The Psychodynamic Approach

1540 Words4 Pages

The Psychodynamic Approach Henry is a man who often finds it difficult to distinguish between reality and fantasy. For example, he believes that he is better than anyone else at the job he does, and that rapid promotion will inevitably follow when other people realise it too. However, few of his colleagues believe this and they feel that Henry is not really facing up to the realities of his everyday life. How might this be explained? (a) Describe how two approaches might try to explain Henry’s difficulty in distinguishing reality from fantasy. (6 marks + 6 marks) The psychodynamic approach states that unconscious urges are revealed in symbolic form. Thus, the unconscious mind ‘leaks’ into consciousness by means of irrational behaviour, in Henry’s case he unconsciously desires a promotion, but because he consciously knows he may not get one, or others work at a higher standard and may be receiving one before himself he behaves irrationally. The irrational behaviour comes in the form of his illogical confident thoughts that everyone isn’t as good as him at his job and he thinks that it is due to other people’s foolishness that he has not yet been promoted, therefore, not placing any of the blame upon himself. Another explanation offered by the psychodynamic approach comes from Freud’s ideas on the structure of the personality, which is made through the development of the id, ego and super ego. The id is part of the unconscious and is the most primitive drive, which demands immediate satisfaction and is governed by the pleasure principle. The ego regulates the id, as it is part of the conscious and intellec... ... middle of paper ... ... none of his behaviour reflects a current social factor, just his unconscious mind influencing his fantasy driven life, whether that be in the terms of being ‘stuck’ in the phallic stage or having an underdeveloped ego and super ego leaving his unconscious uncontrolled id to run riot. However, this may be a little to simplistic and unable to account for many other things throughout life which shape and build personality. Henry’s fantasy thought processes may be driven by an adult experience not just early childhood experience, i.e. if an adult has a scary experience with a spider like it crawling upon their bed they may develop an irrational fear of spiders even when no such event was experienced in childhood and so this fear can’t be linked to any childhood experience, and so this theory fails to offer an explanation.

Open Document