The psychodynamic approach emphasizes unconscious thought, the conflict between biological drives and society’s demands, and early childhood family experiences.
The psychodynamic perspective derives from the work of Sigmund Freud and his students and followers. Its defined by unconscious, the part of mind that contains hidden desires and motivating forces. The main method of investigation in the psychodynamic perspective in psychoanalysis which attempts to uncover the unconscious elements that affect a person. Through the analysis of a person dreams. So in psychodynamic perspective, the model of the mind is as an iceberg, with only the tip visible.
Freud proposed that our thoughts, feelings, self perception and personality is composed of 3 elements. The ego which represents our conscious thoughts, the superego which represents our social conscience and the id which represents our subconscious, pleasure-seeking and inner desires. The id isn’t logical or reasonable, the ego tries to satisfy the id in a safe manner and the superego keeps track of our guilt and social norms.
Those 3 elements are known as our psyche and Freud says that the primary energy i our psyche was the libido and libido is energy created by survival and sexual needs below constantly seeking satisfaction of the desires to be safe and experience pleasure but as we grow, the need of want/needs comes in conflict with id. According to Freud, there are five stages of pschosexual development:
- oral stage- birth to 18 months
- anal stage- 18 months to 3 years
- phallic stage- 3 to 6 years
- latency stage- 6 to puberty
- genital stage- puberty and beyond
Also, according to Freud the ego develops strategies to defend you from daily conflicts that may cause stress or anxiety due to our id’s desires and your superego’s attempts to control those desires. These protective strategies are called defense mechanisms.
A strength of this approach is actually providing a better understanding of dense mechanism.
Did you know that our behavior and feelings as adults are rooted in our childhood experiences because of the psychodynmaic theory??