Approaches : The Psychodynamic Approach Flashcards
What is the psychodynamic approach?
Psychodynamic theories emphasise the importance of unconscious motives and desires and the importance of early childhood experiences in shaping personality. It states there are parts of the mind inaccessible to conscious awareness.
The Iceberg metaphor
Freud said that consciousness was the small part that we are aware of and the unconsious took up the larger propation of the human mind → we arent directly aware or able to access it freely.
Whats psychoanalysis?
Any traumatic events/ memories from childnood are repressed into the unconsious mind and kept there (hidden from conscious awareness)
Psychodynamic theorists say they’re never truly forgotten and can be explored through psychoanalysis. The unconscious mind can reveal itself in dreams, fantasies and ‘slips’, etc → Freudian slips.
Psychoanalysis involves effort to understand defences and unconscious motives driving self destructive behaviours.
The ID
• present from birth
• operales solely in unconscious
• ruled by the pleasure-pain principle → an innate drive to seek immediate satisfaction
• irrational, primitive part of personality (libido, etc)
The EGO
• origin of consciousness
• governed by the reality principle → mediates between impulsive demands of ID, the superego and reality of external world
• how the situation actually plays out
The SUPEREGO
• internalisation of social rules
• determines which behaviours are acceptable and causes feeling of guilt → governed by morals and societal compasses (morality principle)
• develops at around 5 yrs
Whats the ego ideal?
what a person strives for (determined by parental standards of good behaviour)
What are defence mechanisms?
The conflict between ID and superego can cause anxiety - defence mechanisms are triggered by situations too stressful to deal with.
Examples of defence mechanisms
Repression, denial displacement, projection, rationalisation, sublimation
Defence mechanisms - Repression
unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts and impulses
Defence mechanisms - Denial
refusing to believe reality
Defence mechanisms - Displacement
transferring feelings of the source to someone else
Defence mechanisms - Projection
placing own desires onto others
Defence mechanisms - Rationalisation
giving your behaviour a more socially acceptable meaning
Defence mechanisms - Sublimination
negative urges, drives and behaviours channeled into more socially acceptable behaviours
Over using defence mechanisms?
results in the ego becoming increasingly detached trom reality and can cause psychological disorders
Talking therapy
Freud proposed talking therapy and free association (just talking about our problems can alleviate them).
Psychosexual stages of development
psychodynamic theory states that events in childhood greatly influence our adult lives, shaping our personality and traumatic events in childhood can remain in the unconscious and cause problems as adults. Freud proposed all children go through 5 stages of development:
• each stage has a designated “pleasure zone” and “primary activity” and requires resolution of a particular conflict (failure to successfully navigate a stages particular conflict is ‘fixation’ )
• it can determine our adult character, personality and behavioural traits as traces of a stage will remain in adult behaviour
• fixation can occur due to trauma, un/pleasant experiences, change in enviroment, etc.
Psychosexual stages of development - Oral stage
• 0-1 yrs
• ID is developed
• focus of pleasure is the mouth (mother’s breast is object of desire)
• consequences of unresolved conflict → oral fixation - smoking, biting nails, sarcastic, critical
Psychosexual stages of development - Anal stage
• 1-3 yrs
• ego is developed
• Focus of pleasure is the anus (child gains pleasure holding + expelling faeces)
• consequences of unresolved conflict → anal retentive - perfectionist, obsessive / Anal expulsive - thoughtless, messy
Psychosexual stages of development - Phallic stage
• 3-5 yrs
• superego is developed
• Focus of pleasure is the genitals (child experiences Oedipus/ Electra complex)
• consequences of unresolved conflict → phallic personality - narcissistic, reckless, homosexual?
Psychosexual stages of development - latency stage
• earlier conflicts repressed
Psychosexual stages of development - genital stage
• puberty
• sexual desires become conscious alongside puberty
• difficulty forming sexual/ romantic retationships
Whats the Oedipus complex?
The driver of Phallic Phase, where boys have an unconscious desire for their mother, therefore are hostile towards their father and develop castration anxiety (worry their father will castrate them). To resolve the conflict they must identify with their father and internalise his identity. This process is traumatic and cannot be confronted directly, so the ego establishes defence mechanisms → repression and denial (to mediate psychological terrors)
Whats the Electra complex?
girls (between 3-6 yrs) become subconsciously sexually attracted to their father and hostile towards their mother. They get
penis envy when realising they don’t have a penis, leading to the penis substitute (wanting a baby), To resolve the conflict they must identity with their mother and internalise her identity.
Psychodynamic approach advs
• it has great explanatory powers → although Freud’s theory is controversial, it’s had huge influences on psychology and western contemporary thought. Alongside behaviourism, the psychodynamic approach has remained the dominant force in psychology for the first half of the 1900s and has been used to explain a wide range of phenomena (personality development, abnormal behaviour, moral development and gender development
• drawn attention to the connection of experiences in childhood and adulthood (eg. parental relationships and later development)
Psychodynamic approach disadvs
• heavily criticised for being unscientific and untestable → the human brain cannot be dissected to reveal the id, ego or superego therefore it’s not testable. According to Popper, as the theory is not testable nor falsifiable it isn’t scientific.
• gender bias → his obsession with the Oedipus complex is androcentric and it’s irrelevant for explaing women. He also suggests women are inferior as they have ‘penis envy’. Psycho-analysist Melanie Klein showed gender-biased theories
can be adapted to study female behaviour.
• too deterministic → Freud believed all behaviour is driven by unconscious forces, ignoring free will. The psychodymanic approach explains all behaviour is determined by unconscious conflicts rooted in childhood, suggesting behaviour is a result of the success/ failure at working through psychosexual stages.
