The psychodynamic Approach Flashcards
Explain the influence of childhood experiences approach
- Psychological development in childhood takes place in psychosexual stages
- 5 psychosexual stages: Oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital
- Problems at any stage of development can cause a child to get fixated on the body part associated with that stage
- Fixation occurs through: Frustration or overindulgence
Explain the unconscious mind approach
- There are 3 sections to the mind: Conscious, preconscious and unconscious
- The unconscious cannot be directly accessed, it determines most of our behaviour
Explain the tripartite personality approach
- The adult personality is structured into 3 parts: Id, ego and superego
- Id: This is impulsive and is present at birth also known as the pleasure principle
- Ego: The rational part of the mind that develops around 2 years old, has to balance the id aka the reality principle
- Superego: Forms for 4 year olds, has to balance out the id and the ego
What is an ego defence mechanism?
- Conflicts between the id, ego and superego cause anxiety therefore the ego protects itself through ego defence mechanisms
- Examples of ego defence mechanisms: displacement (transferring impulses to another thing/person), projection (undesirable thoughts attributed to someone else) and repression (pushing painful memories deep down)
What are the main components of psychodrama?
- Role Taking: Protagonist (person with issue), auxiliary egos (people that play role of significant people in protagonists life), audience (watch show) and director (psychodramatist)
- Role Reversal: Protagonist reverses roles with an auxiliary ego
- Mirror technique: Protagonist steps out their role and auxiliary ego steps into it
- The Double: Person steps into protagonists role and expresses feelings they think protagonist is having.
What are the strengths of psychodrama?
- Techniques used: Very useful for past events where relevant person is no longer there
- Meta Analysis: Kipper and Richie (2003) carried out meta analysis of 25 studies that compared control to experimental group, overall psychodrama = large improvement in clients
What are the weaknesses of psychodrama?
- Clients protection from harm: Their is a risk to the clients when addressing potentially traumatic experiences
- Group setting: This means an individual doesn’t have confidentiality as other group members are also involved.
Explain the methodology of Bowlby (1994)
Focus of the study - 44 Children (thieves) all attended child guidance clinic in London. (31 Boys & 13 Girls between 5-17 Years old)
Control Group - 44 Other children that attended the child guidance clinic in London that where not categorised as thieves.
Explain the procedures of Bowlby (1994)
- Sample obtained through opportunity sampling
- IQ tests given as psychologist interviewed mothers then interview conducted with child and mother, school reports and other repots were also taken into account
- Many children continued to meet with the psychiatrist weekly over 6 months which allowed a detailed case history to be recorded.
What were the findings of Bowlby (1994)?
Six personality types: Normal (stable), Depressed, Circular (bipolar), Hyperthymic (overactive), affectionless, & Schizoid (show symptoms of schizophrenia)
Affectionless - 14 children identified as affectionless, 12 had experienced frequent separation from their mother
What were the conclusions drawn from Bowlby (1994)?
- Children would not become offenders if they had not had experiences that were harmful to health development
- Damage to relationship between mother and child could affect the development of the superego, leading to reduced sense of right and wrong.
What are the advantages of the procedures of Bowlby?
- Practical applications: Research has significant real world applications and could contributed towards the development of good childcare practices
- Qualitative data: Produced about each participant through extensive interviews which produced very detailed findings
What are the disadvantages of the procedures of Bowlby?
- No conclusion can be drawn: The variable was not being manipulated therefore it cannot be said for certain that maternal deprivation was the cause
Biased data: Data is limited as its based on the view of one person and it heavily rests on the recollection of the parents of this children.
What are the strengths of the psychodynamic approach?
- Nature v Nurture: Takes into account both sides of the debate, adult personality due to innate drives (nature) and childhood experiences (nurture)
- Usefulness: highlights that childhood is an important time in development, psychological factors can explain physical problems and generally useful to explain mental illnesses
- Holistic: Reflects the complexity of human behaviour, recognises that several factors contribute to human behaviour
What are the weaknesses of the psychodynamic approach?
- Reductionist: Simplifies complex behaviour to the mechanics of the mind and ignores other important factors on behaviour e.g. Genetics
- Determinist: Infant behaviour determined by innate drives and adult behaviour determined by childhood therefore we have no free will to chose how we behave
- Cannot be proven wrong: It is difficult to falsify, it cannot be tested to see if its wrong
