psychodynamic approach

• who proposed the psychodynamic approach?

  freud
• freud suggests that most of our mind is made up of the unconscious
• what is the unconscious mind?

  a vast storehouse of biological drives and instincts that has a significant influence on behaviour and personality

  • also contains threatening and disturbing memories that have been repressed
• the unconscious can be accessed during dreams through dreams or slips of the tongue

  • these are called parapraxes
• Freud described personality as a 'tripartite' composed of three parts:

  • Id
  • ego
  • superego
• id

  the pleasure principle

  • present at birth
  • throughout life, the id is extremely selfish and demands instant gratification for its needs.
• ego

  reality principle and mediator between the other two parts of the personality

  • develops around the age of two years and reduces conflicts
  • deploys defence mechanisms
• superego

  morality principle

  • formed at the end of the phallic stage
  • represents the moral standards of the child's same-sex parent
  • punishes wrongdoing through guilt
• Freud claimed that child development occurs in 5 psychosexual stages
• what are Freud's psychosexual stages?

  1. Oral
  2. Anal
  3. Phallic
  4. latency
  5. genital
• Oral Stage

  0-1 years

  • Focuses on the pleasure of the mouth
  • mother's breast is the object of desire
• what are the consequences of an unresolved conflict in the Oral stage?

  Oral fixation - smoking, biting nails, sarcastic, critical
• Anal stage

  1 - 3 Years

  • Focus on the pleasere of the anus
  • gains pleasure from withholding and expelling faeces
• What are the consequences of an unresolved conflict in the anal stage?

  Anal retentive - perfectionist, obsessive

  Anal explosive - thoughtless, messy
• Phallic stage

  3 - 5 years

  • focus on pleasure from the genital area
  • child experiences the oedipus or elctra complex
• what are the consequences of unresolved conflict in the phallic stage?

  Phallic personality - narcissistic, reckless and possibly homosexuality
• Latency Stage

  earlier conflicts are repressed
• Genital stage

  11+ (puberty)

  • Sexual desires become conscious along side the onset of puberty
• what are the consequences of unresolved conflict from the Genital stage?

  difficulty forming heterosexual relationships
• Oedipus complex

  boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mother and murderous hatered for their rival in love - the father

  • fearing thier father will castrate them, boys repress thier feelings for thier mother and identify with thier father
  • taking on his gender role and moral values
• Electra complex

  girls experience penis envy

  • the desire their father - as the penis is the primary love object - and hate their mother
  • the replace their desire of their father with the desire to have a baby
• 2 strengths of the psychodynamic approach:

  • Explanatory power
  • practical application
• how does the psychodynamic approach have good practical application?

  had a huge influence on psychology and Western contemporary thought.

  • remained a dominant force in psychology for the first half of the 20th century
  • has been used to explain a wide range of personality development, abnormal behaviour, moral development and gender
  • significant in drawing attention to the connection between experiences in childhood and later development
• How does the psychodynamic approach have practical application?

  contributed to founding a new form of therapy - psychoanalysis

  • employs a range of techniques designed to access the unconscious - hypnosis and dream analysis
  • Psychoanalysis is the forerunner to many modern-day psychotherapies
• Counterargument for the psychodynamic approach having practical application

  psychoanalysis has been criticised as inappropriate, an even harmful, for people suffering more serious mental disorders (schizophrenia)
• 2 limitations of the psychodynamic approach:

  • the case study method
  • psychic determinism
• How does the case study of the psychodynamic approach act as a limitation?

  Little Hans

  • critics have suggested that it is not possible to make such universal claims about human nature based on the studies of such a small number of psychologically abnormal individuals
  • Frueds interpretations were highly subjective
  • his method lacks scientific rigour
• How does the Psychodynamic approach have psychic determinism?

  Freud believed there was no such thing as an 'accident'

  • even 'slips of the tongue' are driven by unconscious forces and have deep symbolic meaning
  • explains all behaviour as determined by unconscious conflicts that are rooted in childhood
  • free will is just an illusion
• Little Hans

  Hans was a 5-year-old boy who developed a phobia of horses after seeing one collapse in the street.

  • suggested that this was a form of displacement in which his repressed fear of his father was transferred
  • thus, horses were merely a symbolic representation of Hans' real unconscious fear: the fear of castration