The unconscious mind comprises mental processes that are inaccessible to consciousness but that influence judgments, feelings, or behavior (Wilson, 2002).

According to Freud (1915), the unconscious mind is the primary source of human behavior. Like an iceberg, the most important part of the mind is the part you cannot see.

Our feelings, motives, and decisions are actually powerfully influenced by our past experiences, and stored in the unconscious.

Psychodynamic theory states that events in our childhood have a great influence on our adult lives, shaping our personality. Events that occur in childhood can remain in the unconscious, and cause problems as adults.

Personality is shaped as the drives are modified by different conflicts at different times in childhood (during psychosexual development).

PСычодинамический Теория сильно определяется, поскольку она рассматривает наше поведение, как это вызвано совершенно бессознательным фактором, над которым мы не контролируем.

бессознательные мысли и чувства могут передать Сознательный разум в виде парапрофракса, широко известен как freussips или скольжениям языка. Мы раскрываем, что наш наш взгляд Сказав что-то, что мы не имели в виду.

Фрейд полагал, что скольжениям языка давали представление о бессознательном уме и что не было никаких аварий, каждого поведения (в том числе промахи языка) были статистически значимыми (то есть, все поведение определяется). <р класс = свинец> Личность состоит из трех части (т.е. Трехсторонний): в ид, эго и супер-эго :

History of Psychodynamic Theory

The History of Psychodynamic Theory

• Anna O a patient of Dr. Joseph Breuer (Freud's mentor and friend) from 1800 to 1882 suffered from hysteria.
• In 1895 Breuer and his assistant, Sigmund Freud, wrote a book, Studies on Hysteria.

  In it they explained their theory: Every hysteria is the result of a traumatic experience, one that cannot be integrated into the person's understanding of the world. The publication establishes Freud as “the father of psychoanalysis.

• By 1896 Freud had found the key to his own system, naming it psychoanalysis. In it, he had replaced hypnosis with "free association."
• In 1900 Freud published his first major work, The Interpretation of Dreams, which established the importance of psychoanalytical movement.
• In 1902 Freud founded the Psychological Wednesday Society, later transformed into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
• As the organization grew, Freud established an inner circle of devoted followers, the so-called "Committee" (including Sàndor Ferenczi, and Hanns Sachs (standing) Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, and Ernest Jones).
  
• Freud and his colleagues came to Massachusetts in 1909 to lecture on their new methods of understanding mental illness. .

  Those in attendance included some of the country's most important intellectual figures, such as William James, Franz Boas, and Adolf Meyer.

• In the years following the visit to the United States, the International Psychoanalytic Association was founded. .

  Freud designated Carl Jung as his successor to lead the Association, and chapters were created in major cities in Europe and elsewhere. .

  Regular meetings or congresses were held to discuss the theory, therapy, and cultural applications of the new discipline.

• Jung's study on schizophrenia, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, led him into collaboration with Sigmund Freud.
• Jung's close collaboration with Freud lasted until 1913. Jung had become increasingly critical of Freud's exclusively sexual definition of libido and incest. .

  The publication of Jung's Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (known in English as The Psychology of the Unconscious) led to a final break.

• Following his emergence from this period of crisis, Jung developed his own theories systematically under the name of Analytical Psychology. .

  Jung's concepts of the collective unconscious and the archetypes led him to explore religion in the East and West, myths, alchemy, and later flying saucers.

• Melanie Klein took psychoanalytic thinking in a new direction by recognising the importance of our earliest childhood experiences in the formation of our adult emotional world. .

  After becoming a full member of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society in 1923, Klein embarks upon her first analysis of a child. .

  Extending and developing Sigmund Freud’s ideas, Klein drew on her analysis of children’s play to formulate new concepts such as the paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position.

• Anna Freud (Freud's daughter) became a major force in British psychology, specializing in the application of psychoanalysis to children. .

  Among her best known works are The Ego and the Mechanism of defense (1936).

Psychodynamic Summary

Psychodynamic Approach Summary

Issues and Debates

Issues and Debates

Critical Evaluation

Critical Evaluation

The psychodynamic approach has given rise to one of the first “talking cure", psychoanalysis, on which many psychological therapies are now based. Psychoanalysis is rarely used now in its original form but it is still used in a shorter version in some cases.

The greatest criticism of the psychodynamic approach is that it is unscientific in its analysis of human behavior. Many of the concepts central to Freud's theories are subjective, and as such, difficult to test scientifically.

For example, how is it possible to scientifically study concepts like the unconscious mind or the tripartite personality? In this respect, it could be argued that the psychodynamic perspective is unfalsifiable as its theories cannot be empirically investigated.

However, cognitive psychology has identified unconscious processes, such as procedural memory (Tulving, 1972), automatic processing (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Stroop, 1935), and social psychology have shown the importance of implicit processing (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Such empirical findings have demonstrated the role of unconscious processes in human behavior.

Kline (1989) argues that psychodynamic theory comprises a series of hypotheses, some of which are more easily tested than others, and some with more supporting evidence than others.

Also, while the theories of the psychodynamic approach may not be easily tested, this does not mean that it does not have strong explanatory power.

Nevertheless, most of the evidence for psychodynamic theories is taken from Freud's case studies (e.g., Little Hans, Anna O).

The main problem here is that the case studies are based on studying one person in detail, and with reference to Freud, the individuals in question are most often middle-aged women from Vienna (i.e., his patients). This makes generalizations to the wider population (e.g., the whole world) difficult.

Another problem with the case study method is that it is susceptible to researcher bias. Reexamination of Freud's own clinical work suggests that he sometimes distorted his patients' case histories to 'fit' with his theory (Sulloway, 1991).

The humanistic approach makes the criticism that the psychodynamic perspective is too deterministic. Freud suggests that all thoughts, behaviors and emotions are determined by our childhood experiences and unconscious mental processes.

This is a weakness because it suggests we have no conscious free will over our behavior, leaving little room for the idea of personal agency (i.e., free will).

Finally, the psychodynamic approach can be criticized for being sexist against women. For example, Freud believed that females' penis envy made them inferiour to males.

He also thought that females tended to develop weaker superegos and to be more prone to anxiety than males.

APA Style References

Adler, A. (1927). Understanding human nature. New York: Greenburg.

Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American psychologist, 54(7), 462.

Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.

Freud, A. (1936). Ego & the mechanisms of defense.

Freud, S., & Breuer. J. (1895). Studies on hysteria. In Standard edition (Vol. 2, pp. 1–335).

Freud, S. (1896). Heredity and the etiology of the neuroses. In Standard edition (Vol. 3, pp. 142–156).

Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. In Standard edition (Vols. 4 & 5, pp. 1–627).

Freud, S. (1909). Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis. In Standard edition (Vol. 10, pp. 153–249).

Freud, S. (1909). Analysis of a phobia of a five year old boy. In The Pelican Freud Library (1977), Vol 8, Case Histories 1, pages 169-306.

Freud, S. (1915). The unconscious. SE, 14: 159-204.

Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms off Defense. International Universities Press, Inc.

Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological review, 102(1), 4.

Jung, C. G. (1907). Ueber die Psychologie der Dementia praecox. Psychological Bulletin, 4(6), 196-197.

Jung, C. G. (1912). Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido: Beiträge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Denkens. F. Deuticke.

Jung, C. G., et al. (1964). Man and his Symbols, New York, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Doubleday.

Kline, P. (1989). Objective tests of Freud's theories. Psychology Survey, 7, 127-45.

Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of experimental psychology, 18(6), 643.

Sulloway, F. J. (1991). Reassessing Freud's case histories: The social construction of psychoanalysis. Isis, 82(2), 245-275.

Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of Memory, (pp. 381–403). New York: Academic Press.

Wilson, T. D. (2004). Strangers to ourselves. Harvard University Press.

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