SUMMARY OF PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH

• The psychodynamic approach attempts to understand behaviour in terms of the workings of the mind, with an emphasis on motivation and the role of past experience. The approach was pioneered by Sigmund Freud, who developed psychoanalytic theory.
• Psychoanalytic theory emphasis the importance of psychic determinism and innate drives, the role of the unconscious mind, and the continuity of normal and abnormal behaviour.
• In discussing the contents of the mind, Freud distinguished between the conscious mind and the subconscious (compromised of the preconscious and unconscious).
• Freud's theory of personality accounts for behaviour in terms of the dynamic relationships of the id, ego and superego.
• Freud described development in terms of five psychosexual stages distinguished by shifts in the underlying mode of gratification:oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. Each stage is marked by particular challenges and conflicts; of these, the Oedipal conflict (in the phallic stage) is probably the most significant in terms of later development.
• Psychoanalysis, by making the assumption of psychic determinism, views all behaviour as having meaning; consequently, Freud looked at everything from dreams to parapraxes (Freudian slips) to art as expression of the dynamics of the mind.
• Anxiety, which results from conflicts within the individual, is handled by the use of various defense mechanisms, such as displacement and repression, which reduce anxiety by distorting reality rather than resolving the conflict.
• While very comprehensive, Freud's theory has limitations (including problems of falsifiability), and even his lifetime competing theories were developed, including several by his former students.
• The best known of Freud's disciples are Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, who are considered neo-Freudian theorists; other psychodynamic theorists such as Karen Horney and Erik Erikson, are generally regarded as non-Freudian psychodynamic theorists.
• Carl Jung's theory expanded on the nature of the unsconsious, particularly by including a conception of a collective unconscious whose archetypes influence our interpretation of experiences. Jung rejected Freud's emphasis on sexual motivation, and instead emphasized the importance of individuation, the enhancing of awareness, as a motive for development.
• Alfred Adler was influential in the emphasis he gave to issue of esteem, and many of his terms, like inferiority complex and style of life, have become common usage.
• Psychodynamic theories provide a distinctive approach to the understanding of behaviour; the primary difficulty is finding an effective way to evaluate the various theories within the approach.