Psychodynamic Approach

• What is displacement and eg?

  The focus of a strong emotion is expressed on to a neutral/alternative person or object.

  Jed's anger at the detention/missing the football match is transferred to the locker.
• Unconscious


  The driving/motivating force behind our behaviour/personality
• The unconscious protects the conscious self from anxiety/fear/trauma/conflict
• Traumatic (repressed) memories drive our behaviour
• Defence mechanisms


  • Repression
  • Denial
  • Displacement
• Defence mechanisms


  Used unconsciously to reduce anxiety
• Underlying unconscious drive


  Sexual
• If a conflict is experienced during development through the psychosexual stages, a fixation can affect an adult's personality
• Psychosexual stages


  • Oral
  • Anal
  • Phallic
  • Latent
  • Genital
• A fixation resides in the unconscious mind
• Role of the unconscious

  • the unconscious is the driving/motivating force behind our behaviour/personality
  • the unconscious protects the conscious self from anxiety/fear/trauma/conflict.
• Role of defence mechanisms

  • help the ego manage the conflict between the id and the superego
  • provide compromise solutions (usually unconscious) to deal with unresolvable conflict
  • provide a strategy to reduce anxiety (which weakens the ego's influence)
  • use of examples, eg through the use of denial/displacement/repression, to describe the role of defence mechanisms.
• A03: strengths to psychodynamic approach

  • psychotherapy as a treatment for mental health issues
  • explanatory power to many psychological topics
  • use of evidence to support or contradict the psychodynamic approach, eg studies into the effectiveness of psychotherapy, eg De Maat, et al. (2009), case studies of people who are unable to recall upsetting events, eg Gagnepain, et al. (2014) on suppression, Little Hans.
• A03: limitations to psychodynamic approach

  • socially sensitive, eg mental health issues may be blamed on parents
  • testing of unconscious concepts is unfalsifiable
  • lack of scientific rigour
  • subjectivity - unconscious thoughts can only be inferred from behaviour or reported thoughts/ experiences
• Describe psychosexual stages

  • oral (0-1yr) - focus of pleasure = mouth and mother's breast = the focus of desire
  • anal (1-3yrs) - focus of pleasure = anus, child focuses on withholding & expelling faeces
  • phallic (3-5yrs) - focus of pleasure = genitals, children experience the Oedipus/Electra complex
  • latency (6-12yrs) - previous conflicts are resolved/repressed and early years are largely forgotten
  • genital (12yrs/puberty-adulthood) - sexual desires become conscious with the onset of puberty
• Psychosexual stages: there is an unconscious conflict at each stage which must be resolved before the next stage is reached
• The ID is part of the unconscious mind