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Discuss psychological explanations into schizophrenia (24/24)- Psychology unit 4 AQA A
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Schizophrenia essay (for a possible 16 mark, include 3 psychodynamic explanations)Discuss psychological explanations into schizophrenia
Firstly the psychodynamic explanation can be used to explain schizophrenia.
This states that a unconscious conflict formed in childhood can lead to a person
becoming regressed to the pre ego stage which causes their behaviour to
become very childlike. This is shown through delusions of grandeur which is
when you think you are better than everyone else around you, and auditory
hallucinations which are your ego’s attempt to regain control. The need to
regress stems from childhood conflict and parental behaviour could have been
the cause of this conflict.
This theory is supported by evidence from Fromm-Reichman who suggested that
parental behaviour causes schizophrenia as it was found that mothers of
schizophrenics were dominant, overprotecting, rejecting and moralistic. This
supports the idea that parental behaviour could influence chances of developing
schizophrenia.
However this study was correlational and therefore we cannot be sure if it was
the mothers characteristics which cause the schizophrenia or if the stress of
caring for a schizophrenic was the cause of the mother’s characteristics.
This theory can only account for 2 of the symptoms of schizophrenia which are
delusions of grandeur and auditory hallucinations and therefore the theory
cannot be used to explain all symptoms and aspects of schizophrenia.
Also, the idea that there is an id, ego and superego is unfalsifiable as the idea
of an ego is abstract so it may not even exist and because this is the basis of
the psychodynamic theory then the theory may be incorrect as the idea of
regressing to a pre ego stage would be wrong.
The explanation is also reductionist as it ignores other explanations of
schizophrenia such as biological explanations like genes and neurotransmitters
as well as cognitive explanations. Therefore it is only possible for us to get a
limited understanding of the causes of schizophrenia from this explanation.
Another psychological explanation is the cognitive explanation. This suggests
that biological factors cause the cause of the initial hallucination and delusions
but these become worse when a person who has these symptoms tries to
confirm them with others around them. When others can’t confirm these
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