Psychodynamic Approach Essay

There are four main assumptions, or focuses of the psychodynamic approach; the role of the unconscious, The structure of personality, psychosexual stages and defence mechanisms. Freud suggests that most of our mind is made up of the unconscious. This is part of our mind that we cannot access, and contains biological drives and desires. The unconscious is responsible for most of our behaviour and personality. The unconscious can also contain distressing memories that could have been repressed earlier on in life. We also have our pre-conscious, which we cannot access until later on in life, such as after puberty. Our personality is split into three main parts. Firstly, there is the id. The id is a primitive part of our personality, it is quite selfish and focuses on what it wants. The id is present from birth, and is the first part of personality to be developed. The second part is the superego, which is the opposite of the id. It is your morality, and sense of right and wrong and is often

This means that, even though it can be weird and quite contradictory at times, it is one of the main approaches in psychology, along with behaviourism. It has been used to explain many things in psychology such as relations with childhood and later habits. However, it has been criticised for only using the case-study method as evidence/research for this theory. Freud used his patients and applied his theories to his cases such as the famous Little Hans case study to prove the Oedipus complex. Only using case studies is bad because it cannot be generalised to everyone, just those certain psychologically abnormal people. Some psychologists, such as Karl Popper, have also criticised the psychodynamic approach in psychology because it cannot be scientifically tested. The theory relies on the unconscious mind, and as we cannot access this part of our mind it is an untestable concept, meaning that it cannot be proved or