Psychodynamic Approach Flashcards
(17 cards)
What is the psychodynamic approach
This approach looked closely wit a psychologist called Freud and his work. The heart of this approaches is that our behaviour can be explained by courses that drive us it behave the way we do. Many if these forces are linked to the unconscious mind and early childhood experiences.
What are the 4 elements to this approach
The role of the unconscious mind
The structure of personality
Defence mechanisms
Psychosexual development
What is the role of the unconscious mind
Freud compared this to an ice burg. He said that the conscious mind is the part above the water, that are your current thoughts and perceptions.
The bit slightly under the water is the pre-conscious boundary, this is information that you aren’t currently aware of but an easily be brought into the conscious mind.
The bottom of the ice-burg refers to the unconscious mind and this is unaccessible and this can contain traumatic events, secret fears and secret desires.
What is the structure of the personality
Freud believed that the adult personality was structured into 3 parts.
1. Super ego - this develops at amount 5-6 and operates according to the “morality principle” and has 2 parts to it
Conscience- this makes you feel guilty after something
Ego ideal - this makes you feel proud after you have done the right thing.
- Ego - this develops at around 2 years old and operates according to the “reality principle” and thinks about the consequences of a situation.
- Id - this is innate and operated according to the “pleasure principle” and can lead people to be quite selfish to get instant gratification
How does the ego, super ego and id work together
The ego needs to balance the conflicting demands from the id and superego, which is needed to be psychologically “well-balanced”. However not everyone’s ego will be able to balance these, so either the id or superego will become a dominant part of their personality.
Dominant id= aggressive, selfish, impulsive
Dominate super ego = taken advantage of and “moral saint”
What are the defence mechanisms
Defence mechanisms are straggles that your ego will unconsciously develop and use to protect itself to make you feel better about a situation
Projection
Repression
Displacement
Denial
Sublimation
Regression
What is repression
This is pushing a painful memory deep down into the unconscious mind, so far down that its forgotten, such as early child hood abuse
What is displacement
Redirecting unacceptable feeling from the original source to something safer, for example you were mad at your mum, so you slam the door instead
What is denial
Refusing to accept the situation, for example a drug addict might say, i can quit at any time so it doesn’t matter.
What are the psychosexual stages
Oral stage = 0-18 months
Anal stage = 18 months - 3years
Phallic stage = 3-6 years
Latency stage = 6-12 years
Genital stage = 12+
What’s the oral stage
This is pleasure being received by the mouth (mainly focusing on breast feeding), too much or too little can get you fixated in this stage. Consequences are wanting to have things in your mouth, such as gum, nail biters, thumb suckers and smokers.
Too little breast feeding = orally aggressive, shout and swear
Too much = gullible, optimistic and more likely to bite into a hard sweet
What’s the anal stage
Pleasure comes from bowel movements (focusing on potty training), too much or too little can you get fixated in this stage.
Too harsh or too lenient potty training can lead to a fixation in this stage.
To strict = anally recentive personality - respect authority figures, organised and neat freaks
Too little breast feeding= anally excessive personality - messy and not on time
Whats the phallic stage
Children becoming aware of their bodies, such as little boys overcoming the Oedipus complex and little girls overcoming the electra complex. This allows them to identify with the same sex parent.
If fixated in this stage it will lead to
Excessive vein
Sexual dysfunction
Gender dysmorphia
What’s the latency stage
N psychosexual development, and children are focusing on developing social skills, if fixated int this stage there are no consequences
What’s the genital stage
Exploration of sexual relationships and moving through puberty
Consequences of being fixated in this stage will be genital personality, healthy and well balanced
Strength evaluation
P- practical applications
E- ideas put forward b Freud gave influenced therapies to treat mental disorders, such as helping then access their unconscious mind to emotions can be dealt with, such as dream analysis, which is the roal road to the unconscious
E- improved people’s QOL
P- takes into the account both sides of the nature and nurture debate
E- Freud claimed that adult personality is the product of innate drives (nature) and childhood experiences (nurture). Such as the id being an instinctual biological aspect of behaviour and the psychosexual stages result in behaviours from childhood
E- this approach recognises that human behaviour is influenced by multiple factors.
Limiation evaluation
P- difficult to falsely and a scientific theory should be tested to see if it’s wrong
E- many of Freud theories cant be falsified because his belief that root cause of behaviour occurs in the unconscious mind, which is inaccessible, leading it to be untestable.
E- not a sceintific theory
P- its a hard determinism approach
E- we have no free will (choice) over how we behave, such as suggesting that an aggressive personality would be the result of a dominant id or smokers are a result of being fixated in the oral stage
E- giving people an “excuse” for negative behaviour
