Psychodynamic approach

• What is the main assumption

  That all our behaviour is controlled by our unconcious thoughts, so any abnormal behaviour/ mental illnesses are also caused by these thoughts
• Theory of the mind

  Freud said mind is made of 3 parts

  • concious mind - part we're aware of, current thoughts
  • preconcious mind - where we temporarily store thoughts that aren't currently needed
  • unconcious mind - bury unwanted thoughts & memories

  He believed the unconcious thoughts continued to affect us without realising, even as adults
• Theory of personality

  Freud believed have 3 parts of our personality

  • id - insticnt/ primal urges/ drives, we're ruled by id until age 2 (unconcious)
  • Ego - conscious part of personality, develops at 2, part that describes who you are
  • SuperEgo - conscious, sense of right/ wrong, develops at age 5

  id & superego are in constant conflict, ego finds balance.

  When one is too strong, problems/ habits are created
• Theory of psychosexual development

  Freud believed children go through 5 stages of development, dictating adult behaviours.

  If trauma occurs, can become 'fixated' at a stage.

  All relate to unconscious mind:

  • Oral stage (0-18mths) - mouth main source of pleasure, babies like being fed/ sucking on blankets
  • Anal stage (18-36mths) - bottoms & becoming potty trained become main focus, become aware of bodily functions, enjoy learning control
  • Phallic stage (3-5yrs) - become aware of genitals & that men/ women have different ones
  • Boys experience Oedipus complex, develop strong feelings for mums, feel hatred & jealousy towards father
  • pass through stage as superego develops, begin to identify more with same sex parent
  • Girls experience Electra complex
  • Latency stage (5-puberty) - m/f no interested in eachother, gender identity developing
  • Gential stage (pubert+) - genital become main source of pleasure through adult sexual relaionships
• Defence mechanisms

  Psychological strategies unconsciously used to protect from anxiety rising

  Repression

  • prevents unacceptable desires, motivation/ emotions from becoming conscious
  • makes guilty thoughts unconscious, may cause emotional difficulties

  Projection

  • people own unacceptable faults are attributed to someone else
  • accusing someone of being angry when it's you feeling that emotion

  Denial

  • refuse to believe events or admit they're experiencing emotions that produce anxiety

  Regression

  • people respond to anxiety by behaving in childish ways
  • adults stop/ kicking when angry

  Displacement

  • diverting emotions onto someone else as emotions can't be expressed to person concerned

  Sublimation

  • diverting emotions onto something else, socially acceptable

  Intellectualization

  • trying to apply logic to a situation to try and get control
• Evaluation - positives

  • influential, first model accepting therapy as form of treatment
  • idiographic - as does look at individual cases & what has caused people to be traumatised & become fixated on certain stage
  • less deterministic than other approaches, as it uses therapies to change the abnormal behaviour, treatments have a degree of success
  • both nature & nurture - focuses on our innate actions & drives and states we inevitably go through stages but that they're affect by our environment
• Evaulation - negative

  • untestable, difficult to test scientifically, uses case studies & interviews, no empirical data to analyse
  • slightly nomothetic - applies generlaised stages to everyone, but does still look at individual cases
  • slightly reductionistic, oversimplifies human behaviour, as focuses on unconscious thoughts & how they affect us, but still accounts for environmental experiences
  • retrospective - early traumatic experiences in childhood may not appear in adulthood, data may be unreliable
  • psychic & soft determinism - claims abnormal behaviour results from unconscious psychic conflict related to innate biological drives
  • that we have little control over personality development
  • traumatic event in childood gurantees abnormal behaviour
  • ethical implication - people can't be blamed for abnormal behaviour, but that parents are responsible for their childrens
  • current experiences - doesn't account for P's current difficulties