Psychodynamic Theories Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis

Psychodynamic Theories

Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalysis

1. The origins of Freud's ideas

? Early neurological practice

? Work with Dr. Joseph Breuer's patient, "Anna O," who suffered from hysteria (i.e., physical symptoms without organic cause)

2. Beginnings of Psychoanalytic therapy and theory

? from patients like Anna, concluded that neurotic symptoms related to previous, traumatic experiences

? to treat patients, developed method of free association = "telling everything"

? symptom removal requires catharsis: both - recall traumatic event AND - express associated emotion

? resistance to attempts to remember events taken as evidence of repression

? developed a theory of personality to account for the behavior observed in patients

3. Fundamental assumption

Psychoanalysis is a dynamic (motivational) conception "which traces mental life back to an interplay between forces that favour or inhibit each other (Freud, 1910)"

? behavior is the product of "opposing mental forces"

- impulse expression vs. inhibition

? Freud has a spatial or mechanical conception of the personality structure in which mental forces interact ...

4. Personality dynamics (motivation)

- instinctual impulses or drives provide the energy to run the personality system

- "life instincts" to preserve person & species - e.g., hunger, thirst, sex; - libido = sexual energy

- "death instinct" after WW I

Postulated that primary source of sexual pleasure shifts with development, creating 5 psychosexual stages: - oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital

Over- or under-gratification at a stage causes fixation & affects adult personality

5. Structure of personality

a. Spatial theory (pre-1920s)

- conscious, preconscious and unconscious systems

- repression: "keeping something out of consciousness" by censor

Figure 6.1

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download