Psychodynamic Approach

Question 1

The psychodynamic approach is…

Answer 1

A perspective that describes the different forces (dynamics), most of which are unconscious, that operate on the mind and direct human behaviour and experience.

Question 2

Who proposed the psychodynamic approach?

Answer 2

Sigmund Freud.

Question 3

What did Freud suggest?

Answer 3

The part of our mind that we know about and are aware of - the conscious mind - is merely the ‘tip of the iceberg’. Most of our mind is made up of the unconscious.

Question 4

The unconscious.

Answer 4

A vast storehouse of biological drives and instincts that has a significant influence on our behaviour and personality.
Contains threatening and disturbing memories that have been repressed, or locked away and forgotten; can be accessed during dreams or through slips of the tongue - parapraxes.

Question 5

The preconscious.

Answer 5

Contains thoughts and memories which are not currently in conscious awareness but we can access if desired.

Question 6

Structure of personality.

Answer 6

Id, Ego, Superego.

Question 7

Id.

Answer 7

Primitive part of our personality.
Operates on pleasure principle - Id gets what it wants.
Mass of unconscious drives and instincts.
The only one present at birth.
Throughout life Id = entirely selfish and demands instant gratification of its needs.

Question 8

Ego.

Answer 8

Reality principle.
Mediator between other 2 parts of personality.
Develops around age of 2 years.
Role to reduce conflict between demands of Id and Superego.
Employs number of defence mechanisms.

Question 9

Superego.

Answer 9

Formed at the end of phallic stage - 5 years.
Internalised sense of right and wrong.
Based on moralistic principle - represents moral standards of child’s same-gender parent and punishes Ego for wrongdoing (through guilt).

Question 10

Psychosexual stages.

Answer 10

5 developmental stages.
Each stage (except latency) marked by different conflict that child must resolve to progress successfully to next stage.
Any conflict unresolved leads to fixation where child becomes stuck and carries certain behaviours and conflicts linked with stage through to adult life.

Question 11

Oral.

Answer 11

0 - 1 years.
Focus of pleasure = mouth, mother’s breast = object of desire.
Oral fixation - smoking, biting nails, sarcastic, critical.

Question 12

Anal.

Answer 12

1 - 3 years.
Focus of pleasure - anus.
Child gains pleasure from withholding and expelling faeces.
Anal retentive - perfectionist, obsessive.
Anal expulsive - thoughtless, messy.

Question 13

Phallic.

Answer 13

Focus of pleasure - genital area.

Phallic personality - narcissistic, reckless.

Question 14

Latency.

Answer 14

Earlier conflicts are repressed.

Question 15

Genital.

Answer 15

Sexual desires becomes conscious alongside onset of puberty.

Difficulty forming heterosexual relationships.

Question 16

Defence mechanisms.

Answer 16

Ego has difficult job balancing conflicting demands of Id and Superego but it does have help in form of defence mechanisms.
Unconscious and ensure Ego is able to prevent us from being overwhelmed by temporary threats/traumas.
Often involve some form of distortion of reality and as a long-term solution they regarded as psychologically unhealthy and undesirable.

Question 17

Repression.

Answer 17

Forcing a distressing memory out of conscious mind.

Question 18

Denial.

Answer 18

Refusing to acknowledge some aspect of reality.

Question 19

Displacement.

Answer 19

Transferring feelings from true source of distressing emotion onto a substitute target.

Question 20

Strength.

P: Although Freud’s theory is controversial, its strength is the ability to explain human behaviour.

Answer 20

E: Alongside behaviourism, the psychodynamic approach remained a key force in psychology for the first half of the 20th century and has been used to explain a wide range of phenomena including personality development, the origins of psychological disorders, moral development and gender identity.
E: The approach is also significant in drawing attention to the connection between experiences in childhood and our later development.
L: This suggests that, overall, the psychodynamic approach has had a positive impact on psychology.

Question 21

Limitation.

P: The approach consists of untestable concepts.

Answer 21

E: Popper argued that the approach doesn’t meet the scientific criterion of falsification. It is not open to empirical testing.
E: Many of Freud’s concepts are said to occur at an unconscious level, making making difficult, if not impossible, to test. Furthermore, his ideas were based on the subjective study of single individuals, such as Little Hans, which makes it difficult to make universal claims about human behaviour.
L: This suggests that Freud’s theory was psuedoscientific rather than established fact.

Question 22

Strength (includes counterpoint.)

P: A strength of the approach is that it introduced the idea of psychotherapy - a treatment to the approach.

Answer 22

E: Freud brought to the world a new form of therapy - psychoanalysis; this was the first attempt to treat mental disorders psychologically rather than physically. The new therapy employed a range of techniques designed to assess the unconscious.
E: Psychoanalysis claims to help clients by bringing their repressed emotions into their conscious mind so they can be dealt with and is the forerunner to many modern-day ‘talking therapies’.
P: Although Freudian therapists have claimed success for many clients with mild neuroses, psychoanalysis is regarded as inappropriate, even harmful, for people experiencing more serious mental disorders (such as schizophrenia).
E: Many of the symptoms of schizophrenia mean that those with the disorder have lost their grip on reality and cannot articulate their thoughts in the way requited by psychoanalysis
L: This suggests that Freudian therapy may not apply to all mental disorders.

Question 23

IDA.

Psychic determinism and not scientific.

Answer 23

The approach suggests that human behaviour is governed by unconscious drives and early traumatic childhood experiences which are repressed into the unconscious mind. As such, an individual does not have free will over their behaviour and instead is under the influence of psychic determinism.
The theory that the approach is based on is not empirically testable. For example, the human mind cannot be dissected to reveal the Id, Ego and Superefo. As a result, it is not scientific in its approach to explain human behaviour since understanding of behaviour relies solely on the subjective interpretation of the psychoanalyst.