psychodynamic approach

assumptions

• our behaviour and feelings are powerfully affected by unconscious motives.

• our behaviour and feelings as adults are rooted in our childhood experiences.

• personality is composed of three parts, the ID, Ego and Superego which are in constant conflict with one another.

• personality develops in stages shaped as innate drives are modified by different conflicts at different times in childhood during psychosexual development.

• psychic determinism: all behaviour has a cause/reason.

the role of the unconscious

• a part of the mind that was inaccessible to conscious thought.

• Freud believed most of our everyday actions and behaviours are not controlled consciously but are the product of the unconscious mind.

• the mind prevents traumatic memories from the unconscious from reaching conscious awareness which might cause anxiety and therefore the mind uses defence mechanism to prevent this.

defence mechanisms

• repression - the unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts and impulses. These repressed thoughts and feelings still influence behaviour without the individual being aware, e.g. a child who is abused by a parent may have no recollection but still has trouble forming relationships.

• denial - the refusal to accept reality to avoid having to deal with any painful feelings that might be associated with that event. The person acts as if the traumatic event had not happened, e.g. an alcoholic denying they have a drinking problem even after being arrested several times for being drunk and disorderly.

• displacement - the redirection of thoughts or feelings in situations where the person feels unable to express themselves in the presence of the person they should be directed towards. Instead they may take this our on another individual or object, giving their feelings a route for expression even though they are misapplied.

the structure of personality (Freud’s tripartite personality theory)

• the id - operates solely in the unconscious - an individual’s animal instincts. It operates according to the pleasure principle and demands immediate gratification.

• the ego - the mediator between the id and the super ego. It forms compromise between the instinctive id and moralistic super ego and operates on the reality principle.

• the superego - the morality principle which is formed around the age of five. It is the individual’s internalised state of right and wrong, said to be formed by parental upbringing and punishes the ego for wrongdoing through the feeling of guilt.

Freud’s psychosexual stages as a whole

• the first five years of life are crucial to the formation of adult personality.

• the stages emphasise that the most important driving force is libido.

• during the stages the id must be controlled in order to satisfy social demands - sets up a conflict between frustrated wishes and social norms.

• the ego and superego develop in order to exercise this control and direct the need for gratification into socially acceptable channels - gratification centres in different areas of the body at different stages of growth, making the conflict at each stage psychosexual.

• frustration, overindulgence, or any combination of the two may lead to what psychoanalysts call fixation at a particular stage.

• during development, becoming fixated on one of these stages would restrict full development, resulting in displaying specific personality symptoms.

Freud’s psychosexual stages one by one

• oral (0-1 yrs):

  • focus of libido/activities - mouth, tongue, biting and chewing.

  • development - weaning off breast, feeding, ego develops.

  • consequence of fixation for adulthood - smoking, overeating.

• anal (1-3 yrs):

  • focus of libido/activities - anus, bowel and bladder control.

  • development - toilet training.

  • consequence of fixation for adulthood - orderliness or messiness.

• phallic (3-6 yrs):

  • focus of libido/activities - genitals, masturbation.

  • development - Oedipus and Electra complex, superego is formed.

  • consequence of fixation for adulthood - deviancy, sexual dysfunction.

• latency (6-10 yrs):

  • focus of libido/activities - repression of sexual urges.

  • development - cognitive and social development, superego develops further.

  • consequence of fixation for adulthood - none.

• genital (12+ yrs):

  • focus of libido/activities - genitals.

  • development - sexual maturity, development of intimate and sexual relationships.

  • consequence of fixation for adulthood - if all stages completed then sexual maturity and positive mental health is achieved.

the Oedipus complex - Freud

• Freud - during the phallic stage boys experience the Oedipus complex.

• at around age 3 or 4, the young boy begins to desire his mother as she has been his main source of pleasure and he therefore wants her complete attention.

• this means he sees his father as a rival, experiences jealousy of his mother’s desire for the father and wishes he was dead, this then creates anxiety and the repressed fear that his father will castrate him.

• fear and anxiety alongside jealousy creates conflict and the only way the child can cope with and resolve this is through the development of a defence mechanism known as ‘identification with the aggressor.’

• the boy looks for ways to be similar to the father and identifies his father’s attitudes and behaviour forming his gender identity, and at this point the superego is formed as the child learns their morality from identification with the father and his values/attitudes.

the Electra complex - Jung

• Jung proposed that during the phallic stage, a girl develops the Electra complex.

• she starts desiring her mother but envies her father who has her mother’s attention.

• she begins to then admire and desire her father and realises that she does not have a penis so cannot be like him, leading to the development of penis envy and the desire to be a boy.

• Freud claimed that little girls blame their mothers for their 'castrated state.'

• this is resolved by the girl repressing her desire for her father and substituting the wish for a penis with the wish for a baby, creating great tension.

• however, these feelings are repressed in order to remove the tension, and instead a little girl identifies with her mother and internalises her mother’s gender identity, so that it becomes her own.

• she will also develop her superego through this identification and internalisation of her mother’s values.

little Hans case study

• Freud did not directly work with Hans but through correspondence with Han’s father.

• at the age of three Hans developed an active interest in his penis, and throughout this time this was the main theme of Hans’ fantasies and dreams.

• when Hans was five years old he developed a phobia of horses - he was afraid to go out of the house because of his phobia. Hans’ father wrote to Freud “He is afraid a horse will bite him in the street and this fear seems somehow connected with him being frightened by a large penis’, especially afraid of white horses with black around the mouth who were wearing blinkers. Hans' father interpreted this as a reference to his moustache and spectacles.

• Freud believed that the horse was a symbol for his father, and the black bits were a moustache.

• they often played 'horses' together, and the father also recorded an exchange with Hans where the boy said ‘Daddy don’t trot away from me!’

• towards the end of Hans' phobia of horses he experienced several fantasies. During one of which Hans imagined that a plumber had come and first removed his bottom and penis and then gave him another one of each, but larger. Freud interpreted this as Hans’ desire now to be like his father and the beginning of ‘identification with the aggressor’.

• Hans recovered from his phobia after his father assured him that he had no intention of cutting off his penis.

• conclusion - the horses in the phobia were symbolic of the father, and Hans feared that the horse (father) would bite (castrate) him as punishment for the desires towards his mother (castration anxiety). Freud suggested Hans’ phobia was a form of displacement where his fear of his father and of castration was displaced onto horses during the Oedipus complex.

strengths psychodynamic approach

• research - a huge shift in psychological thinking, suggesting new methodological procedures for gathering evidence using case studies (e.g. little Hans) and based on observations of behaviour rather than relying on introspection.

• useful applications - psychoanalysis - a new form of therapy, employing a range of techniques designed to access the unconscious, e.g. hypnosis and dream analysis. It can be used to treat the root cause of some disorders as opposed to drug treatments which can be criticised for only treating symptoms. It has led to the existence of many modern-day psychotherapies.

weaknesses psychodynamic approach

• research - case studies - not possible to make such universal claims about human nature based on case studies of one psychologically abnormal person. Freud’s interpretations were highly subjective - unlikely, in case of little Hans that any other researcher would have drawn the same conclusions.

• research - untestable concepts - low validity - does not meet scientific criteria as cannot be empirically tested with the potential to be disproved.

• issues - gender bias - centred on and dominated by males or the male viewpoint, exaggerates the difference between males and females. Freud explains femininity as failed masculinity, and argued that because girls do not suffer oedipal conflict, they do not identify with their mothers as strongly as boys, so develop weaker superegos. If this were true we would expect women to be more deviant and perhaps more criminal but crime statistics do not support this.

• issues - temporal validity - cannot generalise to all types of families nowadays - same-sex or single-sex parent households.