evaluation of the psychodynamic approach

• whilist the theory has some evidence that supoorts the general idea that anxiety can cause mental illness, the evidence is quite weak.
• It was based on research involving neurotic, repressed viennese victorian women. therefore the theory may:

    -only apply to women

    -only apply to viennese women

    -be out of date

explanation is reductionist as it ignores other factors such as the environment or genes, so at best it only gives a limited understanding of mental illness

the psychodynamic concepts of the id, ego and superego are abstract and therefore untestible. this means that we can't be sure that anxiety is caused by cinflicts between id and superego as they may not even exist