Psychodynamic Approach

Since Behaviourism, there has been a shift in the way psychologists view things which leads onto our new approach psychodynamic. The -psychodynamic approach arose by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud who was born in 1856 and in 1880 took a liking in psychiatry. The theories accentuates the unconscious motives and desires alongside also highlighting the vitality of our childhood experiences and how they impacted our personality. The main key assumptions of this theory is the endless determination of infancy and childhood and our unconscious reasons and dynamics. Freud said that the mind has 3 components of awareness which included; the conscious mind - little amounts of mental activity that we are actually aware of such as our thoughts and
Freud believed we as children go through a series of 5 psychosexual stages: The Oral Stage, The Anal Stage, The Phallic Stage, The Latency Period and lastly the Genital Stage. Oral stage begins at birth right up to the child is 18 months old where our erogenous zones include our mouth, lips and tongue and forms enjoyable activities such as sucking, biting and chewing. Following this is the anal stage which happens between 18 months and 3 years old, an example here would be toilet training the child. The erogenous zone involves stopping or having bowel movements, while fixation is when the parents are rewarding or punishing the child on how they done. Moreover, the Phallic stage ranges from 3-6 year olds and focuses on the genitals and admiring the opposite sex and adapting the our behaviour of the same sex. Furthermore the latency happens between the ages of 6 to puberty. Here its main goal is to achieve a social development. Lastly, the genital stage occurs and this happens from puberty to adulthood where its main accomplishment is to develop sexual relationships with partners. The movement that alters reliability and supports us from anxiety is known as defence
Anna was a 20 year old female who had been ill for one and a half years with bizarre problems ranging from numbness of hands and feet, spasms and suffered hallucinations, despite these no problems where found. Freud and Anna’s private psychian Dr Josef Breur found that when they hypnotised her, her symptoms had gone and they believed this was due to her thinking of her father who had passed away and the link to that emotional experience had caused her to be not