psychoanalysis

• psychoanalysis emphasized the ways our unconscious thought processes and our emotional response to childhood experiences affect our behaviour
• psychic determinism - our behaviour is motivated by inner forces and conflicts with the individual has limited ability to control
• Sigmund Freud is considered the father of psychoanalysis and he believed that the goal of psychology was to understand the unconscious factors that lead to problematic feelings, thoughts and behaviours and learn to work through them to improve daily function
• freud developed the theory of the unconscious mind - he saw difficulties as a result of mental rather than physical problems. he believed that psychological disorders are the result of;

  • unconscious desires
  • unconscious conflicts becoming extreme or unbalanced
  • childhood experiences
• if unresolved conflicts occur in childhood, they will cause "fixations" - conflict between impulse and prohibition
• freud believed that unconscious thoughts and impulses are expressed through; slips of the tongue (freudian slips) and dreams
• freud gave a negative picture of humans; driven by sexual and aggressive impulses in nature.
• free association is a method in which a patient is instructed to say everything that comes to mind, regardless of how trivial or embarrassing it may seem
• dream analysis; freud believed that dreams represented unconscious desires or fears in disguised form
• importance of psychoanalysis: influenced pop culture, was the first approach to recognise childhood as a critical part of developing. focused on the individual , we now use the term psychodynamic theory, first school to study what was underlying the unconsciousness
• limitations of psychoanalysis: doesnt focus on observable behaviour, negative image of humans, not scientifically proven, ignores political and social explanations of problems, implies people have little free will