The Psychodynamic Approach Flashcards
What 3 levels is the mind made up of?
- Conscious
- Subconscious
- Unconscious
2 Main drives
Life drive (Eros): preserve and create life, associated with emotions such as love
Death drive (Thanatos): extinction and ‘inanimate’ state, associated with emotions of fear, hate and anger
The unconscious
Stores biological drives and instincts significantly influencing behaviour and personality
Sigmund Freud’s belief
- Behaviour is influenced by the unconscious
- Childhood experiences affect later life
- Disturbing memories are repressed into the unconscious, and are accessed during dreams or parapraxes (Freudian Slip, e.g. calling your teacher Mum)
- Use psychotherapy to access memories and resolve them
What 3 components is the structure of the personality made up of?
- Id
- Ego
- Superego
The Id
- Primitive part of the personality
- Operate pleasure principle
- Gets what it wants
- All that is present when we are born
- Selfish, demands gratification
The Ego
- Reality principle (mediator)
- Develops age 2
- Reduces conflict between the Id and Superego by employing defence mechanisms
The Superego
- Forms at the end of the phallic stage (age 5)
- Based on morality principle
- Represented moral standards of the child’s parents of the same sex (e.g. son and dad)
What are the names and ages of the psychosexual stages?
1) Oral stage (0-1 years)
2) Anal stage (1-3 years)
3) Phallic stage (3-6 years)
4) Latency stage (6-12 years)
5) Genital stage (puberty onwards)
Oral stage
- Stage 1
- Age 0-1
- Focus of pleasure: the mouth
- Desiring the mother’s breast
- Consequences in later life of not overcoming: smoking, nail biting, sarcasm, over-critical, bad language
Anal stage
- Stage 2
- Age 1-3 (potty training)
- Focus of pleasure is anus
- Child gains pleasure from withholding/expelling faeces
- Consequence in later life of not overcoming: Anal retentive- perfectionist, obsessive, pedantic, well organised, clean. Anal expulsive: thoughtless, reckless
Phallic stage
- Stage 3
- Age 3-6 (become aware of their bodies, superego developing)
- Focus of pleasure if genital area
- The child experiences Oedipus (male desires mother) or Electra (female desires father) complex
- Consequence in later life of not overcoming: phallic personality, narcissistic, reckless, possible homosexual
Latency stage
- Stage 4
- Age 6-12
- Earlier conflicts are repressed
Genital stage
- Stage 5
- Puberty onwards (desire of Id)
- Sexual desires become conscious alongside onset of puberty
- Primary source of pleasure is persuit of heterosexual relationships
- Consequence in later life of not overcoming: difficulty forming heterosexual relationships
What is a defence mechanism?
- Ego uses defence mechanisms to help with balancing the conflicts of the Id and Superego
- Unconscious, help prevent us being overwhelmed temporarily
- Can involve a distortion of reality and can be physiologically unhealthy in the long term
What are the 3 defence mechanisms?
- Repression
- Denial
- Displacement
What is repression?
Forcing a distressing memory out of the unconscious mind and into the unconscious
What is denial?
Refusing to acknowledge some aspect of reality, twisting reality
What is displacement?
Transferring feeling from a true source of distressing emotion onto a substitute target
Gender bias
- Weakness of Freud’s approach
- Alpha bias: researcher exaggerates the difference between men and women
- Androcentric: only viewing behaviour through the male eyes
- Male behaviour becomes the norm
- Symptom of the era (male dominated)
Not scientific of falsifiable
- Weakness
- Unconscious mind is not directly observable (not objective) therefore difficult to test (not falsifiable)
- Tries to make a generalisation
- Not replicable, subjective interpretation (relies of post-hoc reasoning)
- Doesn’t tell us about the individuals experience
- Deters from the credibility of the approach
Psychoanalysis
- Strength
- Used as a part of therapy today
- Human behaviour is complex, psychotherapy needed for specific people/problems
- Resolves issues buried in the unconscious mind
- Some foundations in psychotherapy are used in other counselling/talking therapy
- Psychodynamic approach has a valuable contribution to psychology
What is post-hoc reasoning?
- What has already happened then developing a concluding
- Prone to bias
- Twist your explanation
- Ties in with the issue of determinism
What is psychic determinism?
- Behaviour is determined by unconscious conflicts rooted in childhood
- All behaviour has a cause
- Doesn’t account for free will/choices
- Limitation of the psychodynamic approach
- Freud relied on post-hoc reasoning
