Psychodynamic Approach

Question 1

Psychodynamic summary

Answer 1

Assumptions:
All behaviour is driven by the unconscious mind

Features:
Three levels to the mind
Three parts to personality
Three ego defence mechanisms
Five psychosexual stages

Question 2

Three parts of the personality in Psychodynamic approach

Answer 2

▪ ID- pleasure principle, wants immediate satisfaction, impatient, babies are a mass of ID, born with ID, strong until 18 months old
▪ Ego- balancer, starts developing at 18 months old, by 3yo it should be fully developed, reality principle, balances demands of ID and super ego, in the conscious mind
▪ Super ego- morality principle, sense of right and wrong, develops 3-6yo, comes from society and parents

Question 3

Defence mechanisms (Psychodynamic)

Answer 3

Used by Ego
Denial- refusal to accept reality e.g., grief
Displacement- take our true feelings and place them onto a safer target (eg screaming at parents when you are angry at your teacher)
Repression- pushing things away from conscious awareness

Question 4

Psychosexual stages

Answer 4

All children go through 5 stages
Fixation- You can become stuck in a stage because you receive too much or too little pleasure
Adult personality is shaped by fixation

ORAL
Pleasure is focussed on the mouth --> comes from breastfeeding
Age 0-1
Unresolved conflict --> smoking, biting nails, chewing pens

ANAL
Pleasure focussed on anus
Age 1-3 --> potty training 
Unresolved conflict --> anally retentive personality --> organised perfectionist, narcissist 
			   --> anally explosive personality --> messy, disorganised, thoughtless

PHALLIC
Pleasure focussed on genitals
Age 3-5/6


LATENT
Age 5/6-12 
Earlier conflicts repressed- children focussed on school and friendships

GENITAL
Pleasure focussed on genitals in sexual relationships
Age puberty onwards Unresolved conflict --> difficulty forming heterosexual relationships

Question 5

What are the three levels to the mind in the psychodynamic theory

Answer 5

Conscious- everything you are aware of
Pre-conscious- beyond everyday awareness, these ideas are easily accessible, tend to occur in dreams
Unconscious mind- repress anything traumatic, embarrassing, socially unacceptable, repress it so we don’t have to face it everyday. It can be accessed through therapy like free association. Can occur in our behaviours- we have a latent fear (true fear) and a manifest fear which is the representation of the fear.

Question 6

Psychodynamic theory

Explain why Freud’s focus on the unconscious mind is unscientific.

Answer 6

• Not measurale in a lab
• Every person’s subconscious works in a different way despite all having Id, Ego, and Super Ego
• Any completed studies cannot be replicated and findings cannot be genrelised to other people

Question 7

Explain a valuable contribution of the psychodynamic approach.

Answer 7

• Freud was ahead of his time in understanding the importance of mental health
• He knew talking about problems could help to solve them
• Inspired counselling

Question 8

psychodynamic

Freud based much of his theory on middle-aged women who he was treating for various psychological problems. Explain the implications of this.

Answer 8

• bias results
• very limited sample
• He would have likely obtained results predicting psychological problems as a more imminent and frequent event than was likely true, as his sample predominantly had pre-existing psychological problems.

Question 9

Phallic stage

Answer 9

Boys go through Oedipus complex –> young boys develop sexual attraction to mother and become jealous of father –> develop castration anxiety, boys identify with the father and try to become like him, gain his morals and ethics (super ego fully developed)
Girls go through Electra complex (Jung not Freud) –> girls desire their father because they have penis envy (penis = power) –> identify with mother (no penis) –> girls suddenly desire a baby