AO1

• Defence mechanisms are an unconscious strategy that protects our conscious mind from anxiety
• Psychodynamic theory was developed by Sigmund Freud
• Defence mechanisms:

  • Repression
  • Denial
  • Displacement
• The structure of personality:

  • The id
  • The ego
  • The superego
• Psychosexual stages:

  • Oral (0-2yrs)
  • Anal (2-3yrs)
  • Phallic (3-6yrs)
  • Latent (6-12yrs)
  • Genital (12+)
• Electra complex occurs during the phalic stage of development. When a girl blames her mother for her lack of penis envy, but eventually resolves this through a wish to have a baby and comes to identify with her mother and internalises female gender values.
• Freud proposed that a child enters a phallic stage. The focus was on limbo moves to the genitals.
• Oedipus complex occurs during the phallic stage of a development when a boy wishes his father dead because they are rivals for the mother's love. This leads to causation anxiety which eventually resolved by identifying with the father ander internaliding the father's gender identity.