Psychodynamic Approach

• The unconscious mind has an important influence on behaviour.
• Our personality is structured in 3 parts - interaction between the 3 determines our behaviour.
• There are 5 psychosexual stages that determine adult personality - the sequence of which is fixed.
• The Oedipus and Electra complex are important psychosexual conflicts occuring in the phallic stage.
• Defence mechanisms are used by the ego to reduce anxiety.

• Conscious mind - what we are aware of.
• Pre-conscious mind - thoughts we may become aware of through dreams and 'slips of the tongue'.
• Unconscious mind - a large store of biological drives and instincts that influence behaviour.

• Id - part of the personality that operates of the pleasure principle, demands instant graftification.
• Ego - works on the reality principle and is the mediator between the id and superego.
• Superego - based on the morality principle, punishes the ego through guilt.

• Oral (0-1 years) - pleasure focus is the mouth, mother's breast is object of desire.
• Anal (1-3 years) - pleasure focus is the anus, child gains pleasure from withholding and eliminating faeces.
• Phallic (3-5 years) - pleasure focus is the genital area.
• Latency (5-puberty) - earlier conflicts are repressed.
• Genital (puberty) - sexual desires become conscious.

• In the phallic stage, boys develop incestuous feelings for their mother and a hatred for their father.
• Later boys repress their feelungs for their mother and identify with their father, taking on his gender roles and moral values.
• Girls of the same age experience penis envy (Electra complex).

Unconscious strategies used by the ego.

• Repression - forcing a distressing memory out of the conscious mind.
• Denial - refusing to acknowledge reality.
• Displacement - transferring feelings from their true source onto a substitute target.

• Real-life application.
  E.g. Psychoanalysis therapy accesses the unconscious mind using techniques such as hypnosis and dream analysis, suitable for mild neuroses patients.
  This is the forerunner of many modern-day psychotherapies and talking cures that have been established.

• Case study the theory is based on is criticised.
  E.g. the study of Little Hans is based on one child of which Freud only met a few times.
  The findings of the case study cannot be applied to all children.
• Includes a lot of untestable concepts.
  E.g. concepts such as the id and Oedipus complex occur at an unconscious level and can therefore not be tested.
  The approach is unscientific as there is no proof of the assumptions.
• It is deterministic.
  E.g. Everything that you do in your lifetime is based off of past experiences, including slips of the tongue.
  Suggests free will has no influence on behaviour.