Psychodynamic approach

Question 1

According to Sigmund Freud, the mind is made up of 3 parts:

Answer 1

• the conscious: what we are aware of, the ‘tip of the iceberg’
• the preconscious: thoughts and ideas that we may become aware of through dreams and ‘slips of the tongue’
• the unconscious: a vast storehouse of biological drives and instincts that has a significant influence on her behaviour

Question 2

Freud also saw personality as having 3 parts:

Answer 2

• the id
• the ego
• the supergo

Question 3

what is the id?

Answer 3

the primitive part of the personality which operates on the pleasure principle and demands instant gratification of its needs

Question 4

what is the ego?

Answer 4

the ego works on the reality principle and is the mediator between the other two parts of the personality

Question 5

what is the superego?

Answer 5

our internalised sense of right and wrong- based on the morality principle, it punishes the ego through guilt for wrongdoing

Question 6

Freud argued that child development occurred in 5 stages; each stage is marked by a different conflict that the child must resolve to move onto the next. Any conflict unsolved leads to

Answer 6

fixation where the child becomes ‘stuck’ and carries behaviours associated with that stage through to adult life

Question 7

what are the 5 fixed and irreversible stages of child development?

Answer 7

• oral stage (0-1 years)
• anal stage (1-3 years)
• phallic stage (3-5 years)
• latency stage
• genital stage (puberty)

Question 8

what is involved in the oral stage?

Answer 8

• focus of pleasure is on the mouth and the mother’s breast is the object of desire
• too much or too little gratification here may lead to an ‘oral fixation’ in later life, characterised by behaviours such as nail biting and smoking

Question 9

what is involved in the anal stage?

Answer 9

• focus of pleasure is in the anus
• the child gains pleasure from withholding and eliminating faeces
• unresolved conflicts here lead to ‘anal retentive’ (mean,obsessive and sarcastic) or ‘anal expulsive’ (messy, disorganised, wasteful) personality type

Question 10

what is involved in the phallic stage?

Answer 10

• the focus of pleasure is in the genital area and the child experiences the oedipus complex
• unresolved conflict may lead to a ‘phallic personality type’ (vain, exhibitonists, homosexual)

Question 11

what is involved in the latency stage?

Answer 11

earlier conflicts are repressed into the unconscious

Question 12

what is involved in the gential stage?

Answer 12

sexual desires become conscious alongside the onset of puberty

Question 13

explain how the oedipus complex is a major conflict occurring at the phallic stage

Answer 13

• in the phallic stage, little boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mothers and a murderous hatred for their father- the oedipus complex
• eventually boys repress their feelings for their mother and identify with their father, taking on his gender role and moral values
• girls of the same age experience penis envy

Question 14

what is involved in penis envy?

Answer 14

• girls desire their father and hate their mother = been called the electra complex
• girls give up their desire for their father over time and replace this with a desire for a baby

Question 15

what are defence mechanisms?

Answer 15

defence mechanisms are unconscious strategies that the ego uses to manage the conflict between the id and the superego- conflict between what I want and what I really want to do

Question 16

what are examples of defence mechanisms?

Answer 16

• repression: forcing a distressing memory out of the unconscious mind
• denial: refusing to acknowledge some aspect of reality
• displacement: transferring feelings from their true source onto a substitute target

Question 17

what was a key study in which the psychodynamic approach was investigated?

Answer 17

Freud’s ‘The case of little Hans’

Question 18

what was the procedure of little Hans?

Answer 18

• Hans was a five-year-old boy who developed a phobia of horses after seeing one collapse in the street
• although Freud met Hans briefly on one occasion, most of the analysis was conducted through letters written by Han’s father

Question 19

what were the findings of little Hans?

Answer 19

• Freud suggested that Han’s phobia was a form of displacement in which his repressed fear of his father was transferred onto horses
• horses were merely a symbolic representation of Han’s real unconscious fear: the fear of castration during the Oedipus complex

Question 20

what are the evaluation points?

Answer 20

• one strength is that the approach has explanatory power
• one strength is that the approach has practical application in the real world
• one weakness is that the approach includes lots of untestable concepts
• the case study Freud relied on had been criticised
• one limitation is that it is based on psychic determinism

Question 21

explain how one strength is that the approach has explanatory power

Answer 21

• although Freud’s theory is controversial and often bizzare, it has had huge influence on Western contemporary thought
• it has been used to explain a wide range of phenomena including personality development, abnormal behaviour, moral development and gender development
• it also drew attention to the connection between childhood experience and later development which influenced attachment research
• along with behaviourism, psychodynamic approach was the dominant approach in psychology for the first half of the twentieth century

Question 22

explain how one strength is that the approach has application in the real world

Answer 22

• Freud introduced a new form of therapy: psychoanalysis
• this therapy is designed to access the unconscious mind using a range of techniques such as hypnosis and dream analysis
• psychoanalysis is most suitable for individuals suffering from mild mental disorders but has been criticised as inappropriate and even dangerous, for people with severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia
• that said, psychoanalysis is the forerunner to many modern-day psychotherapies and ‘talking cures’ that have since been established

Question 23

explain how one weakness is that the approach includes untestable concepts

Answer 23

• it may be argued that the psychodynamic approach does not meet the scientific criterion of falsification, in the sense that it is not open to empirical testing and thus cannot be proved or disproved
• many of Freud’s concepts such as the id or the Oedipus complex occur at the unconscious level making them difficult, if not impossible to test
• this affords psychodynamic theory the status of pseudoscience (‘fake science than real science)

Question 24

explain how one limitation is that the case study that Freud relied on has been criticised

Answer 24

• although Freud’s observations were detailed and carefully recorded, critics have suggested that it is not possible to make universal claims about human behaviour based on studies of such a small number of individuals
• What’s more, Freud’s interpretations were highly subjective- in the case of little Hans for instance, it is unlikely that any other researcher would have drawn the same conclusions
• so in comparison with other approaches such as the biological approach, Freud’s methods lack scientific rigour

Question 25

explain how one limitation is that the approach is based on psychic determinism

Answer 25

• the psychodynamic approach explains all behaviour, even accidents, as determined by unconcscious conflicts that are rooted in childhood
• even something as apparently random as a ‘slip of the tongue’ such as calling your teacher mum is driven by unconscious forces and is believed to have deep symbolic meaning
• this is an extreme deterministic stance and ignores any influence that free will may have on behaviour