Psychological Perspectives: Abnormal Psychology

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This assignment is going to outline four approaches to psychology. The approaches are: psychodynamic, biological, cognitive and behavioural approaches. Psychodynamic approach studies unconscious activities in the mind to elaborate on human thoughts, feelings and behaviour (Bernistein, 2013). Freud was able to treat clients by making them recall negative aspects of their past through psychoanalytic techniques such as free association, dream interpretation and transference (Wollheim, 2008). According to Sigmund Freud who founded the approach, human personality and behaviour work at three levels of awareness in the mind; what we are thinking of now (conscious), thoughts, memories we can recall (preconscious) and inaccessible desires, thoughts which can be brought into the conscious mind by psychoanalytic techniques (Erickson and Murphy, 2008). He also inferred that the adult personality is made of three parts: Id, ego and superego (Gross, 2010). Present at birth and located in the unconscious, the id operates on the pleasure principle and seeks instant gratification without considering the consequences of actions in satisfying these instincts (Plotnik and Kouyoumdjian, 2007). The id contains two biological drives that are the base of all mental energy: eros powered by psychic energy known as libido, and thanators which harbours aggression which is directed at anything that prevents gratification of the eros, according to Freud (Leeming Madden and Marlan, 2009). The ego determines which desires of the id should be satisfied at the right time. The ego abides by the reality principle (Coon and Mitterer, 2013). The ego uses defence mechanisms such as repression to subdue urges of libido from id which causes anxiety and depression (Weber,... ... middle of paper ... ...J. and Tomlinson, P. (1997) Piaget, Vygotsky and beyond. London: Routledge. Stephenson, W. (1953) The study of behavior. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Tauber, A., (2010) Freud, the Reluctant Philosopher. New Jersey:Princeton Univeristy Press. Tulving, E. and Craik, F. (2000) The Oxford handbook of memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Horn, J., Irimia, A., Torgerson, C., Chambers, M., Kikinis, R. and Toga, A. (2012) Mapping connectivity damage in the case of Phineas Gage. PloS one, 7 (5), e37454. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0037454. Weber, S. (2000) The legend of Freud. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wollheim, R. (2008) Freud: A Modern Master. 2nd edt. London:Fontana Press. Hill, G. (2001) AS Level Psychology through Diagrams. Oxford:Oxford University Press. Zuckerman, M. (2005) Psychobiology of Personality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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