Psychodynamic Perspective Flashcards
What are the key principles of the psychodynamic perspective?
-Unconcious processes: many important influences on behaviour come from a part of the mind we have no direct awareness of, the unconcious.
-Psychodynamic conflict: different parts of the mind are in constant dynamic struggle with each other (often unconciously) and the consequences of this struggle are important in understanding behaviour
-Emotional drives: Freud believed that behaviour is motivated by sexual and aggressive drives. The drive creates psychic energy that will build up and create tension and anxiety if it cannot be released in some form
-Development: personality is shaped by relationships, experience and conflict over time, particularly during childhood
What are the concepts of the psychodynamic perspective?
Different levels of consciousness:
-Conscious mind: consists of our current thoughts
-Pre-conscious mind: can be accessed with relative ease by retrieving stored memories
-Unconscious mind: hidden form our awareness and consists of our basic drives, instincts, repressed traumas and painful emotions. These unconscious thoughts still influence our feelings and behaviours. Analysing our dreams and slips of the tongue can help us access these unconscious thoughts.
Free Association:
-Patients are encouraged to lie down comfortably and speak aloud any thoughts that come into their head. Projective tests such as Rorschach inkblot tests are also used by therapists to try to reveal a person’s unconscious thoughts and drives. These involve showing patient inkblots and asking them to say what they see. Their comments can reflect the individual’s unconscious conflicts.
Instinctual drives:
-There are two instinctual drives of the Id - Eros, which is the life instinct (pleasure drive) and Thanatos, which Is the death instinct (aggressive energy). These drives cause a build up of psychic energy which needs to be released.
The tripartite model of the personality:
-Id: this is the part of the personality that contains our basic instinctual drives which are present from birth.
-Ego: the reality principle. This tries to resolve conflicts between the Id and Superego. The ego tries to mediate between the unrealistic desires and needs of the Id, and the real world.
-Superego: contains our moral conscience and creates guilt if we break the moral rules we have learned from our parents and society.
What are the core studies in the psychodynamic perspective?
-Freud
-Kohlberg
-Hancock
What are the strengths of the psychodynamic perspective?
-Can be useful in explaining mental health disorders and the role of unconscious drives and conflicts in these mental health issues developing.
-Often uses case study methods (focusing on one person, or a small number of people in depth) which allow lots of detailed information to be gathered about an individual’s experiences
What are the weakness of the psychodynamic perspective?
Case study methods typically study one participant in depth, often someone with a fairly rare mental health issue, which limits the generalisability of the research.
Research is often not very scientific as focusing on the unconscious mind. This means that often the research is not falsifiable and the interpretations of the person’s behaviour is quite subjective.
