Psychodynamic approach Flashcards
(20 cards)
Who is the main researcher of the psychodynamic approach?
Sigmund Freud
What are the 3 levels of consciousness?
- Conscious: contains all the thoughts, memories and feelings of which we are aware of at any given moment. Aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk rationally
- Preconscious: memories/information that can be brought to the conscious easily
- Unconscious: fears, biological instinctual urges (sexual desires, immoral urges, selfish needs), shameful or traumatic experiences. Not easily accessed but can be accessed through dreams or during ‘Freudian slips’
What did Freud believe most of our behaviour and personality is driven by?
The unconscious
How is personality structured according to Frued?
Tripartite personality
- ID
- ego
- Superego
Outline the ID
- primitive part of personality that works on the pleasure principle, it gets what it wants
- Present at birth (innate)
- Demands instant gratification
Outline the ego
- develops around 2 years old
- reduces conflict between ID and Superego
- Uses defence mechanisms
- Reality principle
Outline the superego
- develops around age 5 (end of phallic stage)
- Morality principle
- the child adopts the moral standards of the same-sex parent and punishes the ego for wrongdoing through guilt
What are defence mechanisms?
How the ego deals with conflicts between the ID and Superego.
These are unconscious and prevents us from being overwhelmed by temporary threats or traumas
What are the 3 defence mechanisms?
- Repression: Forcing a distant memory out of the mind
- Denial: Refusing to acknowledge some aspect of reality
- Displacement: Transferring the feelings of truce source of distressing emotions on to a substitute target
What is the psychosexual stages?
- Freud claimed that the development of the child occurred in 5 stages
- Each stage has a conflict which the child must resolve in order to progress successfully
- Any conflict that is not resolved will lead to fixation at that stage and carries certain behaviours into adult life
Name the psychosexual stages
Old age pensioners love Guinness
- Oral
- Anal
- Phallic
- Latency
- Gential
What age does the psychosexual stages occur?
- Oral: 0-2
- Anal: 2-3
- Phallic: 3-6
- Latency: 6-puberty
- Genital: Puberty onwards
What is the Oedipus complex ?
- sexual desire for mothers
- Boys end up identifying with their father (and taking his morals) due to fear of castration
What is the Electra complex?
- sexual desire for the father
- girls end up identifying with their mother because they replace their penis envy with a desire for a baby (and takes up her morals)
What is psychoanalysis?
A form of in depth talk therapy that aims to bring unconscious or deeply buried thoughts + feelings to the conscious mind, so repressed experiences, emotions can be examined
What was the little Hans case study?
- Used to support the Oedipus complex
- Longitudinal case study
- Qualitative data through observations
A03 - Strength - practical applications
- Psychoanalysis therapy is a form of in depth talk-therapy that aims to bring unconscious thoughts and feelings into the conscious mind
- It suggests a new methodological procedure for gathering empirical evidence (case studies)
- Psychoanalysis was based on observations rather of behaviour rather than the subjective stance introspection took
- Matt et al large scale study review of psychotherapy studies conclude that psychoanalysis led to improvment
A03 - Limitation - Little Hans was not a scientific study
- The case study does not use controlled experiments to collect empirical data
- So it is considered less scientific than other approaches
- For example, there was no scientific empirical evidence that Hans fear of horses was a displaced fear of his father; this was Freud’s interpretation
- Therefore it is argued his methods are highly subjective
- Difficult to establish how valid Freud’s theories are due to lack of scientific rigor
A03 - Limitation - Non falsifiable
- His ideas are non-falsifiable
- Freud’s theories may seem to appear to reflect evidence but you cannot observe the relevant construction directly to test them scientifically (unconscious mind)
- so that they can be proved wrong
- Therefore it is difficult to establish validity due to the lack of scientific rigor
A03 - Limitation - It is gender biased
- The approach is gender biased
- Freud suggested that women are morally inferior
- The identification process at the end of the phallic stage was greater in boys than girls
- This is because Freud believed castration anxiety was higher than penis envy
- As a result of weaker identification in girls, they develop a weak superego - leading them to be morally inferior
