psychodynamic approach

key principles/assumptions

• Early childhood experiences are important - they shape our adult behaviour and choices in life

• The unconscious mind drives us - a lot of instincts, memories and drives that have significant influence on our behaviour are hidden in the unconscious mind

• Motivation for behaviour comes from instinctual drives - defence mechanisms, libido

• Little free will - due to our personality being a culmination of what we are taught/experience as children, we have little will over how we end up

• Tripartite personality - there are three parts to the personality (Id, Ego, Superego

unconcscious mind

• Thoughts and perceptions live in the conscious mind

• Preconscious mind - memories and stored knowledge.

• Unconscious mind - are prejudices, trauma, fears, selfishness, instincts and violence.

  • This is what truly influences our decisions and actions as humans

• Freudian slip - Repressed urges, memories or drives that emerge through dreams or ‘slips of the tongue’ – called parapraxes

• Unconscious mind - driving force behind behaviour as it holds our trauma, motivation and instincts

• Protects consciousness - defence mechanisms

dreams?

• Freud believed that dreams were very individual and that every dream was symbolic, no matter how small/nonsensical

  • He invited the clients to tell him whatever came to mind that was relevant to the dream, without suppressing or hiding any thoughts (this is known as free association)

  • Through this he discovered that dreams are the disguised fulfilments of repressed infantile wishes.

  • Dreams are roads to the unconscious mind

  • Dreams are wish-fulfilments – we create an ideal or better world that we cannot have, wishes stem from prohibition

  • Dreams should not be taken at face value as there is manifest content (what we remember) and latent content (the thoughts/wishes behind it) which is exposed via free association

  • Censorship comes from internal prohibitions of wishes (inappropriate desires/unwanted thoughts) – wishes are disguised in dreams as the mind wants to hide them

• Dream work turns the latent into the manifest content – we must follow this backwards to find the cause of a dream

  • Condensation – number of elements/thoughts/wishes are combined into one dream, often makes it nonsensical or hard to follow

  • Displacement – emotions associated with one situation is detached from that and attached to a different situation

  • Secondary revision – narrative coherence in dreams is created as conscious thought is added to dream material

  • Considerations of representation – abstract dreams constructed into pictorial and concrete language

tripartite personality

• Freud saw the human psyche (personality) as possessing three parts: the Id, Ego and Superego.

• Behaviour is the result of a compromise between three parts of the psyche (personality).

  • ID and Superego are two extremes whilst Ego tries to create a compromise - this governs how we act as humans and influences our behaviour

• ID – present from birth, includes instinctive and primitive behaviour that is unconscious, driven by pleasure principle which strives for immediate gratification – lack of this can lead to stress and anxiety.

  • Important in early life to ensure that a child is fed/receives the care they need.

  • Babies work solely on this which is the reason for their lack of understanding of compromise.

• Ego – responsible for reality, ensures that impulses are expressed in acceptable ways, works in unconscious, conscious and preconscious mind and is based off reality principle which strives to achieve satisfaction of ID in a socially correct manner.

  • Develops at age 2

  • Delayed gratification and weighing up costs vs benefits is how this works

  • Uses defence mechanisms to help

• Superego – internalised moral standards and ideal behaviour, emerges at age 5, suppresses unacceptable urges and tries to push idealistic behaviour on the body, present in all minds

  • Morality principle - moral standards of same-sex parent and punishes Ego and Id for wrongdoing

  • Identification with same-sex parent during the phallic stage of psychosexual development leads to internalisation of moral standards - part of the resolution of Electra/Oedipus complex

defence mechanisms

• Ego balances potential conflict between ID and superego and tries to reduce anxiety

  • Ego redirects psychic energy using 'defence mechanisms' - meant to be a quick solution to temporary threats or trauma

  • Long-term, they are unhealthy and undesirable

• Repression - burying an unpleasant thought or desire in the unconscious

• Displacement - emotions are directed away from their source or target, towards other things (neutral objects/people)

• Denial - threatening thought is ignored or treated as if it were untrue (wife might find out that their husband is cheating but explain it away)

• Rationalisation - attempt to find logical explanations/reasons for one's behaviour even when this is not applicable

psychosexual stages

• Psychological development takes place in a series of fixed stages. For healthy adult development, individuals need to be able to leave one stage and move on to the next.

  • Fixation occurs when a stage is not completed or passed through successfully. The individual who is fixated will behave in a way that is characteristic of early childhood.

• Freud believed that children were born with an innate drive to seek bodily pleasure (libido)

• Libido focuses on different aspects of development in different stages of life

• Freud does not believe in free will so the psychodynamic approach is deterministic – cause = effect and so the conflicts or fixation causes later problems, quite predictable patterns

Oral (0-1 year)	Mouth	Primary source of interaction – mouth so rooting and sucking reflex is important Mouth is vital for eating and infant derives pleasure from this stimulation Infant is entirely dependent on caretakers and child develops trust and comfort Primary conflict – weaning process, lack of feeding, overfeeding – child must be less dependent	Dependency or aggression Drinking, eating, smoking, nail biting
Anal (1-3 years)	Anus	Primary focus on controlling bladder and bowel movements Conflict is toilet training as the child must learn to control the bodily needs – developing control leads to accomplishment and independence Parental approach is crucial – parents must utilize praise and rewards at appropriate times to encourage positive outcomes Inappropriate parental responses such as punishing, ridicule and shaming causes negative outcomes	Positive toilet training – competent, productive, creative Leniency – anal-expulsive personality makes messy, wasteful, destructive Strict and rigid regime – anal-retentive personality makes stringent, orderly, rigid and obsessive
Phallic (3-6 years)	Genitals	Children begin to discover difference between males and females Freud believes that boys view fathers as rivals for mother’s affections – Oedipus complex Boys want to possess mothers and desire to replace the father, and so children fear that they will be punished by father – castration anxiety Electra complex – like other complex but for young girls, girls (and boys) experience penis envy The way to overcome complex is to internalise feelings and begin to identify with rival parent	Penis envy is never fully resolved (potentially womb envy is a thing in men)
Latency (6-puberty)	//	Superego develops and children develop social skills, values, relationships Children enter school and are more concerned with peer relationships, hobbies Sexual energy is expressed through exploration and development of other skills	Immaturity, inability to form long-standing meaningful relationships with others
Genital (puberty+)	Focus on other sex	Interest in welfare of others develops Establishes balance between various life areas Ego and superego are fully formed now Sexual desire is conscious	Individual is well-balanced, warm and caring

little Hans

• Little Hans supposedly exhibited symptoms of the Oedipus Complex

• He had a phobia of horses (after seeing one collapse and die on the street)

• Freud said his phobia was due to a fear of his father as horses represented him due to their large penises

• Hans had fantasies that he had children with his mother, that he had been given a bigger penis and allegedly had a fear of castration

psychoanalysis

• The analyst gathers information from the things the person says or does in therapy (including free association and dream descriptions).

• The material is examined to identify repeating ideas and themes which might reflect unconscious motives and memories.

• The researcher must interpret the material by discovering how it is symbolic of issues in the subject’s unconscious.

• Although much psychodynamic research uses patients in analysis, almost anything people do or produce is capable of being analysed in symbolic terms, so some researchers examine, for example, works of literature, paintings or even advertisements in terms of their unconscious symbolism.

 

• Psychotherapy was introduced as a result of psychoanalysis

• Freud would bring unconscious thoughts and repressed emotions to the forefront of the mind to be dealt with - this is like modern day counselling so psychoanalysis had a valuable influence on approach to mental treatment

• More serious mental disorders are hindered by psychoanalysis as people with those disorders do not have a real sense of reality and cannot articulate thoughts

strengths of approach

• Highlights the importance of childhood can be helpful in terms of parenting advice and top tips to help children as they develop. Additional evidence that this is an important time of development from other approaches in psychology.

• Psychoanalysis is effective as a form of therapy as it allows the client to experience free association – therefore going into as much detail as they want based on their thoughts, emotions, dreams etc. Additionally, the analyst is mainly silent/allows the client to explore their own thoughts without leading the conversation.

• Highly influential set a precedent for modern talking therapies. Acknowledgement of the unconscious mind and its power.

• Has many practical applications therapy, criminal interrogations (maybe), parenting advice

• Recognises different between intentions and actions and recognises lack of rationality in behaviours

weaknesses of approach

• Deterministic means there is little ability to be individual and change. Gives little chance to challenge behaviours instilled in childhood (ex: fixation in psychosexual stages may not actually affect adulthood).

• Unfalsifiable not based on empirical evidence so difficult to test and identify if theories are true or not (provable or not). Hard to replicate case studies. Hard to test hypotheses.

  • Unscientific use of case studies, hard to generalise findings as it is so individual, not easy to operationalise

• Based on subjective interpretation qualitative data may be subjectively viewed as there is no definite things.

• Not observable so not objective - hard to replicate studies as well

• Psychoanalysis requires interpretation - skill that takes time to learn

  • Imbalance in case studies - female to male

  • Pessimism due to reliving traumas