Psychodynamic

• Tripartite personality

  • Id: pleasure principle, acts on unconscious drives and instincts
  • Superego: morality principle, internalised "right and wrongs"
  • Ego: reality principle, mediates the other two processes using ego defence mechanisms
• Three parts of the mind

  • Conscious: what we are aware of, current thoughts
  • Preconscious: thoughts and memories that can be accessed if needed but are not in conscious thought
  • Unconscious: where innate drives/instincts and repressed thoughts are held. Has a significant influence on behaviour but we are unaware of it
• Psychosexual stages

  • Oral: 0-1
  • Anal: 1-3
  • Phallic: 3-6
  • Latency: 6-12
  • Genital: 12+

  
• Ego defence mechanisms:

  • Denial: refusing to acknowledge an aspect of reality
  • Repression: burying the memory of an event into the unconscious
  • Displacement: moving the feelings of the event onto a neutral, substitute target
• Psychodynamic evaluation

  + Real life application: is used in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy to help patients

  + Explanatory power: can explain many aspects of psychology and their effect on human behaviour

  - Subjective: created using case studies by Freud where analysis was subjective and he was biased

  - Unfalsifiable: cannot be proven right or wrong, so is subjective and unscientific

  - Alpha bias: overexaggerates the differences between men and women

  - Psychic determinism: claims that people have no free will due to all behaviour being due to the unconscious