Psychodynamic Perspective (10-Oct-2002)

Psychodynamic == mental processes in conflict or change

• Founded by Sigmund Freud
• Freud became interested in patients who had psychosomatic disorders, i.e. phsyical complains caused by mental disfunction. Specifically, he tried to explain the phenomemon of hysteria, where a physical disorder (e.g. deafness) might not have an underlying physical cause.
• Studied with and was influenced by the Parisian neurologist Charcot, who argued that hysteria was a genuine illness, where the patient truly believed themselves ill; others suggested they were malingering.
• Charcot believed that susceptibility to hypnosis is a symptom of a hysterical personality; hysteria and hypnosis are essentially the same disease. He tried hypnosis as a means of curing hysteria
• Freud was interested in Charcot's work; tried hypnosis himself but gradually discarded the practice as he found that he could get patients to talk just by encouraging them to relax and say whatever came into their heads (free association). Also, hypnosis has disadvantages in that subjects can be very suggestible.
• In free association, it has been demonstrated that certain words evoke longer pauses than others do. Typically these are emotive such as "love". Freud would argue that this is the blocking effect of the unconscious.
• In 1900, Freud published "The Interpretation of Dreams" which suggested that dreams acted as a key to the unconscious mind. Freud argued that dreams represented the hallucinatory expression of unfulfilled wishes. Also that many of the objects in dreams were symbols for male or female genitals.
• In 1901 he came up with the theory that slips of the tongue were betraying unconscious desires - "Freudian slips" or parapraxes.
• Freud came up with the idea of how the mind was structure – "iceberg model". The conscious representing those thoughts and ideas that we are actually aware of; the pre-conscious being that which we can easily bring to mind, and the unconscious representing the much larger set of memories, desires and ideas that are too traumatic to cope with in every-day life.
• Every so often, something from the unconscious "bubbles up" into the conscious. As a Freudian slip
• Freud says that all behaviour is motivated by the unconscious, although we may not be aware of the motivation behind the behaviour, and may "make up" reasons for it, e.g. rationalisation, denial.
• Freud said we are born with instincts. The main one is libido, the life instinct, or sex drive. Later on he developed the idea of the death instinct, thanatos. Argued that because the urge was for an individual to satisfy his needs and not have any more needs, the ultimate end-product of that would be to go back to nothingness, nirvana.
• If instincts are in some way suppressed, the pressure builds up and gets released in some way that will satisfy them. If this is healthy, this is sublimation. Unhealthy, might be perversion.
• Freud's picture of the mind contains
  • the id, which represents the instincts and biological drives present in a new-born baby. The id wants immediate gratification and operates on the pleasure principal.
  • the ego is selfish, but pragmatic. It develops in the first couple of years of life. It operates on the reality principal; it defers gratification of needs until a suitable context is found. E.g. when something is socially acceptable
  • the superego develops between 2 and 7 years, and represents the "conscience": it gives you pride for a "virtuous" act, and shame or guilt for a "wicked" one.
  
  
• Freud thought all children go through a series of psycho-sexual stages, based on the different areas of its body that it derives pleasure from at different stages in its development:
  • oral stage occurs from birth to 2 years. Here, anything involving the mouth brings sexual pleasure. Too much or too little pleasure at this stage can manifest itself in adult behaviour in either: oral-passive : pleasure from sucking, swallowing, in adults can lead to thumb-sucking, smoking, or oral-aggressive : pleasure from biting, in adults can lead to tendencies such as nail biting, aggressive talking.
  • anal stage is from 2 to 4 years, and corresponds to toilet training. The child derives pleasure from holding or expelling faeces: for the first time, the child is in control of creating something by itself. In adult behaviour, we might see anal-rententive personalities, who are miserly, not open to new ideas, and excessively tidy, or anal-expulsives, who are generous, messy,
  • phallic stage is from 4 to 6 years, corresponds to the time when children start to focus on genital difference between sexes. Oedipus complex refers to a stage boys go through where they experience worry that their father is a threat to them because he has the mother's affection. Corresponding female version is Electra complex. Freud had problems working this out though, and famously stated that women were hard to understand.
  • Latency stage is from 6 to puberty. Here the superego is consolidated, and the child will experience infantile amnesia, forgetting the oral/anal/phallic stages (or at least those experiences move into the unconscious).
  • Genital stage is from puberty onwards. Here biological and social changes re-ignite unconscious feelings from earlier stages, but now the superego is developed, so won’t let them be expressed without control.
  
  
• Anna Freud and others developed psychoanalytic theory, notably in the classification of defence mechanisms which are processes that the conscious uses to mask unconscious desires, such as:
  • denial is when you refuse to acknowledge that a traumatic event has occurred
  • repression is when you accept that the event has happened, but don't think about it
  • displacement kicking the dog when you've had a bad day
  • reaction formation doing the opposite to an unacceptable impulse, e.g. someone who fears that they are homosexual may be very intolerant of homosexuals
  • projection is seeing something of your own unacceptable behaviour in others
  
  

References

1. Psychology: A New Introduction for A Level (2nd edition), Gross et al
2. Freud: A Very Short Introduction, Anthony Storr

1. George Boeree's Page on Freud

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Homework

Write a chart contrasting strengths and weaknesses of the psychodynamic approach.

With specific reference to Freud's theories, and without considering subsequent developments in the field of psychoanalysis:

"If you look at everything critically, there isn't much in psychoanalysis that will stand up. Yet it helped me. He was a genius."

The "Wolf Man"