The psychodynamic approach

Sigmund Freud founded the psychodynamic approach and psychoanalysis. He said the mind has three levels of consciousness:

• conscious: what we are aware of now;
• preconscious: things we can recall if we try;
• unconscious: hidden wishes and memories we cannot recall, which still shape our behaviour.

He studied the unconscious through free association (saying whatever comes to mind) and dream analysis.

Structure of personality:

When these conflict, we feel anxiety. The ego protects itself with defence mechanisms, such as:

• repression: pushing painful memories into the unconscious;
• projection: attributing one's own unacceptable traits or wishes to others;
• denial: refusing to accept reality;
• reaction formation: acting the opposite of what one feels;
• rationalisation: giving good-sounding excuses.

Psychosexual stages of development: oral, anal, phallic (when the Oedipus complex in boys, or Electra complex in girls, appears), latency and genital. Problems at a stage may cause fixation (getting stuck) or later regression (going back to it).

Post-Freudians: Carl Jung (the collective unconscious and archetypes: inherited images shared by all humans), Karen Horney (basic anxiety from childhood insecurity), Alfred Adler (the inferiority complex), Erich Fromm (social needs), and Erik Erikson (the identity crisis of adolescence).

Criticisms: based on case studies of a small, atypical sample of patients; many concepts cannot be tested scientifically; and a male bias, especially in its views of women.