Psychodynamic Approach Flashcards
What is the basis of the psychodynamic approach?
Focuses on the ways in which your unconscious impacts your behaviour.
Who is the key protagonist of the psychodynamic approach?
Sigmund Freud:
- 1856-1939
- Austrian psychologist
- Developed psychoanalysis through case studies to help people deal with traumatic experiences
- Case studies: Anna O and Little Hans
What are the main assumptions of the psychodynamic approach?
- All behaviour stems from our unconscious.
- Our unconscious is affected by our tripartite (3 part) personality.
- All behaviour stems from our experiences during childhood.
What are the psychosexual stages?
- Children develop through five stages.
- Each stage involves a ‘conflict’ the child must resolve before moving onto the next stage.
- Unresolved conflicts lead to fixation and this can link to particular behaviours in adulthood.
Psychosexual stages- Oral
AGE: 0-1 years
DESCRIPTION: Focus of pleasure is the mouth. Mother’s breast is object of desire.
CONSEQUENCE: Oral fixation- smoking, biting nails, sarcastic , critical.
Psychosexual stages- Anal
AGE: 1-3 years
DESCRIPTION: Focus of pleasure is the anus. Child gains pleasure from withholding and expelling faeces.
CONSEQUENCE: Anal retentive- perfectionist, obsessive.
Anal expulsive- thoughtless, messy.
Psychosexual stages- Phallic
AGE: 3-5 years
DESCRIPTION: Focus of pleasure is the genital area. Child experiences Oedipus or Electra complex.
CONSEQUENCE: Phallic personality- narcissistic, reckless, possibly homosexual.
Psychosexual stages- Latency
AGE: 5+ years
DESCRIPTION: Earlier conflicts are repressed.
Psychosexual stages- Genital
AGE: 12+ years
DESCRIPTION: Sexual desires become conscious alongside the onset of puberty.
CONSEQUENCE: Difficulty forming heterosexual relationships.
What is the Oedipus complex?
- refers to a son’s sexual attitude towards his mother and the associated hostility toward his father.
- first formed during the phallic stage of psychosexual development.
- this desire is kept out of conscious awareness through repression, though Freud believed it still influenced behaviour and played a role in development.
The case study of Little Hans
- Freud supported concept of Oedipus complex with case study- Little Hans.
- Hans was a five year old boy who developed a phobia of horses after seeing one collapse on the street.
- Freud suggested that this was a form of displacement- repressed fear of father displaced onto horses
- horses symbolic representation of Hans’ real unconscious fear: fear of castration experienced during the Oedipus complex.
What is the Electra complex?
- Proposed by Carl Jung, but based on Freud’s theories.
- Refers to a girls psychosexual competition with her mother for possession of her father.
- Freud said that during female psychosexual development, a girl is initially attached to her mother.
- Freud described the feminine Oedipus attitude complex as a daughters longing for her father and competition with her mother.
- Girl possesses an unconscious desire to replace her mother as her father’s sexual partner, sparking rivalry.
What are defence mechanisms?
- Unconscious resources used by the ego to decrease internal stress. Unconscious mechanisms are often devised to decrease conflict within themselves (between id and superego).
- Unconscious psychological responses that protect people from things that they don’t want to think about or deal with.
- First described by Freud in his psychoanalytic theory.
Defence mechanisms- repression
Unconscious mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious. e.g. Oedipus complex: aggressive thoughts about same sex parents are repressed.
Defence mechanisms- denial
Blocking external events from awareness. If a situation is too much to handle , the person just refuses to experience it. e.g. smokers may refuse to admit to themselves that smoking is bad for their health.
Defence mechanisms- displacement
Satisfying an impulse (e.g. aggression) with a substitute object.
The unconscious- iceberg theory
- Freud suggested that the part of the mind that we know about and are aware of (the conscious mind) is merely ‘the tip of the iceberg’.
- Most of the mind is made up of the unconscious: storehouse of biological drives and instincts that has a significant influence on our behaviour and personality.
- Unconscious contains threatening and disturbing memories that have been repressed (accessed during dreams or a ‘slip of the tongue’- Freud called these parapraxes)
The preconscious- iceberg theory
Under the surface of our conscious mind is the preconscious which contains thoughts and memories which are not currently in conscious awareness but we can access if desired.
Tripartite personality theory
Freud described personality as ‘tripartite’, composed of three parts.
Tripartite personality theory- the id
Entirely unconscious, the id is made up of selfish aggressive instincts that demand immediate gratification.
The id (2)
- Primitive part of personality.
- Operates on pleasure principle.
- Seething mass of unconscious drives and instincts.
- Only the id is present at birth (Freud described babies as being ‘bundles of id’)
- Throughout life the id is entirely selfish and demands immediate gratification of its needs.
Tripartite personality theory- the superego
The moralistic part of our personality which represents the ideal self: how we ought to be.
The superego (2)
- formed at the end of the phallic stage, around age five.
- internalised sense of right and wrong.
- based on the morality principle it represents the moral standards of the child’s same-sex parent
- punishes the ego for wrongdoing (through guilt)
Tripartite personality theory- the ego
The ‘reality check’ that balances the conflicting demands of the id and superego.
