Psychodynamic approach

Question 1

Whatdid Freud sugguest about the concious mind?

Describe the role of the unconcious

Answer 1

• Most of our mind is made up of the unconcious - a storehouse of biological drives and instincts from childhood that has a significant influence on our behaviour and personality.
• Contains threatening and disturbing memories that have been locked away/repressed.
• Can be accessed during dreams or slips of the tounge (e.g. calling female teacher mum).

Question 2

What is the personality composed of?

Answer 2

• Id
• Ego
• Superego

Question 3

What is the Id?

Answer 3

• The Id operates on the pleasure principle and is present at birth.
• It is entirely selfish and demands instant gratification of its needs.

Question 4

What is the Ego?

Answer 4

• The Ego operates on the reality prinicple and develops around the age of two.
• Its role is to reduce the conflict between demands of the Id and Superego.
• It manages this by employing defence mechanisms.

Question 5

What is the Superego?

Answer 5

• The superego operates on the morality principle and develops around the age of 5.
• It is our internalised sense of right and wrong
• It represents the moral standards of the child’s same-sex parent.

Question 6

Describe Psychosexual stages

Answer 6

As children develop they go through the psychosexual stages. Stages: Oral, Anal, Phalic, Latency, Genital
* At Each stage has a different conflict that the child must resolve in order to progress
* Unsolved conflicts leads to fixation where the child carries behaviours associated with that stage through to adulthood.

Question 7

Describe the anal stage

Answer 7

Age: 1-3 years
Focus of pleasure: Anus
Potty training to control bowel movements
Fixation: Anal retentive (become obessive perfectionist), Anal explusive (become messy)

Question 8

Desribe the Oral stage

Answer 8

• Age: 0-1 years
• Focus of pleasure: Mouth
• Pleasure through their mouth such as sucking
• Oral fixation - smoking, biting nails

Question 9

Describe the phallic stage

Answer 9

• Age: 3-6 years
• Focus of pleasure: Genitals
• Child experiences Oedipus (boys) or Electra (girls) complex
• Becomes reckless if unresolved

Question 10

Describe the latency stage

Answer 10

Earlier conflicts are repressed.

Question 11

Describe the genital stage

Answer 11

• Age: Puberty
• Sexual desires become concious
• Unresolved conflict - difficult forming heterosexual relationships.

Question 12

What are defence mechanisms?

Answer 12

• Used by ego to reduce the conflict between demands of the Id and Superego.
• The ego distorts reality so that the individual can continue with everyday life without unpleasent feelings dominating their concious awareness.

Question 13

Evaluation: Introduced psychotherapy - real world application

Answer 13

• Strength: It introduced psychotherapy.
• Freud created a strategy to treat mental disorders psychologically rather than phsyically - psychoanalysis.
• The therapy used techniques to access the unconcious such as dream analysis.
• It claims to help clients by bringing their repressed emotions into their concious mind so they can be delt with
• Increases real wolrd value of the approach, as its made a significant contribution to treatment of mental disorders.

Question 14

Evaluation: concepts are untestable

falsiability - a theory can be considered scientific if its possible to establish it as flase.

Answer 14

key concepts of the psychodynamic approach like the unconcious are not directly observable which sugguests that freuds ideas lack falsiability and is not open to emprical testing. This means that theres little objective evidnce that we can measure and operationalise to support the approach.

moreover - based on case study on little hans - cannot generalise to human behaviour of general population.

Therefore lacks scientific credibility and validity

Question 14

ao3: deterministic

Answer 14

approach sugguests childhood experiences shape adult personality and doesnt acknowledege other aspects that shape a person such as genes. It ignores aspects of free will and this is known as psychic determinsm. Therefore the psychodynamic approch is a limited explanation - alternative explanation like humanistic may be a more effective way of explaining behaviour as its holistic and considerers effect of interaction with wider society

Question 15

what are the 3 defence mechanism

Answer 15

displacement - transfer feelings from a distressing source to a subsitute target
denial - failing to acknoledge reality
repression - forcing out a memory out of concious mind