psychodynamic approach

• Psychodynamic approach


  A dynamic approach to psychology that focuses on the unconscious mind and its influence on behaviour and personality
• Unconscious


  The vast storehouse of biological drives and instincts that has a significant influence on our behaviour and personality
• Preconscious


  Thoughts and memories which are not currently in conscious awareness but we can access if desired
• Id


  The primitive part of our personality that operates on the pleasure principle and is entirely selfish, demanding instant gratification
• Ego


  The part of personality that works on the reality principle and mediates between the Id and Superego, employing defence mechanisms
• Superego


  Our internalised sense of right and wrong, based on the morality principle, that punishes the Ego for wrongdoing through guilt
• Psychosexual stages


  • Oral (0-1 years)
  • Anal (1-3 years)
  • Phallic (3-6 years)
  • Latency
  • Genital (onset of puberty)
• Psychosexual stages


  • Each stage (apart from latency) is marked by a different conflict that the child must resolve in order to progress successfully to the next stage
  • Any psychosexual conflict that is unresolved leads to fixation where the child becomes 'stuck' and carries certain behaviours and conflicts associated with that stage through to adult life
• Defence mechanisms


  • Unconscious processes that ensure the Ego is able to prevent us from being overwhelmed by temporary threats or traumas
  • Often involve some form of distortion of reality and are regarded as psychologically unhealthy and undesirable as a long-term solution
• Unresolved psychosexual conflict


  Leads to fixation where the child becomes 'stuck' and carries certain behaviours and conflicts associated with that stage through to adult life
• Freud brought to the world a new form of therapy-psychoanalysis, the first attempt to treat mental disorders psychologically rather than physically
• Psychoanalysis


  Claims to help clients by bringing their repressed emotions into their conscious mind so they can be dealt with
• Psychoanalysis is regarded as inappropriate, even harmful, for people experiencing more serious mental disorders (such as schizophrenia)
• Freud's theory is controversial in many ways, and occasionally bizarre, but it has nevertheless had a huge influence on psychology and contemporary thought
• Many of Freud's concepts (such as the Id and the Oedipus complex) are said to occur at an unconscious level, making them difficult, if not impossible, to test
• Freud's theory was based on the subjective study of single individuals, such as Little Hans, which makes it difficult to make universal claims about human behaviour
• The philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that the psychodynamic approach does not meet the scientific criterion of falsification and is therefore pseudoscientific