The Psychodynamic Approach

• How does the psychodynamic approach explain behaviour?

  A perspective that describes the role of unconscious forces on the mind and direct behaviour and experience
• Sigmund Freud


  • trained as a neurologist
  • moved away from the medical model when he developed the psychological treatment psychoanalysis for abnormality
  • treated mostly hysteria and applied finding from abnormal patients to normal development
• Assumptions

  • behaviour is influenced by unconscious forces
  • early childhood affects development into adulthood
  • focus is placed on the whole person
• The structure of the mind

  • conscious
  • pre-conscious
  • unconscious
• Conscious mind


  Awareness of the environment, both external and internal
• Pre-conscious mind


  Accessible information if it's payed attention to
• Unconscious mind


  Drives our behaviour through repressed memories and inaccessible information
• The id

  • Pleasure principle
  • Present since birth
  • Selfish and demands gratification
• The ego

  • Reality principle
  • Develops at age 2
  • Mediator, helped by defence mechanisms
• The superego

  • Morality principle
  • Develops at age 4/5
  • Determines permissible behaviours and causes guilt
• Oral stage

  • 0-1 years
  • mouth is focal point of sensation/pleasure
• Consequences of oral stage

  Oral fixation:Smoking, nail biting, sarcasm, critical
• Anal stage


  • 1-3 years
  • focal point of sensation is the anus
• Consequences of the anal stage

  Anal retentive:Perfectionist, obsessive

  Anal repulsive:Thoughtless, messy
• Phallic stage

  • 3-6 years
  • Sexual energy of pleasure focuses on genital area
  • child becomes aware of anatomical differences
  • when oedipus and electra complexes develop
• Consequences of phallic stage

  Phallic personality:Narcissistic, reckless, possibly homosexual
• Latency stage

  • 6-puberty
  • Conflicts and issues of previous stages are repressed
  • Unable to remember much of early years
• Consequences of latency stage


  • Difficulty expressing emotions
  • difficulty forming healthy relationships
• Genital stage


  • puberty
  • death
  • genitals are focus of pleasure
  • sexual desire is conscious
• Consequences of genital stage

  difficulty forming heterosexual relationships
• Oedipus complex

  • phallic stage
  • unconscious feelings of desire for mother and jealousy to father
  • leads to castration anxiety
  • to cope, boy adopts and internalises father's characteristics
• Electra complex

  • Carl Jung
  • Girls feel desire for father, jealous of mother
  • develop penis envy
  • resent mother for making them "insufficiently equipped"
  • internalise mother's characteristics
• Little Hans case study

  • 5 years old, phobia of horses
  • at 3, showed an interest in penises
  • fear of horses worsened, linked to horse's big penis
  • Fear worsened with horses with black harnesses over their noses
  • hans's father had a moustache
  • linked to oedipus complex
  • resolve conflict by imagining himself with a big penis and married to his mother
• Defence mechanisms

  • repression
  • denial
  • displacement
• Repression


  unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts and impulses
• Denial


  refusal to accept reality, avoid painful feelings
• Displacement


  redirecting thoughts/ feelings towards a helpless victim or object
• Strength

  real world application
• limitations

  • lacks generalisability/ cultural bias
  • lacks falsibility
  • use of case studies