Psychoanalysis

    Cards (5)

    • What does psychoanalysis do
      It aims to make the unconscious mind conscious as it is these repressed thoughts that are believed to have led to criminality. Once conscious these thoughts can be dealt with.
    • Methods of psychoanalysis
      Free association, dream analysis and ink blots.
    • Aichhorn
      He applied psychoanalytic ideas to policies for treating young offenders. He treated the children by providing a happy and pleasant environment to allow development of the superego.
    • Strengths
      Hypnosis is still used today and has been shown to be effective for stopping smoking/ weight management so could also work for criminality.
      Can help uncover the psychological motivations and conflicts that lead to criminal behaviour, giving us insights to why people commit crime.
    • Weaknesses
      least favoured theory as an approach to working with offenders- its very costly and time consuming and unlikely to provide quick answers.T/F it has never been used large scale to treat criminals.
      Ethical issues - a patient could remember things that caused great distress to them as there was a reason the memory was repressed.
      Eysneck found only 44% of psychoanalysis patients treated for neurosis showed improvements compared to 72% treated by GP’s.