Psychodynamic Approach

• What is the basis of PsychoDynamic Approach?

  Based on Freud's psychoanalytic theory
• What is Repression?

  The blocking of unpleasant emotions, impulses, memories, and thoughts from your conscious mind
• What is Displacement?

  Satisfying an impulse with a substitute object/person.
• What is Denial?

  Refusal to perceive that painful facts, thoughts, or feelings exist/happened
• Define Ego Defence Mechanisms.

  Ways the mind protects itself from anxiety and conflict. They are unconscious mechanisms.
• The 4 Ego Defence Mechanisms

  1. Denial
  2. Repression
  3. Displacement
  4. Projection
• What is Projection?

  an individual attributing their own unacceptable thoughts or feelings to another person or wishes to have the positive qualities displayed by another person.
• The 5 Psychosexual stages of development:

  1. Oral
  2. Anal
  3. Phallic
  4. Latency
  5. Genital
• Oral Stage - ( 0 - 18 Months )
• Anal Stage - ( up to 3 years )
• Phallic Stage - ( up to 5 years )
• Latency Stage - ( up to puberty )
• Genital Stage - ( puberty onwards )
• What is ID?

  Primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives. It demands immediate gratification. (pleasure principle). Present from birth.
• What is the SuperEgo?

  Internalisation of society’s rules (morality principle). From 3YO.
• What is the Ego?

  It mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. This is your expressed personality. From 2YO.
• Tripartite personality - The balance between the three parts isn’t fixed and it can change depending on experiences and circumstances.
• Childhood Experiences:

  • Our behaviours, feelings and thoughts as adults (including psychological problems) are rooted in our childhood experiences. 
  • Events that occur in childhood can remain stored in the unconscious mind and cause problems as adults if they are not resolved.
  • These events might not be conscious but are still emotional experiences / sensitive memories.
• The Unconscious Mind:

  • In Freudian psychology, the unconscious mind is the repository for thoughts, feelings, and memories of which a person is not consciously aware.
  • He argued that unacceptable thoughts, memories, and motives could be repressed in the unconscious mind and this is outside our control.
  • The repressed thoughts, feelings and memories continue to influence much of our behaviour, even though we cannot understand why. The iceberg analogy.
  • The unconscious is not directly accessible but it can manifest itself in parapraxes (Freudian slips), creativity and neurotic symptoms.
• The 3 main assumptions:

  • Tripartite personality
  • The unconscious mind
  • Influence of childhood experiences in later life