The psychodynamic approach: assumptions, application to the formation of relationships, the therapy of psychoanalysis, the classic study of Bowlby (1944), and evaluation.

What this dot point is asking

For the psychodynamic approach you must state its assumptions, apply it to the formation of relationships, describe its therapy (psychoanalysis), describe the classic study of Bowlby (1944) on juvenile thieves, and evaluate the approach. It is the most controversial of the five approaches, so the evaluation matters as much as the description.

Assumptions

The approach rests on these assumptions:

• The unconscious mind. Most of the mind is hidden from awareness and contains repressed memories and desires that still drive behaviour, including slips of the tongue and neurotic symptoms.
• The tripartite personality. The id (present at birth, the pleasure principle) demands instant gratification; the superego (the conscience, the morality principle) holds internalised rules; the ego (the reality principle) mediates between them using defence mechanisms such as repression, denial and displacement.
• Psychosexual stages. Development passes through the oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital stages. Fixation at a stage, through over- or under-gratification, leaves a mark on adult personality (for example an "anal retentive" tidy, controlling adult).
• Childhood determinism. Early experience, especially the first five years, largely determines the adult personality.

Application to the formation of relationships

The psychodynamic approach explains adult relationships as a replay of early experience. The relationship with the primary caregiver in infancy provides a template for later love: a secure, satisfying early bond produces an adult who can trust and form healthy relationships, while disruption produces difficulty in adult intimacy. Freud also argued that resolution of the phallic stage (the Oedipus and Electra complexes) shapes how we relate to the same and opposite sex, as the child identifies with the same-sex parent and internalises a model of partner choice. Unconscious drives and defence mechanisms continue to influence whom we choose and how we behave with them.

Therapy: psychoanalysis

The therapy is psychoanalysis, which aims to make the unconscious conscious so that repressed conflicts can be resolved. Techniques include free association (saying whatever comes to mind to bypass conscious control), dream analysis (interpreting the symbolic "latent content" beneath the "manifest content" of a dream), and analysis of transference (the patient redirecting feelings about a parent onto the therapist). Bringing repressed material into awareness is meant to release the energy tied up in defending against it.

Psychoanalysis can give insight and helped found modern talking therapies, but it is long, expensive, unsuitable for serious disorders such as schizophrenia, and its interpretations cannot be objectively checked.

Classic study: Bowlby (1944)

The study fits the approach because it links early experience to adult behaviour and uses the case-study/interview method characteristic of psychodynamic research. Its weaknesses are that the data were retrospective (relying on memory of early separations), the link is correlational, and Bowlby both diagnosed the children and gathered the data, risking researcher bias.

Evaluation

Examples in context

Example 1. Defence mechanisms. Someone angry at their boss who shouts at their partner instead is using displacement, redirecting a feeling onto a safer target, the ego managing id-superego conflict.

Example 2. A "Freudian slip". Calling a partner by an ex's name is, on this view, repressed material leaking out; it illustrates the unconscious but also the unfalsifiability problem, since any behaviour can be explained after the fact.

Try this

Q1. Name the three parts of the personality in the psychodynamic approach. [1 mark]

• Cue. The id, the ego and the superego.

Q2. Outline how psychoanalysis aims to treat psychological problems. [3 marks]

• Cue. Make the unconscious conscious using free association, dream analysis and transference so repressed conflicts can be resolved.

Q3. Explain one strength and one weakness of using Bowlby (1944) as evidence for the psychodynamic approach. [4 marks]

• Cue. Strength: links early experience to later behaviour using the case-study method. Weakness: retrospective, correlational data gathered and interpreted by the same researcher.