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Psychodynamic - Coggle Diagram
Psychodynamic
Assumptions
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The Unconscious Mind
- Conscious = thoughts/feeling/decisions
- Preconscious = Memory/Knowledge
- Unconscious = Mental processes unaware of/drives most of your behaviour/feeling/trauma/id e.g. sex and aggression/conflict id and superego
- Ego was defece mechanisms to reduce conflict/anxiety in conscious mind
- Unconscious drives and conflicts and trauma childhood are stored in unconscious
- Drives much of our behaviour is later life
- Provokes anxiety
- The ego, the conscious part of the mind, Defends itself from anxiety with various ego defence mechanisms which can lead to certain behaviours
Defence Mechanisms
- Denial = Block external events from awareness
- Projection = own unacceptable feelings/urges projected onto somebody else
- Regression = to take on behaviours from earlier stage of development when faced with stress
- Repression = Banishing painful memories e.g. unpleasant memories from childhood into the unconscious mind
Tripartite Personality
- Our Personality develops due to an interaction between our innate drives and our early experiences.
- Nature side of the Nature v Nurture debate
- Psych = human mind/personality
- Each part of the mind wants different things causing a conflict.
Id
- Present from birth
- Impulsive
- Instinct/drives e.g. hunger, anger, sex
-Based on pleasure principle and satisfactiion
- Avoids pain/displeasure
- Eros/Thanos
Ego
- Part of the mind you are aware of
- Rational/realistic part of the mind
- Gives little bits of the other 2 but not too much
- Reality principle
Superego
- Wants you to be a super good person all of the time
- Developed around 4 years of age
- Learned primarily through identification with parents
- Governed by morality principle.
Dream Analysis
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Evaluation
Ethical
✅ = Addresses the long term underlying cause of psychological and behavioural problems. () = DA works on uncovering repressed unconscious conflicts and desires that may have occurred in early childhood. Bringing them to surface and confronting the issues should result in a long term end to the problems they were causing later in life. — = Strength compared to other therapies such as the biological and behavioural therapies which only treat the symptoms of the problems.
✅ = Being made aware of unconscious conflicts may be distressing and cause psychological harm. () = DA works by revealing to the client, previously repressed desires of conflicts from childhood these desires and/or conflicts have been repressed by the Ego’s defence mechanisms because they may be traumatic. — = This is a weakness because there is the potential for the client to experience psychological harm in the process of acknowledging these unconscious issues.
✅ = One of the main concerns about dream analysis is the power imbalance between the therapist and the client. () = The therapist takes the expert role offering the patient insight into their unconscious. The patient is therefore reliant on the therapist for making progress through the therapy. This is an ethical because it can lead to client becoming overly dependent on the therapist and unable to face their problems on their own.
✅ = DA has the potential to create false memories in people. () = there are documented cases of therapists leading people to inaccurately remember instances of abuse or other unpleasant experiences in their past. — = weakness because FMS can strongly affect people's identity and relationships as well as having negative repercussions for those who may be falsely accused of causing the unpleasant situations.
Effectiveness
✅ = Evidence supports the effectiveness of DA in helping people improve their self-esteem and gain greater insight into their mind. () = Falk & Hill compared 22 separate and divorce and women (aged 22 to 57 years) in eight weeks dream interpretation groups to 12 women in control condition in terms of changes in anxiety, depression, coping, self-esteem, and insight into their dreams results indicate that women who participated in dream interpretation groups showed improvement compared to the control group in self-esteem and insight. — = This suggests that DA appears to be effective at helping women adjust to the life changes associated with divorce.
✅ = A weakness of DA is that it is based on subjective interpretations of the manifest content. () = Manifest content is a literal representation of a memory/emotion rather than a symbol of something in the unconscious. — = It is difficult to scientifically demonstrate that it is the interpretation of a dream that leads to the effective treatment of behavioural or mental disorders. One therapist may offer a different interpretation from another.
✅ = Evidence supports the idea that our dreams are constructed as a result of the workings of the id. () = Solms - PET Scan - unconscious mind is very active when dreaming. — = is effective because dreams makes us unconsciously aware of our desires and conflicts.
Bowlby
Description
Method
Sample
- 44 children = juvenile thieves (convicted of theft)
- All referred to London child guidance cinic where Bowlby worked
- All thieves grade 1-4
- 31 boys + 13 girls
- Sampling Technique = Opportunity
- 44 children control group = non-thieves
- Matched to thief group on IQ, age and economic status
Research methods used
- Series of case studies 1936-39
- Interviews with children and their mothers
- Examined school reports, social worker reports
- In-depth study on 1 person/ a group of people
- Uses lots of different methods
- Longitudinal study
Procedure
- 1936-39 research carried out in London child guidance clinic where Bowlby worked
- Each child had been referred to clinic (opportunity)
- On arrival 2 hour procedure
- Mental tests with psychologist - Binet test for IQ and emotional attitude. Interview with social worker and mother = psychiatric history of the child’s life
- Report then made by social worker and psychologist and given to psychiatrist (Bowlby)
- Bowlby then interviews child and mother
- Bowlby makes a provisional diagnosis of the child (1 of 6 diagnoses)
- Weekly interviews (some every week for over 6 months = Longitudinal)
- Ongoing therapy given to the child
Findings
- Bowlby diagnosed 6 main personality types: Normal, Schizoid, affectionless, depressed, circular, hyperthymic
- 14/44 thieves were affectionless (children who lack normal affection, shame or sense of responsibility)
- There were 0 affectionless children in the control group of non-thieves
- All the affectionless children were grade 3 and 4 thieves
- 56.5% or ‘over half’ of the grade 4 thieves were affectionless
- Instances of mother child separation was highest in the affectionless group 12/14 (70.6%) affectionless children had experienced separation compared to just 5% in the control group
- No separation in 27 cases however their home life was far from normal
Conclusions
- The findings confirm the psychoanalytic assumption that a child’s early years are of great importance to development
- A large number of persistent thieves are of an affectionless character a condition which has resulted from prolonged separation from mothers or foster mothers during childhood
- However, juvenile crime is not just a psychological problem it is also social and economic
- If those who are involved in upbringing and care of small children are aware of the appalling damage prolonged separation can have on development of child’s character then greater effort would be made to avoid them and many cases of criminal behaviour could be avoided
- Mental illness is evident in grandparents and parents of the thieves therefore it is possible that genetic factors played a part and may play a factor in predisposing the child to delinquent and unstable personalities
Evaluation
Generalisability
- Sample used was unrepresentative of the target population.
- Bowlby only used a group of 44 young thieves from one area (London)
- Ppts were selected through opportunity sampling
- His sample was a unique set of individuals with emotional + social problems
- Limiting how far the findings can be generalised to target population
Reliability
- A limitation of Bowlby's procedures = Lacks external reliability. Bowlby used a case study method + he describes the collection of data in his study as "unsystematic + unplanned"
- Very difficult to replicate the procedures in the same way
Alternative Evidence
Research supports Bowlby's conclusions:
- Bifulco et al = loss of the mother through separation/death doubled the risk of depressive + anxiety disorders
- Bowlby’s conclusions that maternal separation does lead to long lasting emotional consequences for the child
Validity
- Bowlby used 44 children who were matched to the thieves in terms of age, IQ + economic status
- He was able to directly compare the experiences of maternal separation + personality types of each group to get a more valid picture of the effects of separation on delinquency than if he had just studied the group of thieves
Ethical
Valid Consent:
- Children were interviewed as part of the treatment at the clinic 1936-39
- Bowlby didn’t produce + publish the report until 1944/46
- It is likely that ppts were unaware that their data would be used in a study
- Valid consent wasn’t gained = highly unethical
Social
Workplace (Negative):
- Research implies that any regular separation from the mother could have damaging consequence
- Leading to women not wanting to work as they don’t want to labelled as a ‘bad mother’
- Leading to a negative impact in society as this could lead to skill gaps in the workplace
- Which would damage our economy
Education:
- Bowlby’s study has benefited society within this area as nurseries now have a low staff to child ratio to ensure that attachments can still be formed
- Parenting classes and PSHE lessons in schools could include importance of attachments with your children to ensure success of forming a parental bond in the in the future
- Both of these are positive implications to reduce possible parent child separations.Therefore possibly prevent future delinquent behaviours