Psychodynamic approach Flashcards
What is the psychodynamic approach?
A perspective that describes the different forces, most of which are unconscious, that operate on the mind and direct human behaviour and experience.
- What is the conscious mind?
- What is the preconscious mind?
- What is the unconscious mind?
- Involves all the things we are currently aware of and are thinking about.
- Contains thoughts and memories that are not currently in conscious awareness but we can access them if desired.
- The part of the mind that we are unaware of but which continues to direct much of our behaviour. The repressed memories within the unconscious can be accessed through dreams of ‘slips of the tongue’ (parapraxes).
What is the Id?
(Structure of personality)
- The primitive part of our personality that operates on the pleasure principle. It is entirely unconscious and made up of selfish aggressive instincts that demand immediate gratification
- It is present from birth
What is the ego?
(Structure of personality)
- It works on the reality principle
- It develops around the age of 2 years and its role is to reduce the conflict between the demands of the Id and the superego. This is done by employing a number of defense mechanisms.
- What are defence mechanisms?
- Name the defence mechanisms.
- Unconscious strategies that the ego uses to manage the conflict between the Id and the superego.
- 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 superego?
(Structure of personality)
- It is formed at the end of the phallic stage (around the age of 5)
- It is our internalised sense of right and wrong.
- It is based on the morality principle and represents the standards of the child’s same-sex parent and pushes the ego for wrongdoing (guilt).
What are the psychosexual stages?
- Freud claimed that child development occurred in five stages.
- Each stage (except latency) is marked by a different conflict that a child must resolve to successfully progress to the next stage.
- If unresolved, it leads to fixation where the child becomes stuck and carries certain behaviours and conflicts associated with that stage.
Name the psychosexual stages.
( Stage - Description - Cocsequence of unresolved conflict)
Oral (0-1) - focus of pleasure is the mouth (mother’s breast) - Oral fixation (smoking)
Anal (1-3) - focus of pleasure is the anus (withholding/expelling faeces - Anal retentive (perfectionist) or Anal expulsive (messy)
Phallic (3-5) - focus of pleasure is the genital area (Oedipus or Electra complex - Phallic personality (narcissistic and reckless)
Latency - Earlier conflicts are resolved
Genital - sexual desires become conscious alongside the onset of puberty - difficulty forming heterosexual relationships.
- What is the Oedipus complex?
- What is the Electra complex?
- Claimed little boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mother and murderous hatred for their love rivals ( father) - Oedipus complex. Fearing castration, boys repress their feelings for their mother and identify as their father, taking in his gender roles and moral values.
- Claimed girls of the same age experience penis envy: they desire their father - as the penis is the primary love object - and hate their mother (Electra complex). Although less clear on the process in girls, they are thought to give up on their desire for their father over time and replace this with a desire for a baby (identifying with their mother in the process.
What was the case of Little Hans?
Freud (1909):
- Supported the concept of the Oedipus complex with the Little Hans study. Hans was a 5yr old boy who developed a phobia of horses after seeing one collapse in the street. Freud suggested that Hans’ phobia was a form of displacement in which his repressed fear of his father was transferred (displaced) onto horses. Thus horses were merely a symbolic representation of Hans’ real unconscious fear: castration experienced during the Oedipus complex.
(AO3) What is a strength of the psychodynamic approach?
(1)
Explanatory power:
- Despite Freud’s controversial and bizarre theory, its ability to explain human behaviour had a huge influence on psychology and contemporary thought.
-Alongside behaviourism, the psychodynamic approach remained a key force and has been used to explain a wide range of phenomena including personality and moral development, the origin of psychological disorders and gender identity. Especially in drawing attention to the connection between childhood experiences and our later development.
- This suggests that the psychodynamic approach has an overall positive impact on psychology.
(AO3) What is a strength of the psychodynamic approach?
(2)
Real-life application:
- It introduced the idea of psychotherapy (as opposed to physical treatments)
- Freud introduced a new form of therapy -psychoanalysis - which was the first attempt to treat mental disorders psychologically rather than physically. This new therapy employed a range of techniques designed to access the unconscious (dream analysis)
- Psychoanalysis claims to help clients by brining their repressed emotions into their conscious minds so they can be dealt with and is the forerunner to many modern-day ‘talking therapies’ (counselling) that have since been established.
- This shows the value of the psychodynamic approach in creating a new approach to treatment.
(AO3) What is a weakness of the psychodynamic approach?
Counterpoint:
- Although Freudian therapists may have claimed success for many clients with mild neuroses, psychoanalysis is regarded as inappropriate, even harmful, for people experiencing more serious mental disorders (schizophrenia).
- Many symptoms of schizophrenia, such as paranoia and delusional thinking, mean that those with the disorder have lost their grip on reality and cannot articulate their thoughts in the way required by psychoanalysis.
- This suggests that Freudian therapy (and theory) may not apply to all mental disorders.
