Psychodynamics

• Freud said that the unconscious makes up most of our mind and is a store for biological drives and instincts.
• Freud said that the unconscious has a significant impact on our behaviour and personality.
• Freud said that the unconscious contains threatening and disturbing memories which have been locked away/repressed
• Freud said that repressed memories can be accessed through dreams or slips of the tongue.
• The preconscious is the thoughts and feelings which can be accessed but are not in the conscious.
• The id is the primitive part of our personality. It uses the pleasure principle, which is the extinctive drive to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
• The id is present at birth. It is based on our unconscious drives and instincts and is entirely selfish.
• The superego is the part of the personality which is the sense of right and wrong. It operates based on the morals learned from the person's same sex parent.
• The superego punished the id with guilt
• the superego develops during the phallic stage.
• The ego mediates between the id and superego. It works on the reality principle: this involves limiting the satisfaction of the demands of the id in order to fit in to the external world.
• The ego develops at 2 years
• The ego is the part of the personality which uses defence mechanisms.
• Freud's stages of development: the first stage is the oral phase. This takes place from birth to 1 year old. The focus of pleasure is on the mouth through getting food from the mother's breast. The consequence of an unresolved conflict in this phase is an oral fixation later in life.
• Freud's stages of development: the second stage is the anal phase. This takes place from 1 to 3 years. The focus of pleasure is the anus: the child gains pleasure from withholding and expelling faeces. An unresolved conflict here leads to anal retention or an ' anal ' personality later in life.
• Freud's stages of development: the third stage is the phallic stage. This takes place from 3 to 5 years. The focus of pleasure is genital. During this stage, boys have an Oedipus complex and girls have an Electra complex. An unresolved conflict in this stage leads to a phallic personality.
• Freud's stages of development: the fourth stage is the latent phase. This takes place from 7 to 13 years. During this stage, earlier conflicts are repressed and the focus switches to developing life skills and social relationships. In this phase the superego is strengthened.
• Freud said that the conflict in each stage must be resolved, otherwise a fixation will be developed which carries on to later life.
• Defence mechanisms can be used if any of the stages of development are unresolved or were traumatic.
• Defence mechanisms include: Repression, Denial and Displacement.
• Repression as a defence mechanism is when a distressing memory is forced out of the conscious mind.
• Denial as a defence mechanism is refusing to acknowledge some aspect of reality.
• Displacement as a defence mechanism is transferring feelings from a true source of distressing emotion to a substitute target.
• An Oedipus complex is the sexual attraction to one's own mother, accompanied by feelings of rivalry and hatred towards the father due to a fear the the father will castrate the son.
• Later in life, the Oedipus complex is repressed and the child learns to identify with their father and takes on his morals.
• In an Electra complex, the girl experiences penis envy as she realises that a penis is the key to power. She also hates her mother and desires her father.
• Later in life, the Electra complex is repressed: the woman stops desiring her father and desires a baby instead as she identifies with her mother.
• The psychodynamic approach seems bizarre now, but earlier in psychology, it was used to explain personality development, abnormal behaviour, moral development and gender
• The psychodynamic approach was created based on single individuals in therapy so, even if it were a sensible approach, it is not reasonable to make universal claims based on this theory because it is so highly subjective.
• Freud developed psychoanalysis. He performed this using hypnosis and dream analysis. Although not helpful for disorders such as schizophrenia, psychoanalysis is still heavily used in modern therapy.
• A criticism of psychodynamics is that it suggests that everything has a deep root and meaning. This doesn't account for the effect of free will.
• An oral fixation later in life causes behaviours such as smoking, biting nails, sarcasm and being too critical.
• Anal retention later in life causes a person to have a personality which is obsessive, messy or perfectionistic
• A Phallic personality causes a person to be narcissistic, reckless and possibly homosexual.
• Freud's stages of development: the fifth and final stage is the genital phase. This takes place from puberty until death. During this stage, sexual desires become conscious. An unresolved complex in this phase causes difficulty forming heterosexual relationships.