psychodynamic approach

    Cards (9)

    • tripartite structure of personality:
      ID = pleasure principle, demands instant gratification (innate)
      Ego = reality principle, mediator of ID/Superego
      Superego = morality principle, punishes ego through guilt (age 5)
    • dominance of superego = neurosis
      dominance of ID = psychosis
    • Psychosexual stages of development:
      Oral (0-1 y/o)
      →pleasure focus of mouth
      →If forceful feeding, deprivation or early weaning occur then fixation could lead to oral activities (e.g. smoking), dependency, and aggression.
      Anal (1-3 y/o)
      pleasure focus on anus
      →If toilet training is too harsh or relaxed then fixation could lead to obsessiveness, tidiness, meanness; or to untidiness and generosity
      Phallic(3-5y/o)
      →Penis or cilitoris masturbation
      Latency (5-Puberty)
      →earlier conflicts are repressed (sexual)
      Genital (puberty - death)
      →sexual desires become conscious (sex/masturbation)
    • What is the Oedipus complex?
      child has unconscious sexual desires for the opposite-sex parent and rivalry with the same-sex parent occurs in phallic stage
    • Defence mechanisms:
      Unconscious strategies that the ego uses to manage the conflict of the ID and the superego 
      • Repression =  used by the ego to keep disturbing memories out of the conscious mind and in the unconscious mind where they cannot be accessed, e.g. sexual or aggressive urges or painful childhood memories.
      • Displacement = impulse redirected from original target onto more acceptable one
      Denial = the existence of unpleasant internal or external realities is denied and kept out of conscious awareness
    • Evaluation summary:
      • Real World application = psychoanalysis
      • Deterministic
      • untestable concepts
    • Real world application:
      has given rise to one of the first “talking cures,” psychoanalysis, on which many psychological therapies are now based. Psychoanalysis aimed to help ppt with everyday problems by providing access to unconscious.
      also used as a form of literary criticism in literature such as Hamlet, where repressed messages are hidden beneath the surface of the text. Interpretation allows us to delve into the character’s mind – It can be used to explain behavior outside psychology.
    • Determinism:
      • suffers from psychic determinism suggesting that behaviour is determined by childhood experiences and unconscious conflict which are shaped by their biological drives
      • few psychologists accept this view
      • therefore by ignoring free will suggests freuds view are too extreme
    • untestable concepts:
      • Karl popper argued the approach does not meet scientific criteria of falsification = cannot be disapproved
      • many of Freud's concepts occur at an unconscious level making it highly difficult to test
      • theory is pseudoscience as they lack scientific credibility
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