Psychodynamic Approach Flashcards
What are the 3 assumptions of the psychodynamic approach?
- Most of the influences on our behaviour come from our unconscious mind
- Our psyche he is made up of several parts that are continually at war which drives behaviour
- All children go through a series of psychosexual stages and if they experience unresolved conflict this can affect adult life
What are the 5 stages of psychosexual? What ages do they occur?
- Oral (0-1)
- Anal (1-3)
- Phallic (3-5)
- Latency (5-puberty)
- Genital (puberty- death)
In which stage does the Electra and Oedipus complex occur?
The phallic stage
What sex does the Electra and Oedipus complex occur
Electra- female
Oedipus- male
What is the oedipus complex?
- Boys develop a sexual desire for their mother and so see their father as a rival and feel hatred towards them
- Fearing that their father will castrate them, boys repress their feelings for their mother and identify with their father
- They internalise their gender role and moral values
What is the electra complex?
- Girls experience penis envy: they desire their father as the penis is the primary love object, and hate their mother
- Girls then give up the desire for their father over time and replace this with a desire for a baby (identifying with their mother in the process)
What is the evidence to support the psychosexual stages?
The case study of little hans
What are defence mechanisms?
Unconscious strategies used by the ego to help balance the conflicting demands of the id and the superego
What are the defence mechanisms?
Repression- forcing a distressing memory out of the conscious mind
Denial- refusing to acknowledge some aspect of reality
Displacement- transferring feelings from true source of distressing emotion onto a substitute target
What is the Id?
The primitive part of our personality which operates on the pleasure principle – it is selfish and demands immediate gratification
What is the superego?
The moralistic part of our personality that represents the ideal self – it punishes the ego for wrongdoing by making us feel guilty
What is the ego?
Works on the reality principle – it is the mediator between the id and superego by trying to reduce the conflict through the use of defence mechanisms
What is the strength of the psychodynamic approach?
Explanatory power- The psychodynamic approach has been used to explain a wide range of phenomena such as personality development, and has drawn attention to the connection between experiences in childhood and later development. E.g., Studies on attachment in childhood have been shown to influence relationships in adulthood. Gerard McCarthy (1999) studied 40 adult woman and found that the type of attachment they had when they were children had impacted their relationships as an adult. This research strengthens psychodynamic theories regarding the link between childhood experiences and later development.
What are the three limitations of the psychodynamic approach?
Gender-biased approach- Freud’s views of women and female sexuality were less well developed than his views on male sexuality à he remained ignorant of female sexuality. Karen Horney= criticised Freud’s views on women and their development. She targeted the concept of ‘penis envy’ and the fact that Freud had framed the personality development of young girls in terms of men. She put forward her own theory, known as ‘womb envy’- Maybe it wasn’t that women coveted men’s power, but that men secretly harboured feelings of inferiority at their inability to produce human life. Dismissing women and their sexuality in such a way is problematic àmany of Freud’s patients were female.
Untestable concepts- Karl Popper à psychodynamic approach does not meet the scientific criterion of falsification-it is not open to empirical testing (and the possibility of being disproved). Many of Freud’s concepts (such as the id and the Oedipus complex) = unconscious, making them difficult to test as they are not directly observable. There is little objective evidence to support the approach. This affords psychodynamic theory the status of pseudoscience (‘fake’ science) rather than real science.
Counter- Fisher and Greenberg (1996) summarised 2,500 psychodynamic studies and concluded there is support for the existence of unconscious motivation in human behaviour and for the defence mechanisms of repression, denial and displacement à adds scientific credibility to psychoanalytic explanations of human behaviour.
Case study method- Freud’s theory was based on the intensive study of single individuals. Although Freud’s observations were detailed and carefully recorded, critics have suggested that it is not possible to make such universal claims about human nature based on studies of such a small number of individuals who were psychologically abnormal. Furthermore, Freud’s interpretations were highly subjective. E.g., in the case study of Little Hans, it is highly unlikely that any other researcher would have drawn the same conclusions.
