10 - Psychodynamic Approach ( Defence Mechanisms and Psychosexual Stages ) Flashcards
What is the purpose of defence mechanisms?
It stops an individual becoming consciously aware of any unpleasant thoughts, feelings, or memories that they may be experiencing.
What are the three defence mechanisms?
Repression
Denial
Displacement
How does repression work as a defence mechanism?
It is the unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts and impulses. However, these continue to influence their behaviour without them being aware.
How does denial work as a defence mechanism?
It is the refusal to accept reality to avoid having to deal with any painful feelings that may be associated with a traumatic situation.
They act as if it has not happened.
How does displacement work as a defence mechanism?
It involved redirecting hostile thoughts or feelings that the individual feels unable to express in the presence of the individual it is directed towards.
Instead, it is directed towards a helpless victim or object.
Outline why Freud came up with the psychosexual stages?
He believed that personality developed in 5 stages, as they emphasise that the most important driving force in personality development is the need to express sexual energy.
List the 5 stages
Oral (0-2 years) Anal (2-3 years) Phallic (3-6 years) Latent (6-12 years) Genital (12+ years)
What happens in the oral stage?
The mouth is the point of sensation and is the way in which the child expresses early sexual energy ( e.g. sucking and biting )
What happens in the anal stage?
Start of ego development.
Child becomes more aware of the demands of reality and the need to conform to the demands of others.
The major issue is toilet training as the child learns to control the expulsion of bodily waste.
What happens in the phallic stage?
Sexual energy is now focused on the genitals.
The major issue is the Oedipus complex in which the male child unconsciously wishes to possess their mother and get rid of the their father.
As a result, they suffer from castration anxiety, the fear that their father will remove their penis to punish them for desiring their mother.
To resolve this, the child identities with their father and internalises his superego.
Girls go through a similar process called the Electra process, but as they don’t go through castration anxiety they don’t internalise their mothers superego in the same way and so it it less developed. Therefore girls are less moral than boys.
What happens in the latent stage?
Child develops mastery of the world around them.
The conflicts and issues of the previous stages are repressed with the consequence that the child is unable to remember much of their early years.
What happens in the genital stage?
Sexual energy in the genitals is fixed.
This eventually directs us towards sexual intercourse and the beginning of adult life.
What are the advantages of this approach?
Freud = first to demonstrate the potential of psychological rather than biological treatments for disorders such as depression and anxiety. Psychoanalysis used a range of techniques designed to access the unconscious, and was the forerunner to many modern-day psychotherapies.
The Psychodynamic approach was the first theory of human behaviour to draw attention to the connection between experiences in childhood, such as our relationship with our parents, and later development.
What are the disadvantages to this approach?
Psychoanalysis has been successful at treating mild neurosis but would be inappropriate, and even harmful, to treat severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, in this way.
The approach is based on Freud’s case studies of his patients, although his observations were detailed and carefully recorded, critics have suggested that it is not possible to make such universal claims about human nature based on studies of such a small number of individuals who were all psychologically abnormal in some way.
The approach does not meet the scientific criterion of falsification, because it cannot be disproved through empirical testing. Many of the concepts (id and Oedipus complex) are unconscious, making them difficult to test.
The approach explains all behaviour (even accidents) as determined by unconscious conflicts that are rooted in childhood. This means that any free will we may think we have is an illusion. Deterministic.
