PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH

• Assumptions


  • Most of our mind is made up of the unconscious
  • We have threatening and disturbing memories that have been repressed which can be accessed during dreams or parapraxes (Freudian slip)
  • Experiences from childhood determine our behaviour and personality throughout life
• What is the structure of personality?

  • A tripartite
  • Id
  • Ego
  • Superego
• id


  • Operates on the pleasure principle
  • Gets what it wants
  • Mass of unconscious drives and instincts
  • id is present at birth
  • Selfish and demands instant gratification
• Ego


  • Reality principle
  • Mediator between id and superego
  • Develops around 2 years
  • Reduces conflict between the demands of the id and the superego through developing defence mechanisms
• Superego 


  • Morality principle
  • Develops around 5 years (end of phallic stage)
  • Represents the moral standards of the child's same-sex parent
  • Punishes ego for wrongdoing through guilt
• What are the 3 defence mechanisms the ego employs?

  Repression

  Denial

  Displacement
• Repression


  Forcing a distressing memory out of the conscious mind
• Denial 


  Refusing to acknowledge some aspect of reality
• Displacement


  Transferring feelings from a true source of distressing emotion onto a substitute target
• Psychosexual stages


  • Oral
  • Anal
  • Phallic
  • Latency
  • Gential
  • Old Age Pensioners Love Guiness
• Oral stage


  • 0-1 years
  • Focus of pleasure- mouth
  • Object of desire- mothers breast
  • Oral fixation- smoking, biting nails
  • ORAL RECEPTIVE- passive,
  • ORAL AGGRESSIVE- hostile, gullible,
• Anal stage


  • 1-3 years
  • Focus of pleasure- anus
  • Child gains pleasure from withholding and expelling faeces
  • ANAL RETENTIVE- perfectionist, obsessive
  • ANAL EXPULSIVE- thoughtless, messy
• Phallic stage


  • 3-5 years
  • Focus of pleasure- genital area
  • Child experiences Oedipus or Electra complex
  • Narcissistic, reckless
• Latency stage


  • Earlier conflicts are repressed
• Genital


  • Sexual desires become conscious
  • Onset of puberty
  • Difficulty forming heterosexual relationships
• Oedipus complex


  • During the phallic stage
  • Boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mother
  • Hatred and rival towards their father
  • Fear of castration and experience 'penis envy'
  • Boys repress their feelings for their mother and identify with their father as a result, taking on his gender role and moral values
• Electra complex


  • Desire their father and hate their mother
  • Overtime they give up the desire for the father over time and replace this with a desire for a baby, identifying with mother in process
• LITTLE HANS (supports concept of Oedipus complex)

  • 5 year old boy
  • Phobia of horses after seeing on collapse
  • Freud suggested Hans' phobia was a form of displacement
  • This was to cope and repress the fear of his father, displacing it onto horses
  • This may be a symbol of his real fear of castration
• (AO3) What is an issue with Freud's concepts?

  • Many are untestable and do not meet the scientific criterion of falsification (empirical testing and being disproved)
  • Many of Freud's concepts are abstract and occur at an unconscious level which cannot be tested nor provided evidence
  • PA is more pseudoscience than real
• (AO3) Psychic determinism?


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