The Psychodynamic approach assumes that all behaviour can be explained in
terms of the inner conflicts of the mind. For example, in the case study of Little Hans, Freud argued that Little Hans phobia of horses was caused by a displaced fear of his father. The psychodynamic perspective emphasises the role of the unconscious mind, the structure of personality and the influence that childhood experiences have on later life. Freud believed that the unconscious mind determines much of our behaviour and that we are motivated by unconscious emotional drives. This suggests that the approach is very deterministic. Freud believed that the unconscious contains unresolved conflicts and has a powerful effect on our behaviour and experience. He argued that many of these conflicts will show up in our fantasies and dreams, but the conflicts are so threatening that they appear in disguised forms, in the shape of symbols. Freud proposed that the adult personality has three parts the id, ego and superego. The id is the combination of pleasure seeking desires and we are born with it. The ego develops later and it controls the desires of the id. The superego is the moralistic part of personality which develops as a child interacts with significant others such as its parents. The superego can be seen as the conscience. It is the role of the ego to maintain a balance between the id and the superego. We use defence mechanisms to protect ourselves from feelings of anxiety or guilt, which arise because we feel threatened, or because our id or superego becomes too demanding. They are not under our conscious control, and are nonvoluntaristic. With the ego, our unconscious will use one or more to protect us when we come up against a stressful situation in life. Ego-defence mechanisms are natural and normal. When they get out of proportion, neuroses develop, such as anxiety states, phobias, obsessions, or hysteria. Freud believed that children pass through five stages of development, known as the psychosexual stages because of Freud's emphasis on sexuality as the basic drive in development. These stages are: the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency period and finally the genital stage. The phallic stage, from three to five years old was the stage where the child's sexual identification was established. During this stage Freud hypothesised that a young boy would experience what he called the Oedipus complex. This would provide the child with highly disturbing conflicts, which had to be resolved by the child identifying with the same-sexed parent. The approach does have its strengths and weaknesses. One strength of the Psychodynamic perspective is that it is the first approach to try and attempt to explain mental illness in psychological terms and has had an enormous influence on the understand and treatment of mental disorders. An example of this is Psychoanalysis and Dream Therapy which aims to make the unconscious material conscious so it is easier to deal with as Freud believed that dreams showed our hidden thoughts and wishes. A major weakness with this approach however, is that the case studies are based on studying one person in detail, and with reference to Freud the individuals in question are most often middle aged women from Vienna. This makes generalizations to the wider population difficult.
Amanda Bueser On the other side of the spectrum, we have the Humanistic approach. Humanistic psychology begins with the existential assumptions that phenomenology is central and that people have free will. This means that not all behaviour is deterministic. We make our own choices and take different paths in our lives because that is what we choose to do. As it developed, humanistic psychology focused on each individual's potential and stressed the importance of growth and self-actualisation. The fundamental belief of humanistic psychology is that people are innately good and that mental and social problems result from deviations from this natural tendency. The humanistic theories of Rogers (1959) and Maslow (1943) are the subjective, and give focus to the conscious experiences of the individual. Humanistic psychologists argue that objective reality is less important than a person's subjective perception and understanding of the world. Due to this, Rogers and Maslow placed little value on scientific psychology, especially the use of the psychology laboratory to investigate both human and animal behaviour. Humanism rejects scientific methodology like experiments and typically uses qualitative research methods. This is because they aim to find out and analyse in-depth an individuals thoughts and feelings and this is not possible with such experimental methods. To evaluate the humanistic perspective, possible reasons for this lack of impact on academic psychology perhaps lies with the fact that humanism deliberately adopts a non-scientific approach to studying humans. For example their belief in free-will is in direct opposition to the deterministic laws of science. However, the flip side to this is that humanism can gain a better insight into an individual's behaviour through the use of qualitative methods, such as unstructured interviews. The approach also helped to provide a more holistic view of human behaviour, in contrast to the reductionist position of science.
