The Psychodynamic Approach

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What did Freud believe the mind was made up of?

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Unconscious, preconscious, and conscious

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What is the unconscious?

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  • Made up of biological drives and instincts that significantly influences our behaviour and personality.

  • Contains repressed disturbing memories that are accessed through dreams or ‘Freudian slips’.

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30 Terms

1
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What did Freud believe the mind was made up of?

Unconscious, preconscious, and conscious

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What is the unconscious?

  • Made up of biological drives and instincts that significantly influences our behaviour and personality.

  • Contains repressed disturbing memories that are accessed through dreams or ‘Freudian slips’.

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What is preconscious?

Contains thoughts and memories not currently in our conscious awareness but can be accessed.

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What is the conscious?

The small part of the mind we know about and are aware of.

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How did Freud think the personality was structured?

Id, Ego and Superego

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What is the Id?

Primitive part of the personality that operates on the pleasure principle

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What is the Ego?

Mediator between the two parts through defence mechanisms - works on reality principle

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What is the Superego

Internalised sense of right and wrong, based on morality principle

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What are psychosexual stages?

Freud’s idea of child development that occurs in 5 stages.

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What happens if a psychosexual conflict is not resolved?

The child becomes fixated and brings certain behaviours from that stage into adulthood

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What are the 5 psychosexual stages?

  1. Oral

  2. Anal

  3. Phallic

  4. Latency

  5. Genital

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What is the oral stage?

Occurs at 0-1years - focus of pleasure is the mouth

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What is the anal stage?

Occurs at 1-3years - focus of pleasure is the anus

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What is the phallic stage?

Occurs at 3-6 years - focus of pleasure is the genitals

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What is the latency stage?

Earlier conflicts are repressed

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What is the genital stage?

Occurs at puberty - sexual desires become conscious

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What are defence mechanisms?

Used by the Ego to conflict the demands of the Id and Superego.

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What do defence mechanisms do?

Prevents us feeling overwhelmed by temporary traumas through distortion of reality

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What are examples of defence mechanisms?

  • Repression

  • Denial

  • Displacement

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What is the Oedipus Complex?

  • In the phallic stage, boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mother and murderous hatred towards their father.

  • Fearing castration, they repress their feelings and identify with their father.

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What is the Electra Complex?

  • During the phallic stage, girls experience feelings towards their father as the penis is the primary love object and hate towards their mother.

  • Over time they give up this desire and replace it with desire for a baby.

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What was the Little Hans Case Study?

He was a 5 year old boy who developed a phobia of horses after seeing on collapse on the street

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How did Freud use the Little Hans Case Study as support for the Oedipus Complex?

  • Phobia was a form of displacement - repressed the fear of his father and displaced it onto horse.

  • Horses represented unconscious fear of castration

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Strengths of psychodynamic approach

  • Real-world application

  • Can explain a wide range of human behaviours

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Limitations of the psychodynamic approach

  • Most of it is untestable

  • Ignores free will

  • Psychoanalysis cannot be used for all mental disorders

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How is real-world application a strength?

  • Created psychoanalysis, a first attempt at treating mental disorders psychologically - paved the way for modern day counselling

  • Designed to bring repressed emotions into the conscious to deal with them

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How is Freud’s theory a strength?

  • Used to explain a wide range of phenomena: personality development, origins of psychological disorders, moral development and gender identity.

  • Connects childhood experiences to later development.

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How is Freud’s theory being untestable make it limited?

  • Many concepts at an unconscious levels - can’t be tested

  • Many ideas based on subjective studies of individuals (Little Hans) - not generalisable

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How does Freud’s theory ignore other approaches make it limited?

Suggests behaviour is determined by unconscious conflicts from childhood, with nothing being an accident and all being driven by unconscious forces - this ignores free will’s influence on behaviour

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What are the limitations of psychoanalysis?

Harmful for more extreme mental disorders, such as schizophrenia - delusion and paranoia means they have lost their grip on reality and cannot articulate their thoughts in the way psychoanalysis requires