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.
Sigmund Freud developed an approach on abnormality that highlighted how human personality and psychosexual development in childhood can cause abnormality. Freud proposed that the human personality is made up of three interacting elements: the id, the ego and the super ego. The id is our unconscious it releases natural pleasure seeking instincts and operates to satisfy these instincts through pleasurable activities. The ego represents our conscious self; it tries to balance the id with moral rules proposed by the superego. 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.
These schools of thought were divided into 3 main ‘schools of thought’. Psychoanalysis and is also known as the first force. This approach applies a more medical and psychiatric practice for those people who have mental/emotional issues. The idea was based on personality being inherited factors as well as conditioning from early childhood experiences. It was conceived and developed by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who taught other psychologists such as, Jung, Adler and Reich who then went onto develop psychotherapy in different directions.
“Evaluate the extent to which Freud’s theory of psychosexual development can help us to understand a client’s presenting issue?” Sigmund Freud’s most vital contribution to the study of psychology and human behaviour was his notion of the “dynamic unconscious”. This view was that the unconscious mind played a precisely important role in determining how an individual behaved. Freud put forward the principle of multiple determinations, which suggests that every psychic event is determined by the simultaneous action of several others. He saw the unconscious mind as the actual source of mental energy, which determined behaviour. He based his belief on the results of trials with hypnosis.
Psychoanalytical theories of personality stress the individual’s unconscious motivations which can be identified through dreams, slips of the tongue and fantasies (McCrae & Costa, 2003; 21). “The psychoanalytical theory views personality as biologically based, relatively unchangeable and determined by the need to control sexual and aggressive instincts which are unconscious in nature” (Rust & Golombok, 1989, 131). Sigmund Freud was the founder of the psychoanalytical approach to personality although many academics have expounded on his research since then (Bernstein, 2001; 125). This contrasts with the humanistic theory which was adopted by leading 20th Century psychologists Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow (Nicholas, 2008; 226). Robert Ewen suggests that
In evaluating the pros and cons of psychosexual theory and helps us to understand a client’s presenting issue, I will define and consider the relationship between the Id, Ego and Superego and the way in which these are in many ways representative of earlier experiences and of those early situations and conflicts we faced. I will examine some of the criticisms that have been leveled at the Freudian theory in order to evaluate it. I will discuss how his theory would help in therapy to ascertain what the problem was, as well giving my own views, whether it would be useful in practice and if it would be enough to go on to offer adequate therapy to a client. Freud created a new perspective on the study of human behaviour where he focused on the unconscious instinct and urges rather than the conscious. Freud suggested that human nature was focused mainly on desire rather than reason and that it was our past experiences that determined our future behaviour and the development of our personality.
This approach views personality as being primarily unconscious and as developing in stages. Psychodynamic theorists believe that behavior is merely a surface characteristic and that to truly understand someone’s personality we have to explore the symbolic meanings of behavior and the deep inner workings of the mind. These ideas were presented by the architect of psychoanalytic theory-Sigmund Freud. Most psychodynamic perspectives emphasize that early experiences with parents play an important role in sculpting the individual’s personality. Freud believed the personality had three structures - the id, the ego, and the super-ego.
Describe and Evaluate the Psychoanalytical / Psychodynamic Approach to Personality Development Psychoanalytic theory originated with the work of Sigmund Freud (Gross 2010). Through his clinical work with patients suffering from mental illness, Freud came to believe that childhood experiences and unconscious desires influenced behaviour. Based on his observations, Freud developed a theory that described development in terms of a series of psychosexual stages. According to Freud (1949), conflicts that occur during each of these stages can have a lifelong influence on personality and therefore behaviour (Hayes 2000). Within this essay I am going to delve further into these principles and evaluate their validity and reliability as an approach to personality development.
They are genuine feelings based on the self's interactions with the environment and the people in it, at different points in time. Freud, in his psychoanalytic theory, regarded counter-transference as a “block” that can hinder therapy and the therapeutic relationship which may occur when the patient triggers certain feelings or reactions in the therapist based on the therapist’s past experiences and relationships (Winnicott, 1994). Another form of counter-transference, termed ‘projective-identification by Melanie Klein, occurs when “parts of the self and internal objects are split off and projected into the external object, which then becomes possessed by, controlled and identified with the projected parts” (Segal, 1974). A third type of counter-transference which is also the one I choose to base my paper on is a different kind of counter-transference; a more totalistic, objective form, referred to first by Winnicott in his paper “Hate in the Counter-transference”. Winnicott describes it as “an understandable and ‘normal’ reaction to the patient’s actual personality and behavior” which he ten
CBT 2 Abstract Objective: Childhood psychic trauma affects several areas of the brain which in relation causes behavioral problems. Traumatized children who are victims of physical or sexual abuse, neglect or other traumatic event is generally evaluated and supervised by therapist who provides trauma focused treatment. I will be providing information on realistic strategies used for managing dysfunctional emotions and behavior problems which is broken down by the trauma focused evidence base treatment also referred to as (EBT) used for children who are highly distress. Methods: Cognitive therapy looks to help children defeat difficulties. Treatment planning includes a balance of both trauma and behavioral focal point, working on ongoing behavioral problems and behavioral crises, modify distorted thinking so that families could have the knowledge to transfer, and children can learn how to talk through their experiences.