The Pychoynamic Approach Flashcards
What is the conscious mind ?
What we are aware of (‘tip of the iceberg’)
What is the preconscious ?
Thoughts we may become aware of through dreams and ‘slips of the tongue’
What is the unconscious ?
A vast storehouse of biological drives and instincts that influence our behaviour
What is the tripartite structure of personality ?
Id - primitive part of the personality operates on the pleasure principle, demands instant gratification
Ego - works on the reality principle and is the mediator between the Id and the Superego
Superego - internalised sense of right and wrong , based on the morality principle , punishes he ego through guilt
What are the defence mechanisms used by the ego to reduce anxiety ?
Repression - forcing a distressing memory out of the conscious mind
Denial - refusing to acknowledge reality
Displacement - transferring feelings from their true source onto a substitute target
What does the psychosexual stages suggests ?
That each stage is marked by a different conflict that the child must resolve to move onto the next
Any conflict that is left unresolved leads to a fixation where the child becomes ‘stuck’ and carries behaviours associated with that stage to their adult life.
What are the 5 psychosexual stages ?
Oral (0-1 yrs) - pleasure focus = mouth, the mother’s breast is the object of desire - consequences = smoking , biting nails + sarcastic
Anal (1-3 yrs) - pleasure focus = anus, the child gains pleasure from withholding or expelling faeces - consequences = anal retentive (perfectionist + obsessive) or anal expulsive (thoughtless + messy)
Phallic (3-6 yrs) - pleasure focus = genital area - consequences = narcissistic , reckless and possibly homosexual
Latency - earlier conflicts are repressed
Genital (puberty) - sexual desires become conscious - consequences = struggles to form heterosexual relationships
What does the Oedipus complex suggest ?
That in the phallic stage little boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mothers and a murderous hatred for their fathers. Later boys repress these feelings and identify with their fathers taking on their gender roles and moral values
Girls of the same age experience penis envy
Name one strength of the psychodynamic approach ?
P - one strength of the psychodynamic approach is it introduced psychotherapy
E - Freud’s psychoanalysis was the first attempt to treat mental disorders psychologically rather than physically - psychoanalysis claims to help clients deal with everyday problems by providing access to their unconscious
E - therefore psychoanalysis is the forerunner to many modern-day ‘talking therapies’
Name another strength of the psychodynamic approach ?
P - another strength is the psychodynamic approach has explanatory power
E - Freud’s theory is bizarre and controversial, but it has had a huge fluency on contemporary thought - its been used to explain a wide range of behaviours and drew attention to the influence of childhood on adult personality
E - this suggests that, overall, the psychodynamic approach has had a positive influence on psychology and modern-day thinking
What is a limitation of the psychodynamic approach ?
P - one limitation is the psychodynamic approach includes untestable concepts
E - Popper - argues psychodynamic approach does not meet the scientific criterion of falsification in the sense that it cannot be disproved - Freud’s concepts like Id and Oedipus complex occur at an unconscious level making them difficult to test
E - this means hat Freud’s ideas lack scientific rigour , the theory is pseudoscience rather than real science
What is another limitation of the psychodynamic approach?
P - one limitation of the psychodynamic approach is based off of psychic determinism
E - the psychodynamic approach suggests that our behaviour is determined by unconscious conflicts - Freud believes there was no such thing as an ‘accident’ - however, few psychologists would crept this view as it leaves no room for ‘free will’ beyond early childhood
E - this suggests that Freud’s views were too extreme as most people do have a sense of control over their behaviour
