The superego is our moral authority this developed through identification of our parent’s moral rules and the social norms of society If the ego fails to balance the id and the superego this can lead to conflict and may result in a psychological disorder. If the id is not balanced by the ego and it becomes dominate this can lead to destructive tendencies and adverse pleasurable behaviour. However, if the superego becomes dominate an individual may be unable to experience any form of pleasurable gratification. This leads on to Defence mechanisms which convert unconscious impulses into more acceptable forms. For example, with displacement an impulse may be redirected away from its original target onto a more acceptable one (e.g.
The psychodynamic perspective says that our behaviors and feelings as adults are deeply rooted from our childhood experiences. According to this view, our personality is made up of three parts: the id, ego, and super-ego. Also, behaviors are motivated by two instinctual drives: Euros and Thanatos (McLeod). The id, ego, and superego are proposed by Freud as “stages which play an important role in how we interact with the world”(Heffner). The id, being the first stage, is more concerned with having basic needs met.
“Evaluate the extent to which Freud’s theory of Psychosexual Development can help us to understand a client’s presenting issue?” In this essay I am asked to evaluate one aspect of Freudian theory. I will begin by first describing Freud’s psychosexual theory and demonstrate an understanding of its relationship to adult neurotic behaviour. Having done this I will examine some of the criticisms that have been levelled at Freudian theory in order to evaluate it. In 1905 Freud published ‘Three Essays on the theory of Sexuality and other Works’, one of those essays was titled ‘Infantile Sexuality’. In this essay Freud sets out his theory of psychosexual development.
There are different theories established by psychologists, which explain where personality originates. The highly important individual who played a role in the psychoanalysis theory was Sigmund Freud. Freud believed an individual’s personality was influenced by the unconscious, which there is no way to control. He based understanding of personality on analysis of patient’s dreams as well as his own dreams. Adler theorized that personality was motivated by the influence of society and fighting for triumph.
The psychodynamic approach evolved from psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud, who considered that people’s behaviours are influenced by their motives or dynamics. Psychodynamics has three distinctive features or assumptions. That the difficulty a client is having has an origin in their childhood. Secondly, the client is not consciously aware of these affecting their motives and impulses, and lastly that it uses the interpretation of the transference relationship between client and councillor (McLeod, p.91). This essay will now consider these features in more depth.
It is the product of an unconscious mind being driven by its most basic desires and emotions in coaction with our traits determined by our early childhood experiences. The other main assumption of the Psychodynamic approach is that our personality is made up of three conflicting elements – The Id, the Ego, and the Superego. These three elements make up the “structure of personality”, as Freud explained it. He states that the Id exists in the unconscious mind and is concerned with instant gratification as it is controlled be instinctual forces. This element is innate – it is present from birth.
With this information, Bowlby realized that the current explanation from Freud that infants love their mother because of oral gratification was wrong. His new theory stated that infants are social from a very young age, 6 months to less than two years old. The infants become focused on a particular individual or a few individuals. Bowlby proposed that “patterns of relating acquired in the early parent-child relationship are internalized and form the basis for how an individual enters and subsequently maintains other close relationships” (Bretherton). Bowlby's aim was to discover the consequences of difficulties in forming attachments in childhood, and the effects this would have on an infant's later development.
Sigmund Freud adapted this theory applying it to the human psyche. Freud and his followers Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Otto Rank, Melanie Klein, Anna Freud et al developed Psychodynamic therapies into what they are today, focussing on revealing and resolving unconscious conflicts formed in early life, driving symptoms causing dissonance. Based on the assumption everyone has a conscious and an unconscious mind, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) developed a series of ideas about human psychological functioning. The conscious mind includes everything we are aware of, our mental processing and all we think and talk about rationally. Freud’s First Model Freud’s first model of mind structure The Topographical Model was driven from results gained from his patients having no recollection of trauma under hypnosis.
Behaviorists are also called “learning theorists” because they believe that all behavior is learned, step by step. Learning theorists focus on conditioning which is when children learn to observe others. Psychoanalytic perspectives have to do with Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson. Psychoanalytic theory are based on inner drives and motives that originated from Freud. Freud came up with five stages for children that are psychosexual, including the oral stage, anal stage, phallic stage, latency, and genital stage, and the genital stage which lasts throughout adulthood.
“Evaluate the extent to which Freud’s theory of psychosexual development can help us to understand a client’s presenting issue?” I commence my essay by describing Freud’s psychosexual theory. I will then continue to demonstrate my understanding of its relationship to adult neurotic behaviour and what it means to me. I will end my essay by discussing the ethical implications this may have in today’s world. Freud early theories place a strong emphasis on the role of sexual energy and drive in the development and structure of the personality, in particular, the first five years of a child’s life. Freud divided the infant’s development into stages relating to the relative importance of zonal regions of the body, which ere relevant to the infant at a particular point in time.