the psychodynamic approach

• Unconscious


  Freud suggested our brain is made up of the unconscious which contains threatening and disturbing repressed memories. These are accessed through dreams or slips of the tongue.
• Tripartite personality


  ID (pleasure principle), Ego (reality principle), Superego (sense of right and wrong)
• Psychosexual stages


  1. Development occurs in 5 stages where each stage is marked by a different conflict that the child must resolve in order to progress to next stage

  2. If unresolved, this leads to a fixation where child carries certain behaviours and conflicts associated with that stage to adulthood
• Defence mechanisms


  • Repression
  • Denial
  • Displacement
• Oedipus complex


  In the phallic stage, boys develop incestuous feelings to their mother and murderous feelings for their father, fearing that their father will castrate them. This explains why they repress their feelings and identify with their father.
• Penis envy


  Girls experience penis envy from their father and hate their mother. They give up this desire for their father over time and replace this with desire for a baby, identifying with their mother.
• Little Hans case study

  • 5 y/o boy who had a phobia of horses after seeing one collapse. Freud said the horses were a repression of Hans' fear of castration from his father.
• Psychotherapy is a therapy that treats disorders psychologically rather than physically. It employed techniques designed to access the unconscious and helped clients by bringing their represses emotions to the consciousness to they can be dealt with.
• Freud's theory was used to explain personality development, origins of psychological disorders, moral development and gender identity. It helped to draw attention to connection between childhood experiences and later development. It had a positive impact on psychology and literature, art and other human endeavours.
• Much of Freud's theory is untestable. It is not open to empirical testing due to the idea that it occurs at the unconscious level which makes it impossible to test. Also, his ideas are based on subjective study of individuals such as Hans which cannot make universal claims about behaviour. Freud's theory was pseudoscientific as opposed to a real science.