Psychodynamic approach

• What are the main assumptions of the psychodynamic approach?

  • A perspective that describes the different forces that direct human behaviour and experience , most of which are unconscious
  • The unconscious - a vast storehouse of biological drives and instincts that influence our behaviour
  • Also contains threatening or disturbing memories that have been repressed, locked away, or forgotten
  • Preconscious contains thoughts and memories which are not currently in conscious awareness but can be accessed if we desired
  • Conscious mind - the part of our mind we know about and aware of is the 'tip of the iceberg'
• What is the structure of Freud's tripartite personality?

  • Id - entirely unconscious, made up of selfish and aggressive instincts that demand immediate gratification and operate on the pleasure principle
  • Superego - our internalised sense of right or wrong that represents our ideal selves, operating on the morality principle
  • Ego - mediator between the id and superego, balancing their conflicting demands by employing defence mechanisms and operates on the reality principle
• What are Freud's 5 psychosexual stages?

  1. Oral
  2. Anal
  3. Phallic
  4. Latency
  5. Genital

  Normal development will occur if no libido is locked into a stage but if a fixation occurs then the child will want to gain satisfaction from that stage as an adult
• What is the oral stage?

  • Birth to 18 months old
  • Mouth is the focus of pleasure - newborns suck their thumbs
  • Id is in control
  • Fixation occurs at this stage if a child is weaned too soon or too late
  • Consequences include smoking, biting nails, chewing pens
  • Weaned too soon will lead to a pessimistic or sarcastic adult personality
  • Weaned too late will lead to a needy and gullible adult personality
• What is the anal stage?

  • 2-3 years old or when potty training is complete
  • Anus is focus of pleasure
  • Fixation in this stage can lead to an anal expulsive character - messy, creative, reckless or an anal retentive character - careful, precise, clean
• What is the phallic stage?

  • 4 years old
  • Genitals are the focus of pleasure
  • Boys experience Oedipus complex where they feel sexual attraction to their mothers and are jealous of their dads
  • Girls experience Electra complex where they experience penis envy and are upset with their mothers for castrating her - replaces desire for penis with a desire for a baby
  • Fixation will lead to a phallic character - self-assured, reckless, vain
• What is the latency stage?

  • 6 years to puberty
  • No focus on sexual drive, instead on school, sports, same-sex friendships
  • Fixations from earlier stages are repressed
• What is the genital stage?

  • Starts at puberty
  • Focus of pleasure is back to genitals but also on friendships and relationships
  • Fixation at this stage will lead to difficulty forming heterosexual relationships
• What are defence mechanisms?

  • Unconscious strategies that the ego uses to manage the conflict between the id and the superego
  • Repression: forcing a distressing memory out of our conscious
  • Denial: refusing to acknowledge some aspect of reality
  • Displacement: choosing a substitute for the expression of our true feelings as we can't express them to the real target
• What was Freud's case study on Little Hans?

  • Hans was a 5 year old boy with a phobia of horses - Freud suggested that this phobia was a form of displacement that where he transferred fear of his father onto horses
  • Horses were merely a symbolic representation of Han's true unconscious fear of castration experienced during the Oedipus complex
  • Freud believed boys developed incestuous feelings towards their mothers and hatred for their fathers as rivals - fearing that their father would castrate them, boys repress their feelings for their mothers and identify with their fathers, internalising his gender roles and moral values
• What is one strength of the psychodynamic approach?

  • Real-world application: introduced the idea of psychotherapy which employed a range of techniques designed to access the unconscious mind such as dream analysis
  • Psychoanalysis can help clients by bringing their repressed emotions into their conscious mind to deal with them healthily
  • Forerunner to many modern talking therapies such as counselling, showing the value of the approach in creating a new approach to treatment
• What is another strength of the psychodynamic approach?

  • Explanatory power: despite Freud's theories being controversial and bizarre it has had a big influence on psychology and contemporary thought
  • Has been used to explain a wide range of phenomena such as personality development, origins of disorders, moral development
  • Significant in drawing attention to our connected between childhood experiences and relationships with later development
  • Suggests it has had a positive impact on psychology
• What is one limitation of the psychodynamic approach?

  • Untestable concepts: Karl Popper argued the approach does not meet the scientific criteria of falsification because it is not open to empirical testing and therefore the possibility of it being disproved
  • Because many of Freud's concepts are said to occur unconsciously they are almost impossible to test, furthered by his use of subjective case studies that cannot be used to make universal claims about human behaviour
  • Suggests Freud's theory is pseudoscientific rather than established fact
• What is another limitation of the psychodynamic approach?

  • Psychic determinism: approach suggests much of our behaviour is determined by unconscious conflicts rooted in our childhood
  • Freud sees us as prisoners of our pasts, which critics see as an extreme view as it dismisses any possible influence of free will on behaviour
  • Makes this approach limited