The Psychodynamic Approach

Sigmund Freud – psychiatrist, neurologist and key pioneer of the psychodynamic approach (including his psychoanalytic theory of personality) – theorised that our mental activity is mostly unconscious, and it is this unconscious activity that causes our behaviour. He explained that traumatic childhood experiences pushed into the unconscious mind can later lead to mental disorders, and developed ‘talking cures’ (psychoanalysis, or more generally termed psychotherapy) to help release problematic repressed memories and relieve symptoms.

Key assumptions of the Psychodynamic Approach

• Unconscious activity is the key determinate of how we behave.
• We possess innate ‘drives’ (or ‘instincts’) that ‘energize’ our minds to motivate behaviour as we develop through our lives.
• Our [three-part] personality – the psyche – is comprised of the ID, ego and superego.
• Childhood experiences have significant importance in determining our personality when we reach adulthood.

The Role of the Unconscious

The psyche, forming the structure of personality, has three parts:

• ID – driving us to satisfy selfish urges (i.e. acts according to the 'pleasure principle') (exists from birth).
• Ego - acts rationally, balancing the ID and the superego (i.e. acts according to the 'reality principle') (develops years 2-4).
• Superego – concerned with keeping to moral norms (i.e. acts according to the ‘morality principle’), and attempts to control a powerful ID with feelings of guilt (develops years 4-5).

Psychosexual Stages

Freud also thought that humans progress through 'psychosexual stages', during the development of the psyche. He named five stages, each with a particular characteristic behaviour:

• Oral – sucking behaviour (0-18 months)
• Anal – holding or discarding faeces (18 months – 3.5 years)
• Phallic – fixation on genitals (3.5 – 6 years)
• Latency – repressed sexual urges (6 years - puberty)
• Genital – awakened sexual urges (puberty onwards)

Freud claimed that, during development, becoming fixated on one of these stages would restrict full development result in displaying specific personality symptoms. An 'anally retentive' personality is one such symptom – he proposed that when conflict occurs over potty training, a person could become fixated on cleanliness and orderliness to an extreme.

Ego Defence Mechanisms

The ego balances potential conflict between the ID and superego, and tries to reduce anxiety. In areas of significant conflict, the ego can redirect psychic energy using 'defense mechanisms'. Three key mechanisms Freud proposed are:

• Repression – burying an unpleasant thought or desire in the unconscious (e.g. traumatic childhood experiences may be repressed and so forgotten).
• Displacement – emotions are directed away from their source or target, towards other things (e.g. wringing a dishcloth in anger, which would have otherwise been directed at the cat scratching the furniture).
• Denial – a threatening thought is ignored or treated as if it were not true (e.g. a wife might find evidence that her husband is cheating on her, but explain it away using other reasons).

Research methods used by the approach

Freud’s psychoanalytical theory was based on case studies, which gather large amounts of detailed information about individuals or small groups. These cases were of patients with which he used psychoanalysis (‘talking cures’), the aim of which to bring unconscious mental activity to the conscious to release anxiety. Techniques to do this include:

• Free association – expressing immediate [unconscious] thoughts, as they happen
• Dream interpretation – analysing the latent content (i.e. underlying meaning) of manifest content (i.e. what was remembered from the dream).

Current psychologists using the psychodynamic approach still utilize case study evidence (e.g. recording psychoanalytic interviews) to provide proof of their explanations.

Evaluation of the psychodynamic approach/methods

Strengths

• Freud highlighted a widely accepted link between childhood experience and adult characteristics.
• Case study methodology embraces our complex behaviour by gathering rich information, and on an individual basis – an idiographic approach – when conducting research.
• Some evidence supports the existence of ego defence mechanisms such as repression, e.g. adults can forget traumatic child sexual abuse (Williams, 1994).
• Modern day psychiatry still utilizes Freudian psychoanalytic techniques.

Weaknesses

• It could be argued that Freud's approach overemphasises childhood experience as the source of abnormality (although modern psychodynamic theories give more recognition to the adult problems of everyday life, such as the effects of negative interpersonal relationships).
• By using case studies to support theories, the approach does not use controlled experiments to collect empirical evidence, so is considered far less scientific than other approaches.
• Case study evidence is difficult to generalise to wider populations.
• Many of Freud's ideas are considered non-falsifiable – theories may appear to reflect evidence, but you cannot observe the relevant constructs directly (namely the unconscious mind) to test them scientifically, such that they could be proved wrong. Philosopher of science Karl Popper famously argued that a theory is not scientific if it is not falsifiable.