The psychodynamic approach 1

The psychodynamic approach 1

1. Assumptions

   • Influence of childhood experiences
     • psychosexual stages represent the fixation of the libido
     • Frustration and overindulgence
     • oral-0 to 18months, anal-18m to 3yrs, phallic- 3 to 5, latency 5 to puberty, genital- puberty onwards
   • The unconscious mind
     • unconscious
       • illogical and ruled by pleasure seeking
         • ego defence mechanisms
           • displacement
           • projection
           • repression
     • conscious
       • logical
     • preconscious
       • what we didnt know we were thinking
   • Tripartite personality
     • Id
       • pleasure principle, present at birth
     • Ego
       • rational, develops at 2, reality principle, solve conflict between id and superego
     • Superego
       • develops at 4, sense of right and wrong,parents
   • Relationship formation
     • over-indulgence results in overdependency
     • ego defences to avoid anxiety, remembering a bad past ecperience
     • maternal deprivaition hypothesis

2. Dream analysis

   • Main components
     • dreams as wish fulfilment of things that cant be satisfied in the conscious mind
     • latent content is transformed into manifest content through the process of dreamwork
     • therapist provides interpretations to reach catharsis
   • Effectiveness
     • solms,2000- rational part of the brain inactive during REM sleep, supports tripartite personality
     • sleep labororoties , question ecological validity
     • subjective information
   • ethical issues
     • power imbalance between therapist and client
     • false memory syndrome
       • Toon et al, 1996, therapists may induce false memories to make more money
     • emotional harm from a distressing memory

3. Bowlby,1944 - 44 juvenile thieves

   • Methodology
     • case studies, 44 children attending a guidance clinic in London
       • graded 1 to 4
     • control group who went the the clinic but didnt steal
     • mothers interviewed
   • procedures
     • opportunity sampling
     • inteligence test, interviewed by social worker,2 hrs
     • therapy over a period of 6 months
   • Findings
     • 6 personality types
     • 14 classified as affectionless, of them 12 had experienced frequent separations from the mother
   • Conclusions
     • wouldn;t have offended if their experiences hadn't been harmful to development
     • damage effects development of superego
     • avoid prelonged separation from mother
       • might be unavoidable due to death or social circumstances
   • evaluation
     • no confidentiality
       • report published 10 yrs later so lack of valid concent
     • Rutter et al,2010, children adopted later lagged behind a control group of UK children on physical, cognitive and social development
     • no causal findings
       • lots of qualitative data but only the view of one person
         • emotionaly disturbed , difficult to generalise to all children