The Psychodynamic Approach

Question 1

Define “personality/psyche”.

Answer 1

Your distinctive and enduring patterns of thinking, feelings and behaving characteristics.

Question 2

Define “unconscious”.

Answer 2

According to Freud, a vast reservoir of unacceptable and often hard-to-tolerate thoughts, feelings, desires and memories.

Question 3

Define “defence mechanism”.

Answer 3

The egos protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Question 4

Define “ego”.

Answer 4

The conscious part of yourself, which deals with reality.

Question 5

Define “intuitive appeal”.

Answer 5

A theory that has relatable appeal, they fit in with common experience.

Question 6

Define “conscious mind”.

Answer 6

The part of the mind we are aware of, its thought and actions. It is concerned with logical thinking.

Question 7

What are the 3 part of the personality called?

Answer 7

The ID
The Ego
The Superego

Question 8

What does the ID do and when is it created?

Answer 8

• The ID is the source of all basic drives and was created at the moment of birth.
• It drives us to obtain gratification (usually sexual)
• It lacks any sort of concept of reality and it’s very irrational.

Question 9

What principle drives the ID?

Answer 9

The Pleasure Principle

Question 10

What does the Ego do and when is it created?

Answer 10

• The ego develops in early childhood.
• The conscious self develops and deals with the real world.
• The go balances out the ID’s irrationality with the moral rules of the superego

Question 11

What principle drives the Ego?

Answer 11

The Reality Principle

Question 12

What does the Superego do and when is it created?

Answer 12

• The Superego develops in later childhood.
• This represents the moral demands of family and society. Therefore it’s governed by moral restraints.
• Freud states this could be the internalised voice of the parents. As the conscious develops you learn right form wrong.

Question 13

What principle drives the Superego?

Answer 13

The Morality Principle

Question 14

What is psychoanalysis?

Answer 14

• The belief that all people posses unconscious thoughts, feelings, desires and memories.
• It aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of the conscious and the unconscious mind and bringing repressed feelings and conflicts into the conscious mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association.

Question 15

Name the 4 defence mechanisms

Answer 15

• Repression
• Denial
• Displacement
• Regression

Question 16

What is Repression?

Answer 16

-Forcing distressing images/memories out of the conscious mind, ‘locked away’, to forget. -Conscious efforts to recall these memories have no effect.

Question 17

What is Denial?

Answer 17

• The person refuses to accept the situation of an uncontrollable situation.
• Often a short term mechanism.
• Obvious to those around them.
  i. e. someones been bereaved and cannot accept reality.

Question 18

What is Displacement?

Answer 18

-The person transfers feelings from a ‘true source’ of distressing emotion onto a ‘substitute target’.
-This target is usually less threatening.
I.e. the pain of unrequited love, turning into aggression.

Question 19

What is Regression?

Answer 19

• The person reverts back to an earlier behaviour in the developmental stage that feels safe or comforting.
  i. e. cuddling a teddy, sucking your thumb.

Question 20

What are the 5 psychosexual stages?

Old Age Pensioners Like Grapes.

Answer 20

• Oral
• Anal
• Phallic
• Latency
• Gential

Question 21

What is the Oral stage and at what age does it occur?

Answer 21

• 0-18 months.
• Desire is focused on the lips and mouth, babies always put things in their mouth as a way of exploring.
• Sucking and chewing.

Question 22

What is the Anal stage and at what age does it occur?

Answer 22

• 18 months- 3.5 years

- Pleasure by holding or passing faeces.

Question 23

What is the Phallic stage and at what age does it occur?

Answer 23

• 3.5-6 years
• Oedipus complex (when a young boy begins to view their fathers as a rival for their mothers’ affections. The feelings the young boy has towards his mother are describes as wanting to possess the mother and the desire to replace his father. On the other hand, the child still fears punishment from the father for having these feelings, called ‘castration anxiety’ according to Freud.
• Girls go through s similar set of feelings called the ‘Electra complex’, however Freud believed that girls instead experienced penis envy.

Question 24

What is the Latency stage and at what age does it occur?

Answer 24

• 6-puberty

- Repressed sexual urges

Question 25

What is the Gential stage and at what age does it occur?

Answer 25

• Puberty-onwards

- awakened sexual urges. Oedipus complex is resolved and ‘normal’ social and sexual development completes.

Question 26

Define “fixation”?

Answer 26

A lingering focus on pleasure seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

Question 27

What are the 4 real life personality traits Freud could explain?
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Answer 27

Addiction- There was a fixation the oral stage, food being withheld or over-fed.
Amnesia- Repression
Anxiety- Over use of defence mechanisms
Aggression- Displacement

Question 28

What does OVER USE of defence mechanism cause according to this theory?

Answer 28

Anxiety and Depression

Question 29

What are the strengths of the psychodynamic approach?

Answer 29

• Intuitive appeal, the population as a whole can relate to it. Fits in with common experience.
• Highlights the importance of childhood in mental health through the psychosexual stages.
• Can be applied to explain: aggression, amnesia, anxiety, addiction.
• Useful in developing talking therapies for people with mental illness.
• Influence of his concept and language in everyday terms.

Question 30

What are the limitations of the psychodynamic approach?

Answer 30

• Unfalsifiable: the subject can be tested and a hypothesis proving it false cannot be written.
• They happen at an unconscious level and you can only infer, it’s hard to objectively measure them so this approach is deemed unscientific.
• dDeterministic: it says that suffering childhood trauma will lead to abnormal behaviour in adulthood, however it ignores the influence of genes (biological), reward (behaviourism), and thinking patterns (cognitive).