Case Study Of Psychodynamic Theories Of Personality

Psychoanalysts focus on the unconscious mind as the sole problem of all things. It has to do with your Id, the part of ourselves that contains our unconscious desires and immoral thoughts, our ego, our reality, and lastly our super ego, our ideal moral self. The part of ourselves that encourages us to do the right thing is the super ego. (Psychodynamic Theories of Personality, 5). If something is found to be affecting you in a wrong way, then it has to do with the Id controlling you or it could deal with the stages of personality that Freud came up with. The stages are: oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital. (Psychodynamic Theories of Personality, 8) Our case is of a 14 year old freshman named Jodie. She has been feeling hopeless and depressed since her mother passed away. She has been experimenting with illegal drugs and alcohol. She used to have good grades and a good GPA, but now she is failing over half of her classes. She also is not communicating with anyone in her family. Jodie is the oldest child of three and has the responsibility of taking care of her two younger brothers. Unfortunately now she neglects them. She leaves them home alone to take care of themselves. She does not feed them or watch over them. She has

Sigmund Freud and the neo-freudians analyze the fear of helplessness in the unconscious mind. Jodie’s helplessness and depression are caused from grief of losing her mother from liver disease. Her Id and Superego are in conflict with each other which is causing Jodie to act lost. Jodie used to have good grades, however when her mother died her Id took over and caused her to behave reckless. In the Psychodynamic perspective, Freud stated that we are unaware of our true feelings because they lurk in our unconscious mind.(Perspectives, Slide 5). Psychologists would look back to Jodie’s childhood and see if she had any fixations in her stages of