Psychodynamic approach Essay Example for Free

Psychodynamic approach Essay P1 – Explain the principle psychological perspectives. M1 – Assess different psychological approaches to study. Sigmund Freud developed an approach which was the first psychological approach that elucidated behaviour. Freud discovered the psychoanalysis, which is a technique for curing mental illness and also a theory which explains human behaviour. Psychoanalysis is recognised as the talking cure. Normally, Freud would inspire his patients to talk freely (on his famous couch) concerning their symptoms and to explain precisely what was on their mind. He also states ‘The iceberg which has 3 levels known as the conscious mind, preconscious and unconscious mind. Freud compared himself to an archaeologist digging away layers of the human mind, and found three discrete parts of the mind. He was the earliest philosophers to get public awareness the concept that we are not conscious of all our features all the time. He proposed that what we are conscious of is represented on our conscious mind but that most of our memories, feelings and mind he named as ‘unconscious’. We don’t have access to the contents of our unconscious, but they occasionally ‘leak out’ in dreams and slips of the tongue. Freud’s first elucidated behaviour by his iceberg analogy. He suggested that the conscious mind was like the tip of an iceberg –merely a small part being accessible to consciousness. Part of the unconscious that we can easily access he named it the preconscious. This can be used in health and social care as health carers can identify what is happening in the client’s conscious mind and identify any faults there might be such as depression and schizophrenia and possibly phobias. Sigmund Freud proposed that we have inborn drives that stimulates our conducts in the form of the mind. These are known as the ego, superego and the id. The id occurs at birth and is the base of our unconscious inclination. It works on the gratification concept to get instant pleasure, so it prevents pain and therefore it is very egocentric. The id is the origin of a supernatural known as Libido. The superego  develops throughout the age of five years and entails principles and values. It is the child’s ego and moral sense which constructs the paragon of what the child wishes to be. Our ego is developed throughout our childhood and it enables the child to learn that getting instant gratification is not always feasible and that a lot of the time pain cannot be prevented The ego operates on the actuality principle because it decides what actions are most convenient and what to avoid from the id. It also tries to balance the requirements of the id and superego with the actualit y of life so we can do what normal individuals do by using the defence mechanisms. Depending on Sigmund our defence mechanisms are used in order to manage unconscious dispute amongst ego, superego and id. These disputes might be unconscious or conscious and the defence mechanisms work in an unconscious manner to wards of any disagreeable feelings and make things better for the person. There are four key defence systems that are used by the ego. An example is displacement. Displacement is when people’s emotional state towards the actual goal cannot be expressed and where accepting faults cause concern and worry that causes moods to be interchanged on to other objects. For instance an individual blaming their parents for their performance as of them not raising them properly instead of blaming their self. Denial is another ego defence mechanism that is where someone cannot accept a specific truth. Individuals might object to believe occurrence or acknowledge emotions as of worry and concern, thus specific awareness is not dealt with. For instance, someone who is unwell might reject to believe this. Repression†¯is another well-known defence mechanism. Repression acts to keep information out of†¯conscious†¯recognition. Though, these memories dont just vanish; they endure to impact our behaviour. For example, a person who has repressed memories of abuse suffered as a child might later have troubles making relationships. The final ego defence mechanism is regression. This is where people act out behaviours from the†¯stage of psychosexual development†¯in which they are fixated. For instance, someone fixated at an earlier developmental stage may cry or sulk as of hearing dissatisfying news upon. Behaviours related to regression can differ significantly depending  upon which stage the individual is fixated at. Someone fixated at the†¯oral stage†¯may start eating or smoking immoderately or may become verbally violent. A fixation at the†¯anal stage†¯might result in immoderate tidiness or messiness. Sigmund also developed the psychosexual stages of development. He supposed that character is chiefly started throughout the age of five years because early experiences play a great role in the development of character and endure to impact behaviour in the future. He believed that our character develop in stages in which pleasure-seeking drives of the id commence to focus on erogenous places. The driving power behind our performance was elucidated by psychosexual energy known as the libido. Through completing the stages successfully the person can develop a good character. Though, if the stages are not completed appropriately and specific matters at the stage are not sorted out. Then, it results in fixation. Fixation is where there is a continuous focus on an earlier psychosexual stage as of unsorted dispute. The person will continue to be stuck at this stage if the dispute is not resolved. There are five stages to the psychosexual that Freud suggested. The first stage is the oral stage, at this stage the child is 0-1 years of age and the chief source of libido is the mouth. Here the child will relish consuming food along with placing objects into their mouth. The essential impact at this stage is the mother because the child will link the mother and food with love. If they are neglected from food or are fed involuntarily then it may well cause matters in the future. If a child is weaning from liquid to solid foods they need to learn to be patient for food to be cooked instead of having food instantly. The second stage is the anal stage. At this stage the child is one to three years of age and the child will feel a sense of pleasure in the anus. The child will feel gratification from expelling or holding in excrement. The essential effect at this stage is being taught on how to use the toilet. The child will learn when and where they are intended to release excrement which will prevent fixation. Added to that, the child  would be capable to sway their parents by their bowel movements, because their parent’s devotion and approbation depends on whether or not they release excrement when they ask to be able to go to the toilet. Though, being too stern on the child being permitted to toilet training could possibly lead to fixation, also because the child might develop to become anal impetuous. The third stage is the phallic stage where the child is three to five years of age. The key source of libido here is the child’s penis or vagina and pleasure is obtained from masturbation. At this stage the child will encounter Electra complex and associate with their mother if they are female, whereas if the child is a male they will encounter Oedipus complex where he will associate with his father. Through being affected by this information positively, the superego is developed and they include the morals of the self-same sex parent along with association of gender and sex duties. If they do not associate with the self-same sex parent then they will become fixated at this level and this could possibly lead to homosexuality. The fourth stage is the latency period. At this period the child is six years of age. The latent period is a time of investigation in which the sexual drive is still present, but it is directed into other areas like intellectual pursuits and social interactions. They have reached puberty and the key source of gratification is playing with peers of both sexes. During this stage the child is active with playing with their peers that not much befalls in terms of sexuality. If fixation befalls here the child will not feel content with members of the incompatible sex because they grow up and will find it to build heterosexual relationships. This stage is essential in the development of social and communication skills and self-confidence. The final stage is the genital stage which arises from puberty and the key source of libido/gratification here is having sexual intercourse with others. At this stage the persons interests and feelings towards others benefit will develop and they try to create a balance among their discrete lifestyles. If fixation has arose throughout any other stage, it will become  obvious at this psychosexual stage. Though, a different concept was suggested by Erik Erikson which approved with Freud’s theory to a degree. This was Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development. He thought like Freud that everyone grows in stages, however these stages endure during our life and rather than having a greater focus on the lust for indulgence we must deem our need to be tolerated also. Erikson suggested eight psychosocial stages of development. Stage one is where the child is aged from zero to one years of age and the focal point is how the infant is raised. If they are raised in the right way, then they will form trust, but if the infant isn’t raised in the right way, then the infant will begin to not trust parents/guardians and their surroundings. Stage two is where the child is aged from one to three years of age and the focal point is being permitted to freedom. If this is done appropriately the child will develop some sort of autonomy. If they are continuously criticised the child will interrogate their own aptitude. Stage three is where the child is three to six years of age and begin to interact with the everyone. If the child is persuaded to endeavour different things and develop different skills and qualities, it will enable them to develop capabilities and self-assurance. However, if the child is continuously criticised and made culpable, then it will cause low confidence. Stage four is where the child is six to twelve years of age and focuses on the knowledge of how things operate. If the child begins to accomplish practical jobs they will form some kind of hard work however, if they are being pressured on specific tasks that they cannot accomplish will cause subservient and make them feel incapable. Stage five is where the person is twelve to eighteen years of age and the main focus at this stage is developing some sort of individuality by experimentation. Through being permitted to do the experiment, the child could then possibly develop a secure identity. However, not experimenting means they do not create a secure identity and causes misperception and negative identity. Stage six is where the person is aged eighteen to forty years of age and will focus on discovering new relationships to lead to long term commitments with each other. By creating these secure and committed relationships the sense of safety and be associated to devotion leads to a sense of love. Though,  through ignoring closeness and having phobia of commitment can cause the person to isolate them-selves and this little amount of love and could cause depression. Stage seven is where the person is aged forty to sixty five and the main focus is creating a career and having a family. Through having a career and giving back to society by parenting children and participating in community services, the person receives a sense of love and care. However, not getting participating with society could possibly cause a feeling of wasting life and being unfruitful. Stage eight is the final stage and here the person is over the age f sixty five. The person’s focal point at this stage is working less actively and intensely and think about their accomplishments during the course of their life. Through, performing this successfully, the person develops the merit of understanding that enables them to look back on their life with a feeling of accomplishment. This way the person is then able to can accept passing deprived of being afraid. Though, if the person has feelings of culpability about their life or has an insufficient achievement which will cause feelings of lead to feelings of desolation and frequently depression and as a result phobia of death. A benefit of the psychodynamic approach is that it is developed in stages. These stages make it easier to examine and give back up due to the fact that the stages are simple and easy to follow and acknowledge, therefore, making it easier to gather support for. On top of this, the stages developed by Erikson have more logic than Freud’s psychosexual stages because they make sense and are easy to acknowledge. This means that it can be easily implemented in health and social care practises. For instance in the counselling and treatment centre the health and social care workers are then able to use their insight of the eight stages of Erikson’s concept to detect why the person is feeling dejected has insufficient autonomy and tried to give most appropriate remedy. Though, some issues can be discovered with the psychodynamic approach. A problem is that the approach doesn’t use scientific methodology which means that it is based on opinions. This makes it hard to depend on the results because they are not a dependable source. This insufficient facts means the  approach is can be proven false. On top of this, a lot of the backing research originates from case studies. Though, these enable us to get in detailed information about one person. They might not be the most convenient when it comes to application to other people because the results can’t be generalised to the overall populace. A well-known case study that has been implement by Freud was the case of Little Hans, which was used as assistance for his psychodynamic approach. Little Hans had a fear of horses because he thought that they would hurt him or cause chaos. Little Han’s dad after being consulted by Freud, interpreted his fear through saying that the horses looked like his dad and that the phobia of being bitten signifies the fact that Little Hans was encountering the Oedipus complex and had a phobia of being castrated by his dad as of his feelings about his mum Little Han’s father and played a role his analyst and interpreted his sexual desires and associated these back to the Oedipus complex. Though, there are numerous factors to the Little Han’s case study that have been neglected. For instance, Little Han’s was more petrified of his mum because she threatened to cut off his penis because he was persistently fiddling with it. Also, after Freud spent some time with Little Han’s his parents split up. This means that Little Han’s phobia might be as of the reason that his parents ended their marriage and not be as of Oedipus complex. On top of this, his mum was also spiteful to her baby daughter, therefore it can possibly be that the ‘row’ he was scared of was the crying of his baby sister. Additionally, Freud analyse Little Han’s fear him-self. It was his dad who used Freud’s instructions in order to cure Little Han’s phobia. This means that, as his dad is not an expert analyst, he didn’t get the ideal remedy and the interpretations made might have possible been wrong, and so leading to inadequate remedies . This case study indicates that there are numerous different factors that Freud didn’t deem which could have been the motive of Little Han’s’ phobia. His phobia might have been better elucidated through operant conditioning. Little Han’s had witnessed a falling horse before, therefore, it might be that he related his fear at that instant with the falling horse and therefore develop the phobia.   However, Freud was capable to gather an adequate amount of data about Little Han’s which helped him in the explanation of his fear. However, his case studies are subject to partiality as most of his case studies focused on middle-class Victorian female, however some of his cases focused on males. This indicates that his results are sex bias and might not be relevant to the opposite sex. Also, his explanation are opinion based which means that they might vary to another psychoanalyst’s explanation. This could possible lead to issues to the welfare of the person who will not get remedies as of dissimilar information they are getting. Another problem with the psychodynamic approach is that the therapies people get entails time and dedication. This means that the client needs to be dedicated in the remedy in order for them to recover. Another therapy like medicine might possibly be quicker, however psychoanalysis has a more long term effect on the person. Where remedies can lead to deterioration, psychoanalysis will alter the client’s perception and lead to long term modifications. This is beneficial for the patient because at the therapy and counselling centre, they will be aware that the dedication and time will be useful, also will identify long term modification after some time.