The psychodynamic approach

• Freud would say that in a normal, well developed individual the Ego walks and this is able to balance out the ID and superego successfully. This is called the intra-psychic conflict.
• If the ID is dominant in a person, the individual becomes destructive and likely to be unhibited e.g. in sexual activity being selfish and thinking of themselves all the time
• If the superego is dominant , the individual will always put others first which will result in them being unable to be happy or experience pleasure at all.
• Denial is one mechanism used by people. This is when an individual denies the reality of the situation. For example, after losing a job, they may deny that they have been made redundant.
• Another mechanism is repression. This is when threating impulses are repressed into the unconscious they do not disappear but the individuals are not longer consciously aware of them they can emerge as symptoms of anxiety. An example is someone forgetting the trauma of pet dying.
• Another mechanism of displacement is when an unacceptable setting is moved from the original target to a more acceptable market. For example, hatred of a parent is displaced into hatred if a sibling or anger towards a political party directed towards participant.