This essay will also look at the role of women and homosexuality and discuss whether Freud’s views where based on a cultural prejudice when he devised the psychosexual theory. Freud’s theory of psychosexual development. Freud’s theory of psychosexual development was devised in the late 19th century and was tested and researched on middle class, Viennese women. Freud believed that in order to understand a client’s presenting issue then we would need to look into their childhood to establish why the client was suffering neuroses. Freud believed that it was possible to link the psychosexual stages of development with adult neuroses.
Outline and evaluate the psychodynamic approach to abnormality The psychodynamic approach assumes that experiences in our earliest years can affect our emotions, attitudes and behaviour in later years without us being aware that it is happening. Freud suggested the mind or psyche has three parts: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. Freud suggested that individuals can never be aware of the contents of the unconscious. Freud argued that childhood experiences play a crucial part in adult development, including the development of adult personality. Every child must pass through the so-called psycho-sexual stages; how a child experiences these stages plays a crucial role in the development of his/her personality.
They may say they hear voices telling them what to do. Schizophrenia is one type of psychosis, it is a lack of insight, and they hallucinate, and have feelings of persecution. They may have suffered damage to their personalities as a child, which makes them powerless to control their impulses. They go with their need without thinking about if it’s right or wrong or the
Erikson introduced the idea of a psychosocial moratorium which is a temporary suspension of activity. During this time, adolescents try out different roles in order to decide which suits them best. This role sampling and resolution of role confusion leads to the establishment of the adult identity. The reason that it is so important to form an identity is that it enables the individual to cope well with the demands of life and to form adult relationships. If this crisis is not resolved then a lack of identity (or role confusion) results which can lead to four kinds of behaviour.
This resulted in Freud doing further research into psychosexual development and caused Freud to believe that personality develops through a series of childhood stages. This essay will look into the stages of Freud’s psychosexual development theory and how it relates to the development of personality and childhood experiences that his patients occurred. Freud’s theory stated that awareness is divided into three sections of consciousness, Conscious, Pre-Conscious and Unconscious. Freud’s view of the human psyche was displayed as an iceberg metaphor. The conscious is shown as the first 7th of the human psyche and is the awareness we have when we are awake.
It is the aim of this essay to explore Freuds’ argument for a psychodynamic perspective on development; establishing whether there is indeed evidence that child development can be linked to sexual urges, particularly an unconscious level. Freuds’ case study on child development, “Analysis of a phobia in a 5 year old boy”, more commonly known as “Little Hans” will be used as a resource to investigate Freuds’ conclusions, in particular in relation to phobias and their role in development, castration anxiety and the Oedipus Complex. By way of contrast and comparison, Lacans’ stance on the
According to Sigmund Freud our personality develops as a result of passing through various stages of development during childhood and adolescence. If we are able to complete successfully one stage we easily enter another, which is what Freud would call a healthy development. If on the other hand we encounter difficulties we get stuck in one of the stages and are not able to progress to the next developmental stage and this can last well into adulthood. Such person might develop mental health problems later in life and it was Freud’s belief that these can be traced to problems encountered in various psychosexual stages of development. While this can certainly be helpful to a therapist working with a client it cannot be taken for granted as there could be other explanations for the client experiencing problems which I would like to develop further.
Gentlemen, please begin.” Freud : “Hello and many thanks, I will begin with saying that the human personality is part of the unconscious mind & that is fueled by an underlying reservoir of feeling. Personality is developed through stages, and throughout life, beginning at infancy.” Piaget : “Agreed. I have been exploring the roots of our varying knowledge base, and found them to be intertwined deep within childhood. Personality develops and changes, just as a child’s perception changes transitioning into adulthood.” Freud : “Piaget, surely you have had a slip. My findings conclude that the same, unquestionable, repressed sexual desires can be observed from infancy through to adulthood.
During his research, Freud discovered the large effects that past experiences can have on personality development. He used this theory and its stages to prove how such experiences can affect one’s behavior later in life. If one of these stages is not completed successfully then the person will experience fixation; being fixed in that stage until successful completion. According to Freud, fixation can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. Beginning with the oral stage, it is commonly completed between a child’s birth until they are eighteen months old.
2. Branch of Neuropsychology Caramazza and Coltheart (2006) refer to cognitive neuropsychology as a deeply characteristic of cognitive neuropsychology that it studies symptoms rather than syndromes and carries out single case studies rather than group studies (p. 5). Based on Freud’s Psychodynamic theory George is experiencing an analogous split in the infant ego, with the loving parts of the self-identified as good and the aggressive and sadistic parts as bad. The need to split feelings, experiences, and relationships is anchored in the inability of the primitive infant ego to integrate diverse emotions which includes to totolerate ambivalence. Splitting allows the infant to keep contradictory feelings and impressions separate, so that it can hate safely and love safely, without its good and loving parts being destroyed by its bad and hating parts.