Psychodynamic Flashcards
Tripartite personality
-The tripartite personality refers to the psychodynamic assumption that our personalities are controlled by 3 parts, id, ego, and superego.
Id
-The id is the part of our personality that we develop from birth to around 2 years and is unconscious, impulsive, and is run by the pleasure principle.
Ego
-The ego is part of our personality that we develop at 2 years old, which is conscious and reasonable and tries to apease both the id and superego as a referee.
-Governed by the reality principle.
Superego
-The part of our personality that develops at around 4 years old and is run by the morality principle, which gives us empathy and shame.
The influence of childhood experiences.
-The psychosexual stages are what Freud believed were our developmental stages in childhood, and he assigned each a body part at which our libido would be present during that stage.
Libido
-The ‘drive’ we are all born with and that moves through different parts of our body and what it experiences shapes our personalities.
Fixation
-A fixation occurs when our libido is either overindulged or frustrated at a psychosexual stage, causing it to become stuck, either enjoying itself too much or longing for satisfaction.
Oedipus Complex
-The oedipus complex is what boys go through during the phallic stage of development.
-They experience attraction towards their mothers and a hatred and jealousy regarding their fathers.
-Following this is castration anxiety, which the boys repress by transfering their affection to their fathers.
-This is when their superego develops.
Electra Complex
-The electra complex is what girls go through during the phallic stage of development.
-First, they have feelings of resentment towards their mothers and admiration to their father for being the head of the family.
-Then develop penis envy, which they repress by idolising the mother.
-This is when the superego develops, which is said to be weaker than a boys.
Concious Mind
-This is the part of our mind that we are aware of and is what we believe we are truly like as a person.
-This is also where our ego is contained, which uses ego defence mechanisms to ensure the unconcious mind remains unaware to us.
Preconsious Mind
-The part of our mind whichis just out of reach and can be accessed with a little bit of help, it includes our dreams and memories.
Unconcious Mind
-The largest part of our mind, which we are entirely unaware of and is composed of our childhood experiences and traumas that have been repressed, such as our id.
Ego Defense Mechanism
-These are the strategies our ego in the conscious mind uses to ensure the traumas of the unconcious mind remain repressed.
-They include repression, displacement, and projection.
Dream analysis applied to the unconcious mind
-Freud classed dreams as the ‘royal road to the unconcious’ and claimed the threatening nature of our unconscious thoughts is disguised in dreams.
-Aims to make the unconscious conscious by decoding the manifest content into latent content.
-Establishes if the root cause of the psychological problem is due to repressed issues.
Dream analysis applied to the influence of childhood experiences
-Freud said that traumatic experiences would be repressed to the unconcious mind as they are too painful to process.
-To try and work through past events, these traumas would resurface in dreams.
-Aim to uncover the hidden meaning in order to reveal and confront repressed conflicts.
Dream analysis applied to the tripartite personality
-Its thought that the unacceptable demands and desires of the id are active in our dreams.
-Dreams are a way of acting out these wishes in a more acceptable way.
-‘Dreamwork’ is an ego defence mechanism that protects us from the undesirable truths by disguising them in dreams.
-Aims to reverse the dreamwork process.
Dreams as wish fulfilment
-Freud said that dreams are the unconscious fulfilment of wishes that couldn’t be satisfied in the concious mind as they are unacceptable.
-Dreams protect the sleeper by stopping the desires from building up and threatening our sanity.
-The repression of true desires is seen as a source of mental disorders, so therapy aims to uncovet the true wishes and what they represent.
Symbolic nature of dreams
-To protect us, dreams appear in a disguised form.
-Dream analysis says that what the dreamer recalls is symbolic of the truth buried in their unconcious mind.
-‘Dreamwork’ is the defence mechanism responsible for changing latent content into manifest through several processes
-E.g displacement which involves the emotional significance of a dream object being separated and attatvhed to an entirly different one.
Dream diary
-Clients are asked to record their dreams on waking.
-The manifest content is often forgotten throughout the day, so the dream diary is kept near the bed to record manifest content while it is still in memory.
-The manifest content recorded is the basis for discussion during therapy sessions.
Role of the therapist
-Therapist aims to reverse the dreamwork process by decoding manifest content back into latent content.
-Only trained psychoanalysts should do interpretations as they have to be in context with the clients’ life experiences.
-Sometimes, the manifest content doesn’t actually represent some latent content.
Free association
-A person verbalises or writes all thoughts that come to mind when thinking or discussing specific topics and words.
Manifest content
-The dream itself (how these desires are symbolised in the dreams we remember).
Latent content
-Hidden/real meaning (the true wishes and desires)
Supported by research evidence: Depression and anxiety (effectiveness strength)
Point - DA can help people with depression and anxiety.
Evidence- Matt and Navarro reviewed 63 meta-analyses on psychotherapy, showed 75% of people receiving DA showed improvements.
Explanation-Suggests that DA is an effective therapy for many common mental health problems.
