PSYCHODYNAMICS

Dr Faiqa Yaseen
 Table of content
 Definition
 Main Figures
 Features

 Sigmund Freud
 Psychoanalysis
 Dream analysis
 Id ,ego and super ego
 Life and death instincts
 Anxiety and ego defence mechanism
 Psychosexual development

 Carl Jung
 Archetypes
 Theory of libido
 Attitudes towards life
 Theory of unconscious
 Causality and teleology
 Dream theory
 Erik Erikson
 Psychosocial development model

 Alfred Adler
 Inferiority complex
 Organ inferiority
 Life style
 Creative self

 Karen Horney
 Erich Fromm
 Henry Murray
 Limitations
 Psychodynamics in Today’s world
• His system of Psychoanalysis was the first formal theory of
personality.
• Many of personality theories are derivatives or elaborations of his
basic work.
Definition

Psychodynamics, also known as dynamic

psychology, in its broadest sense, is an
approach to psychology that emphasizes
systematic study of the psychological forces
that underlie human behavior, feelings, and
emotions and how they might relate to early
experience. It is especially interested in the
dynamic relations between conscious
motivation  and unconscious motivation
Main Figures

 
 Sigmund Freud
 Carl Jung
 Erik Erikson
 Alfred Alder
Features
• Our behavior and feelings are powerfully affected by unconscious motives.

• Our behavior and feelings as adults are rooted in our childhood experiences.

• All behavior has a cause ,even slips of the tongue. Therefore all behavior is determined.

• Personality is made up of three parts the id, ego and super-ego.

• Behavior is motivated by two instinctual drives: Eros and Thanatos. Both these drives
come from the “id”.

• Parts of the unconscious mind (the id and superego) are in constant conflict with the
conscious part of the mind (the ego). This conflict creates anxiety, which could be dealt
with by the ego’s use of defence mechanisms.

•  Personality is shaped as the drives are modified by different conflicts at different times in
childhood
Features
• Instincts In Freud’s system, mental presentations of internal stimuli,
such as hunger that drive a person to take certain actions
• Freud's best term for this concept is Trieb , which is best translated as a
driving force or impulse.
• Instincts are a form of energy –Transformed physiological energy-that
connects the body’s needs with the mind’s wishes.
• When a body is in a state of need , the person experiences a feeling of
tension or pressure .
• The aim of an instinct is to satisfy the need and thereby reduce the
tension.
• Freud’s theory can be called a homeostatic approach as it suggests the
maintenance of physiological equilibrium or balance to keep the body
free of tension.
• This means that instincts are always influencing our behavior.
Features (Instincts)
 Life Instincts serve the purpose of survival of the individual and the species by
seeking to satisfy the needs for food water, air and sex.
 The life instinct are oriented towards growth and development
 The life instinct Freud considered most important is sex, which he defined in broad
terms. He did not refer solely to the erotic but included almost pleasurable
behaviors and thoughts.
 Freud regarded sex as our primary motivation . Erotic wishes arise from the body’s
erogenous zones : the mouth, anus and sex organs.
 Libido: The Psychic energy manifested by the life instinct is the libido.
 Cathexis: An investment of psychic energy in an object or person.
 (If you like your roommate, for example, Freud would say that your libido is
cathected to him or her.
 Death Instinct: In opposition to the life instinct is the death instinct. The
unconscious dive towards decay , destruction and aggression.
 Aggressive Drive: The compulsion to destroy , conquer and kill. The unconscious
wish to die turned against objects other than the self.
Sigmund Freud
 Freud was inspired by the theory of thermodynamics and used the term
psychodynamics to describe the processes of the  mind as flows of psychological
energy in an organically complex brain .

The Structure of Personality:

 Id , Ego and super ego

Id : To Freud, the aspects of personality allied with the instincts, the source of psychic
energy, the id operates according to the pleasure principle.

Pleasure Principle : The principle by which the id functions to avoid pain and
maximize pleasure.

Ego: To Freud the rational aspect of the personality, responsible for directing and
controlling the instincts according to the reality principle.
Reality Principle: The principle by which the ego functions to provide appropriate
constraints on the expression of the id instinct.

Superego: To Freud, the moral aspects of personality, the internalization of parental

and societal values and standards.

  Hence, the basic psychodynamic model focuses on the dynamic interactions

between the id, ego, and superego.

  Psychodynamics, subsequently, attempts to explain or interpret behavior or mental

states in terms of innate emotional forces or processes.

  A dynamic psychology is one that studies the transformations and exchanges

of energy within the personality. This was Freud’s greatest achievement, and one
of the greatest achievements in modern science, It is certainly a crucial event in
the history of psychology -American psychologist  Calvin S. Hall
PSYCHOANALYSIS

Freud’s psychoanalysis was the original psychodynamic theory, but the psychodynamic
approach as a whole includes all theories that were based on his ideas.

 Cathartic Method:
The name Freud and Joseph Breuer gave to their method of allowing patients to get relief
talking out their previously repressed emotions.

 Transference:
It is a type of projection in which early parental conflicts are re experienced with the
therapist, whose job is to interpret them back to the patient. Freud first saw transference as a
hindrance because it distorted the relationship between patient and the therapist; later, he
argued that a positive transference onto the analyst could help the psychoanalysis progress.

 Counter-Transference:
The therapist’s transference projections-in other words, enactment of old conflicts from the
family of origin.-onto the patient.

 Freud’s Self Analysis:

Freud conducted a long analysis of himself during the time he formulated the first
psychoanalytic operations. He believed that much could be learned by analyzing oneself, but
that being analyzed by someone else was necessary due to the many resistances and blind
spots that occur in the course of self-observation.
DREAM ANALYSIS

 Manifest content
 What we usually think of as the dream itself, and what Freudians see as surface, a disguise of
the true latent dream material.

 Latent Content
The true thoughts below the manifest imagery of the dream. Psychoanalysis seeks to translate the
‘disguised’ manifest content into the true latent, and therefore repressed, wishes of the dreamer.

 Dream work
The mental activity that translates the latent wish-seeking unconscious material into the manifest
imagery that disguises it. It includes condensation, displacement of affect, inversion and
secondary elaboration.

 Condensation
The dream’s tendency to combine several themes into one dream symbol. In this way symbol can
stand for several different thoughts, feelings, wishes, ideas.

 Displacement
The dream’s tricky transfer of high-impact emotionally onto unimportant material and an
emotional cooling to hot material. It also refers to the tendency of libido to invest itself in objects
other than original object of its aim.
 The Id EGO AND SUPER-EGO
 Id
This is the only component of personality present from birth and includes
instinctive and primitive behaviors. This aspect of personality is entirely
unconscious

 Ego
It deals with the reality, trying to meet the desires of the id in a way that is
socially acceptable. This is the organized part of the personality structure
that includes defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive and executive
functions.
 
 Super Ego
It is based on morals and judgments about right and wrong. Super ego aims
for perfection. It forms the organized part of the personality structure but
not entirely unconscious that includes the individual’s ego ideals, spiritual
goals and the psychic agency.
THE LIFE AND DEATH INSTINCTS

 Eros( Life) Instinct

It relates with to create life and favours productivity and construction. It is
concerned with preservation of life and preservation of the species. It appears as the
basic needs for health, safety etc. It is associated with the positive emotions of love,
cooperation, collaboration and other behavior.

 Thanatos (Death) Instinct

It appears in opposition and balance to Eros and pushes a person towards
extinction and an inanimate series. It is associated with negative emotions like hate,
anger etc.

ANXIETY AND EGO DEFENCE MECHANISM

Sigmund Freud noted a number of ego defenses which he refers to throughout his
written works. His daughter Anna developed these ideas and elaborated on them,
adding fives of her own.
PSYCHO-SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT
Oral Stage: (Birth to 18 months)
During the oral stage, the child if focused on oral pleasures. Too much or too little gratification
can result in an oral fixation or Oral personality which is evidenced by a pre- occupation with oral
activity.

Anal Stage: (18 months to three years)

The child’s focus of pleasure in this stage is on eliminating and retaining feces. Through
society’s pressure, mainly via parents, the child has to learn control and stimulation.

 Phallic Stage: (Age three to six)

The pleasure zone switches to the genitals. Freud believed that during this stage boy develop in conscious
sexual desires for their mother and he becomes rivals with his father and see him as competition for the
mother’s affection. These feelings are known as Oedipus Complex. Later it was added that girls go through a
similar situation, developing unconscious sexual attraction to their father, known as Electra Complex.

Latency Stage: (age six to puberty)

It’s during this stage that sexual urges remain repressed and children interact and play mostly
with same sex peers.

Genital Stage: (Puberty and onwards)

The final psychosexual development begins at the start of puberty when sexual urges are once
again awakened. Through the lessons learned during the previous stages, adolescents direct their
sexual urges onto opposite sex peers.
 
Erik Erikson

Psychosocial Development

 According to the theory, successful completion of each stage

results in a healthy personality and the acquisition of basic
virtues. Basic virtues are characteristic strengths which the ego
can use to resolve subsequent crises.

 Failureto successfully complete a stage can result in a

reduced ability to complete further stages and therefore a more
unhealthy personality and sense of self.  These stages,
however, can be resolved successfully at a later time.
 ALFRED ADLER
INFERIORITY COMPLEX

 Every child experiences the feelings of inferiority as the result of being surrounded by
stronger and more capable adults.

 As the child grows he becomes obsessed by his original feelings of inferiority he

experienced earlier and so he strives for power and recognition.

 If the child failed to meet certain life challenges during his act of compensation then he
will develop an inferiority complex.

 Alfred Adler said that if the person managed to compensate properly for his inferiority
feelings then he will pass through this phase successfully and become a mentally healthy
person

 On the other hand if the person failed to compensate for his weaknesses he might
develop an inferiority complex and believe that he is less worthy than others.
ORGAN INFERIORITY

 Organ inferiority was a term coined by Alfred for the first time.

 It describes how people who found themselves born with certain physical defects develop
feelings of inferiority and start taking actions to compensate for their weaknesses.

 Organ inferiority never makes a child develop inferiority complex unless his society forces
him to believe that he is less important than others.

LIFE STYLE

 An individual's striving towards significance and belonging can be observed as a

pattern.

 The style of life is reflected in the unity of an individual's way of thinking, feeling, and
acting.

 The life style was seen by Adler as a product of the individual's own creative power, as well
as being rooted in early childhood situations.
  Clues to the nature of the life style are provided by dreams, memories, and
childhood/adolescent activities.
TYPES OF STYLE

 Adler distinguished four primary types of style.

 Three of them he said to be mistaken styles :
 the ruling type - aggressive, dominating people who don't have much social
interest or cultural perception;
 the getting type- dependent people who take rather than give;
 the avoiding type- people who try to escape life's problems and take little part in
socially constructive activity.

 The fourth life style considered by Adler is the 

 socially useful type- people with a great deal of social interest and activity

CREATIVE SELF
 The concept of the creative self places the responsibility for the individual's
personality into his own hands.

 The Adlerian practitioner sees the individual as responsible for himself, he attempts
to show the person that he cannot blame others or uncontrollable forces for his
current condition.
Limitations

 Case Studies - Subjective / Cannot generalize results

 Unscientific (lacks empirical support)

 Too Deterministic (little free-will)

 Biased Sample

 Ignores Mediational Processes (e.g. thinking, memory)

 Rejects Free will

 Unfalsifiable (difficult to prove wrong)

Psychodynamics in Today’s World

 Research in this field provides insights into a number of areas, including

• Understanding and anticipating the range of specific conscious and unconscious responses to
specific sensory inputs, as images, colors, textures, sounds, etc.

• Utilizing the communicative nature of movement and primal physiological gestures to affect
and study specific mind-body states.

• Examining the capacity for the mind and senses to directly affect physiological response and
biological change.

 Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

 Cognitive Psychodynamics
Questions
And
Answers