Psychodynamic approach

• Freud suggested the mind is made up of:

  • conscious - what we are aware of (top of iceberg)
  • preconscious - not immediately accessible but can brought into conscious awareness -- thoughts we may become aware of through dreams and slips of the tongue
  • unconscious - holds thoughts and memories that aren't accessible to awareness but influence our behaviours and feelings (largest of the mind) - contains desires, impulses and repressed memories
• Freud - tripartite personality:

  • Id: selfish part of the mind - focused only on satisfying personal needs and desires - operates on pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification (part of the unconscious mind)
  • Ego: based on reality principle - uses rational thinking to manage Id's demands - acts as mediator between id and superego
  • Superego: mainly unconscious - known as morality principle - influences behaviour by feelings of guilt - moral standards
• 5 psychosexual stages - each is marked by a diff conflict that the child must resolve to move onto the next - any conflict thats unresolved can lead to fixation where child becomes stuck and carries behaviours associated with that stage to adult life

  1. oral (0-1yr) - pleasure focus = mouth, mothers breast
  2. anal (1-3yr) - pleasure focus = anus, gains pleasure from witholding and eliminating faeces
  3. phallic (3-6yr) - pleasure focus = genital area
  4. latency earlier conflicts are repressed (held in)
  5. genital (puberty) - sexual desires become conscious
• Oedipus complex -- in the phallic stage, little boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mother and a hatred for their father

  Later, boys repress their feelings for their mother and identify with their father, taking on his gender role and moral values

  Girls of the same age experience penis envy
• Defence mechanisms - unconscious strategies used by the ego (unconscious to protect conscious mind), e.g:

  • repression: forcing a distressing memory out of the conscious mind
  • denial: refusing to acknowledge reality
  • displacement: transferring feelings from their true source onto a substitute target
• strength: approach introduced psychotherapy - Freuds psychoanalysis was the first attempt to treat mental disorders psychologically rather than physically - psychoanalysis claims to help with everyday problems by providing access to their unconscious, employing techniques such as dream analysis - therefor, psychoanalysis is the forerunner to many modern-day talking therapies
• another strength- approach has explanatory power - Freuds theory is controversial and often bizarre but it has had huge influence on contemporary thought - its been used to explain a wide range of behaviours (moral, mental disorders) and drew attention to the influence of childhood on adult personality - this suggests that overall, the approach has had a positive influence on psychology and modern-day thinking
• limitation: approach includes untestable concepts - popper argued that the psychodynamic approach doesnt meet the scientific criterion of falsification (cannot be disproved) - many of freud's concepts like the Id or Oedipus complex, occur at an unconscious level, making them difficult to test - this means that freuds ideas lack scientific rigour, the theory is fake science rather than real science
• weakness: determinism - Freud claimed that our behaviour is determined by factors outside of our control - he argued that we don't choose how we behave because our actions are predetermined by our past experiences - this means that individuals aren't responsible for their own actions which goes against the idea of free will - this viewpoint could be seen as pessimistic and fatalistic
• role of unconscious part of the mind: it drives our conscious behaviour and shapes our personalities (unconscious shaping of behaviour is due to trying to solve conflict between diff aspects of personality and psychosexual stages - problems during these stages can result in fixation, leading to negative personality traits)

  unconscious has a role of protecting the conscious mind from harmful thoughts (traumatic thoughts, fears, anxiety) through defence mechanisms like i.e. repression
• imbalance of tripartite personality can lead to criminal behaviour - if the id is excessively dominant, an individual may engage in impulsive and antisocial behavior to satisfy primal urges without regard for laws or moral standards