Lesson 6 Flashcards
How does the psychodynamic approach explain human behaviour?
A perspective that describes the role of unconscious forces on the mind and direct human behaviour and experience.
Who was Sigmund Freud?
- Freud was trained as a neurologist
- He moved away from the medical model when he developed the psychological treatment psychoanalysis (“talking cure”) for abnormality.
- Treated mostly hysteria and applied findings from abnormal patients to normal development.
- Victorian times (1800s) - conservative, repressed society, male dominated society.
What are some assumptions?
- Behavior is influenced by unconscious forces.
- Early childhood is incredibly important and affects development into adulthood without us knowing.
- Focus is placed on the whole person.
What is the structure of the mind?
- Conscious mind: the conscious mind refers to what we are aware of any one time.
- Awareness of something on the outside as well as some of specific mental functions happening on the inside e.g. aware of the environment.
Pre-conscious mind:
- consists of accessible information.
- Aware of this information once you pay attention to it.
Unconscious mind
- consists of instinctual wishes as well as the information we cannot access.
- they are unconscious forces which drive our behaviour.
- it also contains threatening and disturbing memories that have been repressed.
What is the structure of personality?
There is the ID
- primitive part it is based on the pleasure principle and gets what it wants.
it is selfish and demands gratification and present since birth.
There is the ego
it is the reality principle, it is the mediator between the impulsive demands of the id and the superego.
often helped by defence mechanisms
develops around the age of 2
There is the superego
- this is divided between the conscience (societal rules) and ego ideal (what we strive to be).
- known as the morality principle (determines which behaviours are permissible and causes feelings of guilt when rules are broken).
develops around 4/5 years.
What are the psychosexual stages?
- Freud believed that development occurred through a sequence of five stages.
- Each stage is marked by a different conflict that the child must resolve in order to progress to the next stage.
- any psychosexual conflict which is unresolved leads to fixation - (the child becomes stuck). As a result, particular behaviours and conflicts associated with that stage are carried through to adult life.
OLD AGE PEOPLE LOVE GRAPES
Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital
What stage is the oral phase?
(0-1 years)
the mouth is the focal point of sensation and is the way in which the child expresses early sexual energy. It gets satisfaction from putting all sorts of things in its mouth (through sucking, biting and breastfeeding).
consequence of unresolved conflict - oral fixation, smoking, biting nails, critical and sarcastic verbalisations.
What is the anal phase?
(1-3 years)
Focus is now on the anus and the child derives great pleasure from defecating (excreting faeces). Ego begins to develop; they are a person in their own right and that their wishes can bring them into conflict with the demands of the outside worlds.
Anal retentive: neatness, perfectionism
Anal expulsive: messiness, insensitivity
What is the phallic stages?
(3-5 years)
Sexual energy of pleasure is focused in the genital area. The child becomes aware of anatomical differences, which sets in motion erotic attraction, resentment, rivalry, jealousy and fear which Freud called the Oedipus complex (in boys) and Electra complex (in girls.) This is resolves through identification, which involves the child adopting to the characteristics of the same sex parent and allows the child to develop a superego.
Vanity, overambitions, narcissism, impulsivity.
What is the latency phase
The child develops their mastery of the world around them. During this age, the conflicts and issues of the previous stages are repressed with the consequence of children being unable to remember much of their early years.
There are no signs
What is the genital phase?
(13+ years)
Focus is on the sexual energy in the genitals. This eventually directs us towards sexual intercourse and the beginnings of adult life.
Sexual desires become conscious alongside the onset of puberty.
Difficulty forming heterosexual relationships
Oedipus complex
- occurs during the phallic stage, source of libido is concentrated on the genitals of the child’s body.
- child experiences unconscious feeling of desire for their opposite - sex parent and jealousy and envy towards the same - sex parent.
- hostile feelings leads to castration anxiety (irritational fear that the father will remove his penis as a punishment).
- to cope with anxiety, son identifies with the father, by adopting and internalising the attitudes the father holds (e.g. personality, gender role, masculine behaviours, etc.)
What is the electra complex?
- Introduced by Carl Jung
- when girls feel desire for their fathers and jealousy of their mothers.
- Jung suggested when girls discover they do not have a penis, they develop penis envy and resentment towards their mothers for sending them to the world ‘ insufficiently equipped’.
- Resentment eventually gives way to identification with their mother and the process of internalising characteristics & attributes of the same sex parent.
Little Hans Case study
- Little Hans was a 5 year old boy with a phobia of horses. Like all clinical case studies, the primary aim was to treat the phobia. He gained an interest in the age of his genitals around the age of 3 years old. His phobia was linked to his fear was linked to the horse’s large penis. He overcame this conflict by imagining himself with a big penis and married to his mother. This allowed Hans to get over his castration anxiety and identify with his father.
What are the defence mechanisms?
- If an individual is faced with a situation they are unable to deal with rationally, their defence mechanisms may be triggered.
- Defence mechanisms are unconscious strategies that the ego uses to manage the conflict the between the ID and and the superego.
- The individuals stops themselves becoming aware of any unpleasant thoughts and feelings associated with the traumatic situation.
- Distortion of reality and as a long- term solution are regarded as psychologically and unhealthy and undesirable.
