Approaches - The Psychodynamic approach (Freud) Flashcards
Outline the key assumptions of the psychodynamic approach
- All behaviour has an unconscious cause.
- Psychic determinism - behaviour is caused by unconscious factors we cannot control.
- Innate processes (drives/instincts) motivate our behaviour as we grow up.
- Childhood experiences have significant importance in determining our personality when we reach adulthood.
Describe the structure of personality in the psychosexual approach
ID – driving us to satisfy selfish urges (i.e. acts according to the ‘pleasure principle’) (exists from birth).
Superego – concerned with keeping to moral norms (i.e. acts according to the ‘morality principle’), and attempts to control a powerful ID with feelings of guilt (develops years 4-5).
Ego - acts rationally, balancing the ID and the superego (i.e. acts according to the ‘reality principle’) (develops years 2-4).
Outline the psychosexual stages in the psychodynamic approach
Freud also thought that humans progress through ‘psychosexual stages’, during the development of the psyche. He named five stages, each with a particular characteristic behaviour:
Oral – sucking behaviour (0-18 months)
Anal – holding or discarding faeces (18 months – 3.5 years)
Phallic – fixation on genitals (3.5 – 6 years)
Latency – repressed sexual urges (6 years - puberty)
Genital – awakened sexual urges (puberty onwards)
What happens if someone gets fixated on a particular psychosexual stage?
Someone who is fixated at a particular stage as a child will show personality traits associated with that stage as an adult.
e.g. if a child is fixated at the oral stage, e.g. because of difficulties breastfeeding, then the adult may be over-dependent on others.
An ‘anally retentive’ personality is one such symptom – he proposed that when conflict occurs over potty training, a person could become fixated on cleanliness and orderliness to an extreme.
Outline the ego defence mechanisms proposed by Freud
The ego balances potential conflict between the ID and superego, and tries to reduce anxiety. In areas of significant conflict, the ego can redirect psychic energy using ‘defense mechanisms’. Three key mechanisms Freud proposed are:
Repression – burying an unpleasant thought or desire in the unconscious (e.g. traumatic childhood experiences may be repressed and so forgotten).
Displacement – emotions are directed away from their source or target, towards other things (e.g. wringing a dishcloth in anger, which would have otherwise been directed at the cat scratching the furniture).
Denial – a threatening thought is ignored or treated as if it were not true (e.g. a wife might find evidence that her husband is cheating on her, but explain it away using other reasons).
What is the iceberg analogy in Freud’s psychodynamic approach (conscious, unconscious etc)
The conscious mind is that part of the mind we are aware of. It can be compared to the part of an iceberg that is above the water. It contains the thoughts we are currently thinking at any given moment.
The pre-conscious mind is the part of the mind we are occasionally aware of. It can be compared to the part of the iceberg that is below the water-line but still visible. It contains remembered dreams, feelings that haven’t been put into words and memories that can be recalled into the conscious mind without help.
The unconscious mind is the rest of the psyche that we are totally unaware of. It can be compared to the bulk of the iceberg that is out of sight under the water. It contains instincts and desires, fears, motives, most of our dreams and memories that have been repressed because they are too painful.
What is psychoanalysis?
The unconscious mind is (according to Freud) completely inaccessible to the conscious mind. You cannot “look inside yourself” and understand your own unconscious thoughts. Freud created a technique called psychoanalysis to help his patients understand their unconscious minds with the help of a trained psychoanalyst. He believed that psychoanalysis could enable people to overcome problems rooted in the unconscious.
How can we study the unconscious mind?
The unconscious mind is a mystery, but there are sometimes clues about what it contains:
Dreams may contain unconscious wishes or fears. However, these unconscious thoughts always turn up in disguised or symbolic form.
Dreams have to be interpreted by a trained psychoanalyst.
“Slips of the tongue” (or parapraxes) may reveal our unconscious wishes, because we accidentally say what we really (unconsciously) mean rather than what we intended (consciously) to say. These are often called “Freudian slips”. A trained psychoanalyst will notice these and help the patient interpret them.
Outline the Oedipus complex
The Oedipus Complex is a psychological crisis that children go through at around the age of 5 when their super-ego forms. This crisis is caused by the fact that every child sexually desires its opposite sex parent, but feels guilt about this. It grows to fear and hate its same-sex parent as a result.
Children are supposed to repress these feelings and use a defence mechanism called identification to imitate the same-sex parent that they hate and fear. This, Freud claims, is where we get our gender identity and personality from.
Evaluate the psychodynamic approach - case study
Evidence for the psychodynamic approach is most often based on case studies, i.e., the case of Little Hans. The critique here is that case studies are observations of one person in great detail - their fears, thoughts and actions. Therefore, studying one person and trying to generalise the reasoning behind the problem to the greater population is not accurate.
Evaluate the psychodynamic approach - non-falsifiable
Many of Freud’s ideas are considered non-falsifiable - theories may appear to reflect evidence, but you cannot observe the relevant constructs directly (e.g. the unconscious mind, penis envy) to test them scientifically.
Karl Popper argued that a theory is not scientific if it is not falsifiable.
Evaluate the psychodynamic approach - subjective
The methodology of case studies used in this perspective may be subjective, and this means that results may be open to bias. For example, much of the data in Freud’s case study of Little Hans was gathered through interviews and observations done by Hans’ father, who was a keen supporter of Freud. He may have used leading questions, which could have influenced Hans’ responses.
