PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH

• Psychodynamic approach

  Role of the unconscious
• Levels of consciousness


  • Conscious - 5%
  • Subconscious - can be recalled from your brain if necessary
  • Unconscious - repressed memories that are revealed through dreams or parapraxes
• Structure of the personality


  • Id - pleasure principle - birth - selfish desires
  • Ego - reality principle - 2 years old - mediates between id and superego to compromise - uses defence mechanisms
  • Superego - morality principle - 5 years old - internalised morals from same sex parents
• Defence mechanisms


  Unconscious strategies that the ego uses to mediate the conflict between the id and superego
• Defence mechanisms


  • Repression - unconsciously forcing a bad memory out your conscious mind
  • Denial - refusing to accept reality
  • Displacement - transferring your feelings onto a substitute target
• Psychosexual stages


  • Oral - pleasure from the mouth - consequence from conflict is an oral fixation inc. Smoking, nail biting, sarcasm
  • Anal - pleasure from anal excretion - consequence from conflict is anal retentive (perfectionist) or anal expulsive (thoughtless)
  • Phallic - pleasure from genitals - consequence from conflict is phallic personality (reckless, narcissistic)
  • Latency - late childhood (earlier conflicts repressed)
  • Genitals - teens/adulthood - sexual desires become conscious during puberty
• Pneumonic for psychosexual stages

  Old Age Pensioners Love Grandchildren
• Oedipus complex


  Boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mother and murderous hatred towards their father but fearing castration they repress these feelings and start identifying with their father and the male identity
• Electra complex


  Girls desire their father and hate their mother. After a while they give up this desire and start to want to start a family and have babies, identifying with their mother in the process
• Same sex identification occurs during the phallic to genital stage
• Strengths of the psychodynamic approach


  • Psychotherapy - new form of therapy that allows therapists to access the unconscious mind using techniques such as dream therapy - shows value of the psychodynamic approach
  • Able to explain a wide range of phenomena's inc. Personality development, origins of psychological disorders, moral development and gender identity. It is known for drawing links between childhood trauma and future development - positive impact on psychology
• Limitations of the psychodynamic approach


  • Inappropriate or harmful to those with more serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia as it is more difficult for them to formulate their thoughts in the way psychoanalysis would like
  • Untestable concepts - all its assumptions happen on an unconscious level so cannot be empirically tested and cannot be proved right or wrong - most of his ideas were based on subjective studies of individuals such as Little Hans and Anna O' so difficult to generalise to others - not so scientific
  • Psychic determinism - the assumption that all behaviour is determined by childhood traumas and unconscious conflicts - everything has an unconscious cause - doesn't allow free will
  • Use of case study methods - investigated individual cases such as Little Hans and Anna O' so cannot generalise case studies
• Case study - Anna O'

  Stages of her illness: 

  Latent incubation – during her dad's illness she fell ill and there were many observable symptoms 

  “Manifest illness” – when her father passed, her recovery was derailed, and she started displaying suicidal tendencies 

  Intermittent somnambulism – after her father's death she switched between periodic somnambulism (sleepwalking) and apparently normal behaviour  

  Recovery – Breuer stated that following his treatment, Anna began to make a slow recovery that lasted until June 1882 
• Anna O' -

  Symptoms: 

  Paralysis – right arm and leg 

  Involuntary eye movements – vision problems and a squint 

  Hydrophobia – an aversion to food and water which led to her avoiding water for a couple of days 

  Lethargy – the start of 1882, Anna was bed-bound 

  Language difficulties – repeating words, polyglot: speaking multiple languages and eventually not being able to speak for a couple of weeks 
• Anna O' - 


  She was eventually diagnosed with hysteria and Breuer and Freud used talking therapies to try and help her vocalise her thoughts. Anna eventually recovered and led a feminist movement in Austria and Germany, which she was passionate about due to her restrictive upbringing. 
• Case study - Little Hans

  A 5-year-old boy who had a fear of horses and the primary aim was to treat this phobia, but the secondary aim was to find out what caused the phobia and what factors can lead to its remission. From about the age of 3, Little Hans was obsessed with his ‘widdler’, both his and of other males and at one point his mother threatened to cut off his widdler if he continued to play with it.
• Little Hans


  His fear of horses worsened, and Freud linked this to fear of the horse's large penis. As it started to improve Hans was only afraid of horses with black harnesses over the nose, linked to his father.
• Little Hans


  This study represents the Oedipus complex, the horse with black harnesses and large penises unconsciously representing his fear of his father. Freud told him to resolve this conflict by imagining himself with a large penis and married to his mother which allowed him to identify with his father and overcome his fear of castration.