The Psychodynamic Approach

The Psychodynamic Approach

Henry is a man who often finds it difficult to distinguish between

reality and fantasy. For example, he believes that he is better than

anyone else at the job he does, and that rapid promotion will

inevitably follow when other people realise it too. However, few of

his colleagues believe this and they feel that Henry is not really

facing up to the realities of his everyday life. How might this be

explained?

(a) Describe how two approaches might try to explain Henry’s

difficulty in distinguishing reality from fantasy. (6

marks + 6 marks)

The psychodynamic approach states that unconscious urges are revealed

in symbolic form. Thus, the unconscious mind ‘leaks’ into

consciousness by means of irrational behaviour, in Henry’s case he

unconsciously desires a promotion, but because he consciously knows he

may not get one, or others work at a higher standard and may be

receiving one before himself he behaves irrationally. The irrational

behaviour comes in the form of his illogical confident thoughts that

everyone isn’t as good as him at his job and he thinks that it is due

to other people’s foolishness that he has not yet been promoted,

therefore, not placing any of the blame upon himself.

Another explanation offered by the psychodynamic approach comes from

Freud’s ideas on the structure of the personality, which is made

through the development of the id, ego and super ego. The id is part

of the unconscious and is the most primitive drive, which demands

immediate satisfaction and is governed by the pleasure principle. The

ego regulates the id, as it is part of the conscious and intellec...

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... none of his behaviour reflects

a current social factor, just his unconscious mind influencing his

fantasy driven life, whether that be in the terms of being ‘stuck’ in

the phallic stage or having an underdeveloped ego and super ego

leaving his unconscious uncontrolled id to run riot. However, this may

be a little to simplistic and unable to account for many other things

throughout life which shape and build personality. Henry’s fantasy

thought processes may be driven by an adult experience not just early

childhood experience, i.e. if an adult has a scary experience with a

spider like it crawling upon their bed they may develop an irrational

fear of spiders even when no such event was experienced in childhood

and so this fear can’t be linked to any childhood experience, and so

this theory fails to offer an explanation.