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OUTLINE OF THE PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH
The foundation of psychodynamic thinking in psychology was laid by Sigmund Freud, which
theorised the notion of the unconscious.
His theories revolve around three main assumptions:
1. Personality has a detectable structure.
2. Personality is constructed by the passage through psychosexual stages.
3. During the construction of our personality, unconscious conflicts are mediated by defence
mechanisms.
According to Freud, personality is tripartite:
1. ID, referred also as the “pleasure principle”. This is the stage that forms from birth until
the 18 months of age and is the childish and hedonistic part of an individual’s personality
which focus only on the self.
2. Ego, referred also as the “reality principle”. It forms between 18 months and 3 years of
age.
Works as the mediation between the first and the third part of our personality, it keeps
balance.
3. Superego, referred also as the “morality principle”. It forms between 3 and 6 years of age.
The role of it is to behave as a conscience of the individual, it helps personality to form a
moral code.
As precedentially said, the ego balance potential conflict between the ID and the superego and tries to
limit anxiety. In the moment in which the conflict is significant, the ego can redirect energy on
“defence mechanisms”. The three main ones are repression (pushing an unpleasant thought in the
unconscious), displacement (emotions gets redirected from their source to a different target) and
denial (an unpleasant thought is ignored or treated as not truthful).
Freud also thoughts that an individual progress through different psychosexual stages. He named five
stages having each one a particular behaviour:
1. Oral, from birth. The focus of pleasure is the mouth, arriving through sucking and
biting. (i.e., breastfeeding)
2. Anal, at around 18 months. The focus shift from the mouth to the anus. Therefore, the
pleasure is given to the child by defecating.
3. Phallic, at around 3-6 years old. In this stage the focus shift on the genitals. It differs
by gender with boys experiencing the Oedipus complex (by which the boy would
experience sexual feeling for their mothers, seeing their fathers as a rival and as a
source of “castration anxiety”. To avoid this, the boy befriended the father and act as
an ally through the process of identification.) and the girls experiencing the Electra
complex (by which the girls would experience envy of the males for their penis. They
think that their mother cut it off and resent them for it. When the desire of having a
penis is not fulfilled, the focus shift on to the desire of having a baby.
Girls goes through the identification phases in the same way as the boys do)
4. Latent, around 6 years old. In this stage the child just focuses on being a child.
5. Genital, around 12 years old. In this stage the focus of the libido is once again on the
genitals. Every person reaches this stage and from this point on the child become an
adult.
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