Psychodynamic 5

• Fixation

  During the oral stage of psychosexual development the libido receives satisfaction from stimulation of the lips and mouth.

  Most of the time the libido‘s urges are satisfied by feeding.

  Too little or too much stimulation during this stage can lead to fixation.

  Freud proposed that people with SZ become fixated during the first one or two months of the oral stage.
• Regression

  If an individual experiences excessive amounts of stress they may regress back to the oral stage.

  Regression is an ego defence mechanism which causes the ego to retreat back to an earlier stage temporarily or long term.
• Losing touch with reality

  During the oral stage the ego is not well developed.

  If an individual regresses to a point when the ego effectively doesn’t exist, there is nothing controlling the id.

  SZ symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions supposedly represent the unchecked activities of the id.

  The person loses touch with reality and is unable to distinguish between reality and desires / fantasies.
• Mednick

  Research on children whose mothers were temperamental, cold, rejecting and emotionally aggressive concluded that within 10 years, 17 of these 207 children were diagnosed with SZ compared to 1 child in the control group of 107 children.

  Children with a schizophrenogenic mother are more likely to have SZ in later life.
• Mischler

  During family therapy mothers talking to daughters were aloof and unresponsive.

  This shows that the child having SZ could cause the mother to act distant rather than the other way around.
• Strengths of psychodynamic explanation

  Supporting evidence (Mednick)

  Deterministic
• Weaknesses of psychodynamic explanation

  Difficulty establishing cause & affect (Mischler)

  Incomplete as doesn’t explain negative symptoms

  Deterministic

  Unfalsifiable