Psychodynamic approach

• What is the Psychodynamic approach?

  Traumatic events from childhood are repressed into the unconscious mind, hidden from conscious awareness to protect from anxiety.
• What is the structure of personality?

  The personality has 3 parts - the ID, the ego and the supergo.
• What is the ID?

  The pleasure principle, present at birth, drives us to selfish urges
• What is the ego?

  Reality principle - the mediator to reduce conflict between the id and superego (uses defence mechanisms to deal with this), develops at 2
• What is the superego?

  Our internalised sense of right and wrong - the morality principle and develops at end of phallic stage (age 5)
• What are defence mechanisms?

  Unconscious strategies to reduce anxiety to manage the conflict between the id and superego. (repression, displacement, denial)
• What is repression?

  unconscious concealment of uncomfortable thoughts in the unconscious - protects emotional wellbeing
• what is displacement?

  transferring feelings from their true source onto a substitute target.
• what is denial?

  refusing to acknowledge some aspect of reality.
• What are the psychosexual stages of development?

  Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency and Genital
• What is the oral stage?

  The infant experiences pleasure through their mouth - fixation on smoking, biting nails.
• What is the anal stage?

  pleasure is in the anus from withholding and expelling faeces.
• What is the phallic stage?

  Focus of pleasure is the genital area
• What is the latency stage?

  Earlier sexual conflicts are repressed/forgotten
• What is the genital stage?

  Sexual desires become conscious alongside the onset of puberty.
• What is the Oedipus complex?

  Involved a boy, aged between 3 and 6, becoming unconsciously sexually attached to his mother and hostile towards the father.
• What is the electra complex?

  A girl, aged between 3 and 6, becoming unconsciousLily sexually attached to her father and increasingly hostile toward her mother.
• Why are Freud’s concept untestable and unfalsifiable?

  Concepts such as the ID and Oedipus complex occur at an unconscious level - impossible to test experimentally - a pseudoscience (Karl Popper)
• What is the practical applications of the approach?

  Psychoanalysis - form of therapy, techniques access the unconscious (hypnosis, dream analysis) - however harmful for schizophrenia
• Why is Little Hans case study idiographic and what does that mean?

  Little Hans has a displaced phobia of his father, aim was to bring unconscious mental activity to the conscious to release anxiety. Cannot be generalised!
• What is the research support for this approach?

  Little Hans - supports the Oedipus complex.