Psychodynamic Perspective

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Psychodynamic Perspective

• Sigmund Freud
• Main Point
• Id, Ego, Superego
• Personality Development

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Psychodynamic Perspective

• What is at stake in all these attacks?...The real
  object of attackfor which Freud is only a
  stalking-horseis the very idea that humans have
  unconscious motivation. A battle may be fought
  over Freud, but the war is over our cultures
  image of the human soul. Are we to see humans as
  having depthas complex psychological organisms
  who generate layers of meaning which lie beneath
  the surface of their own understanding? Or are we
  to take ourselves as transparent to ourselves?
• Jonathan Lear, Open Minded
• The principal Freudian concept on which
  everything turns holds that mental illness is a
  result of defense against anxiety.
• Peter Madison

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Psychodynamic Perspective

• In one of his Introductory Lectures, Freud told
  the following story
• I was once a guest of a young married couple and
  heard the young woman laughingly describe her
  latest experience. The day after her return from
  her honeymoon she had gone shopping with her
  unmarried younger sister while her husband went
  to his business. Suddenly she noticed a
  gentleman on the other side of the street, and
  nudging her sister had cried Look, there goes
  Herr L. She had forgotten that this gentleman
  had been her husband for some weeks. I shuddered
  as I heard the story, but I did not dare to draw
  the inference. The little incident only occurred
  to my mind some years later when the marriage had
  come to a most unhappy end.

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Psychodynamic Perspective

• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
• Father of Psychoanalytic Theory
• Psychodynamic Theory focuses
• on the inner person
• Defined
• Much of behavior is motivated by inner forces,
• memories, and conflicts of which a person
• has little awareness or control.
• They stem from ones childhood
• and influence behavior throughout
• the lifespan.

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Main Point

• Unconscious forces act to determine both
• Personality Behavior
• Part of everyones personality.
• We are unaware of it.
• Though it strongly influences our behavior.

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The all Powerful Unconscious

• Conscious
• Preconscious
• Unconscious

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Two Powerful Forces

• Genetic Dead End?
• Thanatos Libido
• Death Drive Sexual Instinct
• Life Instinct

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ID

• Raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality
• Primitive desires of hunger, sex, and aggression
• Pleasure Principle
• Satisfaction is the
• ultimate goal

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MINE!!!
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EGO

• Rational and reasonable
• Reality Principle
• Instinctual energy (ID) is restrained
• in order to maintain the safety of the
• individual and keep him/her within
• societies norms

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SUPEREGO

• Right and wrong
• Develops at age 5 or 6
• Learned from others
• Moral Ideals and Conscience
• Guides us toward socially acceptable behavior
  through the use of guilt and anxiety
• The cost of advanced civilization is the sense of
  guilt.
• Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its
  Discontents

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Scenario

• Child in grocery store check-out lane
• To take the candy or not to take the candy, that
  is the question!

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Personality Development

• Key Features
• Consists of stages
• Focused on particular biological functions
• If children are unable to gratify themselves
  sufficiently during a particular stage or receive
  too much of it
• Fixation will occur

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Stages of Development

• Oral Anal Phallic
• (Birth to 12-18 months) (12-18 m to 3 years)
  (3 to 5-6 years)
• Latency Genital
• (5-6 years to adolescence) (Adolescence to
  adulthood)
• It is astonishing that the human race could have
  for so long clung to the belief that children
  were asexual beings. Sigmund Freud, Introductory
  Lectures