Sigmund Freud And Erikson's Psychodynamic Approach

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Recommended: Evaluate the psychodynamic approach

The psychodynamic approach is a psychological perspective developed by Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson. Sigmund Freud was a specialist who specialised in disorders of the central nervous system. He believed that some types of phobias resulted due to past traumatic experiences. Freud helped patients with traumas to talk about their experience from which he observed how these traumatic experiences lead to the patient becoming conscious. He stated that encouraging the patient to talk about their traumatic experience gave the patient a chance to get rid of the causes of their neurotic symptoms.
In addition to this, he also introduced the role of the unconscious mind. The iceberg analogy is used to explain his theory of human consciousness. At the surface of the iceberg is the conscious mind, where the thoughts and experiences that we are aware of are. For example, when we are thirsty, we instantly get a glass of water or juice. Below the conscious mind is the preconscious mind where our thoughts and experiences that we are not aware of are. For example, you may not be thinking about your mobile number, home phone number or your home address but when you mention it, you end up reminding yourself of what your mobile number is, what your home number is or what your …show more content…

These stages were oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital. He observed that during the oral stage, between the time at which the child is born and the age of 1 years, children use their mouth a lot to suck, chew, swallow and bite. He also found out that if the children at this stage have developed healthily then they will have trust in other people and will want to eat and drink. This stage could affect the child’s adult personality depending on how much the child weans. If they wean too much then the child becomes optimistic whereas if the child does not be weaned enough then they become

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