Psychodynamic Theories

Name he first notable deceased psychologist that pops into your mind..ready? GO! Was it Sigmund Freud? Most likely!

Freud lived from 1856 to 1939 and was one of the strongest leaders in psychology, specifically psychodynamics.  What are psychodynamics? This is when someone views personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences.  He theorized that people were driven by two factors: sex and aggression.  He had a fascination with tapping into ones unconscious and used free association; this is where he has the patient relax and say whatever comes to their minds no matter how embarrassing or trivial.

The Psychodynamic Perspective makes the following assumptions:

1. Human nature is destructive and self centered
2. Early childhood experiences are more important than anything
3. Humans are in psychological conflict
4. All behavior is unconsciously determined

This is Freud's theory of our personality structure:

Ego doesn't mean what we think of it as today; ego here, just means "I."  Our egos are mostly conscious.  It is the executive part of the personality that according to Freud, mediates among the demands made of the id, superego and reality.

Now you might be wondering, what are the id and superego?

Id: a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives.  The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification. 

Superego: the superego is the part of the personality that, once again according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement and for future aspirations.  The superego is what we now refer to as your conscience.  So just picture a devil on one shoulder and an angle on the other.   

Freud thought that the id, the superego and reality all made demands on the ego.  Freud thought that there was sometimes a conflict between the id and the ego.  Living in a society doesn't let humans fully express the aggressive or sexual things that they feel and Freud thought this caused them to use different defense mechanisms. Here are a few examples of defense mechanisms:

Regression:
-retreating to an earlier psychosexual state
-example: a boy reverts to the oral comfort of sucking his thumb on the way to school

Reaction formation:
-switching unacceptable impulses to their opposites
-this happens when someone feels really angry but they repress it and show exaggerated happiness/friendliness

Projection:
-disguising one's impulses by accusing others of doing the same
-an example is a closeted homosexual male calls other men gay in derogatory ways

Displacement:
-shifting sexual/aggressive impulses towards a more acceptable or less treating object or person
-an example is a little girl's mother sends her to the room and she's really angry so she kicks her dog when she's really mad at her mother

Denial:
-refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities
-an example is when someone gets cheated on but the partner denies the evidence

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Other Psychodynamic theorists include Carl Jung.  Jung believed in something he called the collective unconscious.  The collective unconscious is the concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species history.