Psychodynamic (perspective)

• Psychosexual theory of child development -> 0-2 - oral - sucking, biting, swallowing

  3-4 - anal - pooing, holding poo in

  4-5 - phallic (oedipus complex) - genitals

  6-puberty - latent - sports, hobbies, same sex friendships

  Puberty-onwards - genital - sexual feelings towards others + sexual gratification
• Defining principles and concepts - tripartite structure of personality

  Tripartite structure of mind + defence mechanisms (id, ego, super ego)

  Oedipus complex

  Pyschosexual stages of child development (oral,p anal, phallic, latent and genital)
• Main research methods - self report, case study, longitudinal, dream analysis
• Justification for these methods - the participant is able to tell you the information that you need as its not something that you can observe or experiment to find out (self report). To study indepth their life experiences (case study). Because it takes a while to fully understand someone (longitudinal). Reveals the unconscious true desires (dream anaylsis)
• Key research - freud
• Strength one - can explain how hard to understand or puzzling/bizzare behaviour by revealing the unconscious
• Strength two- explains the cause of mental illness such as phobia
• Weakness one - not scientific/ not objective/ not falsifiable
• Weakness two - issues with generalisability due to small samples - often single individuals in case studies
• Application - used for therapy/ counselling

  Psychoanalysis - there are over 30,000 registered psychoanalysts in the USA. Developed by Freud as 'talking cure' it treats psychological and physical symptoms by dream analysis and revealing the unconscious mind