Psychodynamic Approach

• key assumptions

  focused on studying how unconscious processes shape behaviour, thought to form during early childhood experience
• the role of the unconscious

  1 of 3 aspects of the mind: conscious and pre conscious

  not open to awareness, contains socially unacceptable thoughts, drives/instincts and memories that are repressed
• the Id

  pleasure principle

  present from birth, focused on satisfying its own needs/desires
• the Ego

  reality principle

  develops from 3 yrs, focused on balancing the Id and Superego through rational thought
• the Superego

  morality principle

  developed from 3-5 yrs, focused on obeying learnt rules of society and uses guilt
• defence mechanisms

  unconscious processes that reduce anxiety felt by the Ego by distorting reality
• repression

  making a memory inaccessible to consciousness
• denial

  refusing to accept the reality of a situation
• displacement

  moving emotion from the source to an alternative
• oral stage

  0-18 months, pleasure centre: mouth - fixation on mothers breast for milk

  . smoking, biting nails, sarcastic, critical
• anal stage

  18-36 months, pleasure centre: anus - withholding and expelling faeces

  . anally retentive = perfectionist, obsessive

  . anally expulsive = thoughtless, messy
• phallic stage


  3-6 yrs, pleasure centre = gentians - conflict through the Oedipus/Electra complex

  . fixation = narcissistic, reckless, possibly homosexual
• latent stage

  6-12 yrs, libido = dormant - conflicts of previous stages are repressed
• genital stage

  12+ yrs, libido = genitals - where it stays for life

  . difficulty forming heterosexual relationships
• ao3 - development of therapy

  treatment for anxiety disorder, psychoanalysis
• ao3 - explanatory power

  focused on emotional development that occurs in early childhood and effects adult behaviours and personality
• ao3 - not observable

  inferences - unconscious mind is not observable and therefore not testable

  unfalsifiable; reduces the scientific validity
• ao3 - psychic determinism

  mental processes/behaviour that are seen freely chosen under conscious control are actually caused by unconscious systems in childhood