Psychodynamic Perspective

Psychodynamic Perspective

1. Psychosexual Stages (Freud)

   • Anal Stage (15 months - 3yrs)
     • Pleasure gained from ability to retain and expell faeces (in turn controlling parents)
   • Oral Stage (0-15 months)
     • Pleasure is focused on the mouth - chewing objects
   • Phallic Stage (3-5yrs)
     • Pleasure from genitals/indentification with same-sex parent/ Oedipus/Electra Complex
       • Oedipus Complex - boy child is sexually attracted to mother
       • Sexual identification is established
   • Latency Stage (5yrs - puberty)
     • Sexual drives are repressed - child prefers same-sex friends
   • Genital Stage (puberty onwards)
     • Pleasure from genitals stimulated through mature sexual relationships

2. Defence Mechanisms

   • Regression
     • When faced with anxieties/ stressful event, person will revert back to methods of comfort used as a child e.g. sucking thumb
       • Individual fixated on oral stage in past = potential chain smoker/verbally agressive
       • Individual fixated on anal stage in past = excessive timidness/ messiness/ very tidy
   • Repression
     • The blocking of unacceptable feelings/ memories from consciousness, which are then expressed in dreams/neurotic behaviour - e.g. Little Hans repressed his anxieties about his mother, father and sister, but his fears attached to a phobia of horses

3. Evidence

   • Little Hans
     • Giraffe dream
       • Showed Hans's sexual desire for his mother (Oedipus Complex)
     • Phobia of horses
       • ...Caused by a displaced fear of his father
   • Thigpen and Cleckley
     • Concluded that Eve's multiple personality disorder was caused by inner conflicts and early childhood experiences

4. 3 parts of Personality

   • ID
     • Our animalistic desires - sexual and violent drives
   • Ego
     • Maintains a balance between ID and super ego
   • Super ego
     • Counteracts ego - our morals and ethics taught to us by our parents - develops as we socialise

5. 3 parts of the mind

   • Conscious
     • Everyday thoughts
   • Unconscious
     • Thoughts that are more difficult to bring into the conscious mind e.g. childhood memories
   • Subconscious
     • Part of our mind we are not aware of/ the unresolved conflicts that determine our behaviour - e.g. deep fears expressed in phobias; repressed and traumatic childhood memories expressed in dreams

6. All behaviours can be explained in terms of the inner conflicts of the mind

7. Strengths

   • Explains a wide variety of phenomenon
   • Freud invented therapies for healing mental disorders e.g. hypnosis

8. Weaknesses

   • Highly subjective - hard to test ideas scientifically
   • Most evidence based on findings from case studies - hard to generalise