freud Flashcards
research method
- case study
- an issue with case studies is that it can lose objectivity due to the close bond developing between the people involved that the researcher can lose objectivity and the person being studied can be keen to give the researcher what they want to hear
- longnitudinal study as the same particioant was studied over a lengthy period of time and data were collected on him repeatedly throughout this time
data
- data was collected through a series of unstrcutured interviews in which the questions asked by the interviewer (little hans father) were in response to comments made by the patient (little hans)
- collected qualitative data: reports of little hans dreams and fantasies, conversations between little hans and his father and interpretations placed by either freud or the father
how is freuds study ethical
- protection from harm: psychoanalysis can cause patients harm so he used a pseudeonym ‘little hans’ which shows a protection of the childs identitiy
- anonymity
- informed consent
- deception
validity
lack ecological validity: children are not typically interviewed about their dreams and fantasies
- lack population validity: the sample only had 1 boy from vienna meaning it is not generalisable for the wider population
reliability
- low external reliability: the sample is too small to establish a consistant effect
- low internal reliability: the procedure isnt standardised as it only consists of little hans’s father and freud writing letters to eachother and interviews which are subjective
sample
- having only one sample from vienna makes it less generalisable
- it may be impossible to base theories about the psychosexual development of girls on a study of a boy and or whether the experiences of a middke class chid in vienna are likely to be typical of the experiences of chidren in other less privileged parts of the world
ethnocentricism
- not ethnocentric: phobias are common in children across the world
- ethnocentric: experiences of a middle class child in vienna are likely to be typical of experiences in other less privileged parts of the world.
psychology as a science
- not scientific due to it being a case study so it is difficult to replicate to see if someone will get the same results
- freuds interpretation of hans phobias and fantasies is subjective due to his opinion rather than a matters of facts
- it is unclear if freuds interpretations could be proved wrong and so it is unfalsifiable
nurture
nature/nurture
hans phobias are due to his experiences as he grew up
reductionist
reductionism/holism
- freud explains little hans’ phobias and fantasies in relation to his theory of psychosecual development
- he reduced the explanation of his phobias and fatasies down to this
holism
reductionism/holism
- the way that the research was conducted (in depth case study) it meas that little hans was not restricted in different aspects of his experience that he could reveal
usefulness
- it enables the patients to obtain a coonscious grasp of unconsciousness
- it enables people to understand where their phobias and fantasies are rooted from
how does freud link to individual differences area
- it is investigating a way which people differ bu experiencing phobias
how does freud link to the psychodynamic perspective
- because of the way in which freud explains little hans behaviour as arising from unconscious forces which is the psychosexual stages of development through which he was progressing
key theme of freud
understanding disorders
how does freuds research link to the key theme of understanding disorders
freuds study would appear to tell us that this could be done through an understanding of unconscious conflicts
