Ch 12.2 - Psychodynamic Approaches

Psychodynamic Perspective

Includes Freud, focus on how personality arises through complex interactions involving conscious and unconscious processes that occur from early development through adulthood

Freud’s Structure of Personality

ID: collection of basic biological drives, act on impulses and gratify and pleasure ourselves

Superego: responsible for moral judgements, act righteously and act accordingly to norms of our society

Ego: mediates between desires of ID and Superego, grounded in reality and makes decisions based on present moment

Thought we were born to be bad (ID) and then developed our other moral part of our mind

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

Freud believed our personalities were influenced by our progression, or lack thereof, through psychosexual stages

ID trying to gratify itself in different ways, if u don’t develop normally and control impulses → Fixation: when an individual becomes preoccupied with obtaining the pleasure associated with a particular stage

First stage: oral > putting things in our mouth (sucking our thumb)

Second stage: anal > pooping (potty training)

Proposed some odd psychological tendencies, not supported by an empirical evidence

The Oedipal Complex

Phallic (age 3-7): Children become aware of their genitals and become sexually attracted to the opposite sexed parent

(penis envy: girls being jealous of men because they didn’t have their genitals)

Final Psychosexual Stages

During the two final stages, children learn to balance their basic urges with the need to conform to social norms

Latency: 7-11, child continues his or her development but sexual urges are relatively quiet

Genital: 11-adults, Growing adolescent shakes off old dependencies and learns to deal maturely with the opposite sex

Sexist drives*