The Psychodynamic Approach

• The assumption of the psychodynamic approach is that all human behaviour is determined by the unconscious as well as childhood experiences
• it also believes that personality is made up of three features: the id, ego and superego
• All children experience biologically driven psychosexually stages of development
• Conscious: the parts of our mind that we know about
• Preconscious: just below the surface, we could become aware of these things if we tried
• Unconscious: processes and thoughts we are unaware of and can’t become aware of
• For Freud, the unconscious controls all human behaviour and can’t be accessed consciously. The unconscious houses biological drives, instincts and memories of childhood trauma. It may repress these from reaching consciousness, the the anxiety and distress associated with them arent felt
• Freud believed that the unconscious extends its influence into every part of our waking and sleeping life, and can be evidenced in dreams, behaviour and parapraxes
• Id: this part of the personality is childlike, immature and is interested in meeting its needs straight away
• Ego: this part of the personality is more rational and logical. Its job is to mediate between the impulsive demands of the id, and the moral demands of the superego. It bases decisions on reality
• Superego: the superego is concerned with doing what is right. It makes the ego feel guilty and judges when you don’t do what it wants
• According to Freud, the way the ego deals with the id and the superego depends on how the child deals with the psychosexual stages of development
• Psychosexual development refers to a series of biologically determined stages that each child must successfully navigate during childhood
• Each of the psychosexual stages correspond to a particular conflict that must be resolved before that individual can successfully advance to the next stage. Each stage also represents the fixation of the libido on a different area of the body
• If a child is over or under indulged at any of the psychosexual stages this can lead to a fixation at a particular stage of development and regression back to this stage, in adulthood, thereby influencing adult personality
• Oral stage: child explores the world through putting things in its mouth. This can cause oral receptive or oral aggression
• Anal stage: pleasure from withholding or expelling faeces. This can cause anal retentive or anal expulsive
• Phallic stage: child is starting to realise differences between girls and boys and learning about gender roles. Boys experience the oedipus complex and girls the elektra complex
• Latent stage: sexual desires are repressed. Child repressed previous psychosexual development and learns new life skills
• Genital stage: adult gets pleasure from physical relationships. Id sexual drive reawaKen’s and adult life is spent pursuing sex and sexual relations
• Defence mechanisms protect the self from the anxiety that passes through the psychosexual stages of development can cause, the ego may use defence mechanisms to convert unconscious impulses into more acceptable forms and thereby reduce anxiety
• People use defence mechanisms to protect ourselves from feeling of anxiety or guilt, which arise because we feel threatened or because our id or superego becomes too demanding. They’re not under conscious control and are non-voluntary
• Repression: an unconscious mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious. This offers the advantage of not having to deal with painful feelings and memories which could cause anxiety
• Denial: involves an individual not accepting the reality of a situation. Denial therefore reduces anxiety
• Displacement: redirecting emotional responses from a real target to something else. This reduces anxiety by allowing expression of that emotion
• A strength of utilising defence mechanisms to explain human behaviour is that they’re intuitively appealing. Most people can appreciate that ideas of denial, repression and displacement and can perhaps recognise periods in their life where they may have used such mechanisms. Therefore, these Freudian ideas make logical sense within the context of human behaviour
• A weakness of using defence mechanisms as a method of explaining behaviour is that they lack testability. sentence mechanisms are unconscious processes and can’t be directly studied using scientific methods. Instead they can only be inferred from observable behaviour or from reported thoughts or experiences. Therefore, it can be argued that denial, repression and displacement are unfalsifiable concepts, because they can’t be verified
• Nature vs Nurture: the psychodynamic approach suggests that behaviour is caused by innate drives, although early childhood experiences also shape our behaviour
• Free Will vs Determinism: according to the psychodynamic approach, behaviour is determined by unconscious drives and early childhood experiences
• Scientific: the psychodynamic approach uses many concepts/theories which can’t be empirically tested. Therefore, an idiographic approach is often taken and there’s a large element of subjective interpretation
• Real World Application: the psychodynamic approach has led to the development of treatments like psychoanalysis, however the positive impact/application of this treatment is questionable