Psychology And The Psychodynamic Approach By Sigmund Freud

The psychodynamic perspective focuses on the concept that the unconscious is what causes us to behave the way that we do. Sigmund Freud analyzed psychological problems and came to the conclusion that psychological disorders stemmed from problems that occurred in an individual’s past. Freud came up with the idea that the mind has three main structures that help define personality (Whitbourne & Halgin, 2013). One structure is what he labeled as the id; this is the structure of personality that contains an individual’s deepest desires, including the gratification of sexual and aggressive needs. Freud stated that the id followed something called the pleasure principle. The concept of the pleasure principle is that we want to instantly have something that fulfills the sensual needs of the individual. The drive for sexual and aggressive fulfillment is created by something Freud called the libido. The id is contrasted by the mental structure called the superego. The superego can be described as the conscience of an individual; this conscience is somewhat set by the standards of society, which helps to determine what you know is right and wrong. The balance between the two mental structures is what is known as the ego. The ego follows the reality principle, which means that rationality is the basis for goal achievement for an individual. The id follows the form of irrational primary process thinking, which is more instinctual, rather than the ego’s secondary process thinking, which uses more logical and analytical approaches to problem solving (Whitbourne & Halgin, 2013). Freud believed that a healthy individual had a balance between the id and the superego, which allowed the instinctual desires of the id to be accomplished through the ...

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... intimate partner violence, but there have been criticisms about the effectiveness of the treatments and the methods being used. The researchers in this study try to integrate aspects of psychodynamic psychotherapy with cognitive behavioral therapy in an attempt to create a more effective treatment for men with intimate partner violence, since therapy is the only known effective treatment for it. This integration of the two therapies resulted in a more positive outcome from therapy for men with intimate partner violence (Lawson et al., 2012). This approach is differentiated from the others because this perspective gives great emphasis to the role of the processes beneath the surface of awareness as the influences of abnormality, while other perspectives focus more on environmental, biological, and neurological components of abnormalities (Whitbourne & Halgin, 2013).