association-expressing immediate unconscious thoughts as they happen

  Dream interpretation - analysing the latent context (underline meaning) of manifest content (which was remembered from the dream).
• Little Hans -age 3-5

  Links to phallic stage of development in psychosexual stages

  Links to oedipus complex

  Supports displacement - horses.

  Phobia was caused by unconscious activity being displaced into harmless external objects.
• What is a strength of little Hans?


  In depth, qualitative data can be gained through methods such as observations and interviews - allowed for it to make detailed conclusions

  However, as the data was gained by Han's father (subjective) and it may lack objectivity as there may have also been biased in the questions.
• What is a weakness of Little Hans?


  The sample was a single individual so the study lacks population velocity - findings are questionable concerning the Oedipus Complex and psychosexual development- cannot be generalised to all children
• What is a weakness of Little Hans?


  Unethical - Little Hans was a five year-old boy so who was unable to give informed consent?

  Some of the questions hans' father asked his son may have caused psychological harm.

  Detailed description of Hans' personal information could be invasion of privacy.
• What is a strength of the psychodynamic approach?


  Supporting evidence - some evidence supports the existence of ego defence recognition such as repression E.G. adults can forget traumatic child sex abuse - Williams (1994)
• What is a strength of the psychodynamic approach?


  Influential - modern day psychiatry still utilises Freudian psychoanalytic techniques - his ideas are still influential today.
• What is a weakness of the psychodynamic approach?


  Overemphasises childhood experience - overemphasises childhood experience as the source of abnormality

  Modern day psychodynamic theories recognise adult problems of everyday life e.g. effects of negative interpersonal relationships.
• What is a weakness of the psychodynamic approach?


  Cultural bias - Sue and Sue (2008) - psychoanalysis has little little relevance to western cultures

  E.g.Chinese culture values avoiding thoughts that may cause distress.
• What is a weakness of the psychodynamic approahc?


  Unfalsifiable - cannot be proven or proven wrong as we cannot observe the relevant constructs directly as it is in the unconscious mind.

  Proper argued that a theory is scientific.
• What is a weakness of the psychodynamic approach?


  Gender bias - Freud thought women had a weaker morals than men as they have a stronger superego

  Femininity as failed masculinity.