1. Psychodynamic

• Psychodynamic approach

  • A perspective that describes the different forces (most of which are unconscious) that operate on the mind and direct human behaviour and experience
• The role of the unconscious

  • Freud suggested the conscious mind is merely the 'tip of the iceberg'
  • The mind is mainly made up of the unconscious
  • Vast storehouse of biological drives and instincts, significant influence on behaviour
  • Contains threatening and disturbing memories that have been repressed
  • Can be accessed during parapraxes
• Structure of the personality

  • Id - primitive, operates on the pleasure principle, gets what it wants, present at birth, entirely selfish throughout life
  • Ego - reality principle and mediator, develops at the age of 2, reduces conflict demands between id and superego, employs defence mechanisms
  • Superego - formed at the end of the phallic stage (age 5), sense of right and wrong, represents moral standards
• Psychosexual stages

  • Child development in five stages
  • Each stage besides latency is marked by a different conflict that the child must resolve in order to progress to the next stage
  • Unresolved conflict leads to fixation where the child becomes 'stuck' and carries certain behaviours associated to adult life
• Stage 1 - Oral

  • 0-1 years old
  • Focus of pleasure is the mouth
  • Mothers breast is desire
  • Consequence - oral fixation such as smoking, biting nails and sarcasm
• Stage 2 - Anal

  • 1-3 years old
  • Focus of pleasure is the anus
  • Child gains pleasure from holding faeces
  • Consequence - anal retentive (perfectionist) and anal expulsive (thoughtless)
• Stage 3 - Phallic

  • 3-6 years old
  • Focus of pleasure is the genital area
  • Consequence - phallic personality eg. narcissism and recklessness
• Stage 4 - Latency

  • Earlier conflicts are repressed
• Stage 5 - Genital

  • Sexual desires become conscious alongside the onset of puberty
  • Consequence - difficulty forming heterosexual relationships
• Defence mechanisms

  • Ego has defence mechanisms to balance conflicting demands
  • Unconscious and ensure the ego is able to prevent us from being overwhelmed by temporary threats or traumas
  • Involve a form of distortion of reality and are regarded and psychologically unhealthy in the long term
  • Repression - forcing a distressing memory out of the conscious mind
  • Denial - refusing to acknowledge some aspect of reality
  • Displacement - transferring feelings from it's true source of distress onto a substitute target
• AO3 - Strength of ability to explain human behaviour

  • Controversial and occasionally bizarre but has had a huge influence on psychology and Western contemporary thought
  • Key force in psychology for the first half of the 20th century
  • Used to explain personality development, abnormality and gender identity
  • Draws attention to childhood experiences and later development
  • Explains why people have strained relationships with parents
  • Has practical applications
• AO3 - Strength of real world application

  • Introduced the idea of psychotherapy as treatment
  • Psychoanalysis was the first attempt to treat mental disorders psychologically instead of physically
  • Range of techniques to access the unconscious such as dream analysis
  • Clients can bring up repressed thoughts into the conscious to be dealt with
  • Forerunner for modern talking therapies such as counselling
  • Real world value
• AO3 - Counterpoint of real world application

  • Claimed success with clients with mild neuroses but psychoanalysis is regarded as harmful and inappropriate for more serious disorders such as schizophrenia
  • Paranoia and delusional thinking means people cannot grasp reality and cooperate with the therapy
  • Cannot apply to all mental disorders
• AO3 - Limitation of being untestable

  • Popper argues the psychodynamic approach does not meet the scientific criteria of falsification and is not open to empirical testing
  • Many of Freud's concepts such as the Oedipus complex and the Id are said to occur at an unconscious level making them impossible to test
  • Ideas based on subjective studies of single individuals such as Little Hans making it hard to generalise findings to wider society with such a small sample size
  • Theory is pseudoscientific rather than established fact