Eduqas A Level Psychology Psychodynamic Approach Exam Questions

About Eduqas A Level Psychology Psychodynamic Approach

The psychodynamic approach in Component 1 is built on Freud's ideas about childhood, the unconscious and the id, ego and superego. You apply these assumptions to explain behaviour, learn one therapy (dream analysis or psychodrama), and study Bowlby's 1944 investigation of forty-four juvenile thieves as the classic research. The linked contemporary debate asks whether the mother should be the primary caregiver of an infant. Examiners often ask for the procedure and findings of Bowlby's study, evaluation of its retrospective, interview-based method, and comparison of the approach's unfalsifiable concepts with more scientific approaches such as the cognitive and biological.

What you need to know

• Influence of childhood experiences Personality develops through the psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital). Unresolved conflict at a stage can lead to fixation, which shows in adult behaviour.
• The unconscious mind Most of the mind lies below awareness, like an iceberg. Unacceptable thoughts are kept out of consciousness by defence mechanisms such as repression, denial and displacement, but still drive behaviour.
• Tripartite personality The id works on the pleasure principle, the ego on the reality principle and the superego (conscience and ego-ideal) on morality. The ego balances the demands of the other two; conflict between them causes anxiety.
• Bowlby (1944) Forty-four juvenile thieves Bowlby compared 44 children referred to the London Child Guidance Clinic for stealing with 44 children referred for emotional problems who did not steal, using interviews and mental tests. 14 thieves were classed as affectionless psychopaths and 12 of these 14 had experienced frequent or prolonged separation from their mother in early childhood, compared with very few of the controls.
• Dream analysis or psychodrama Dream analysis treats dreams as the 'royal road to the unconscious': the analyst interprets symbols in the manifest content to uncover latent content disguised by dream work. Psychodrama (Moreno) has a protagonist act out conflicts on a stage with a director, auxiliary egos and an audience, moving through warm-up, action and sharing.
• The mother as primary caregiver Bowlby argued for monotropy and a special bond with the mother. Against this, Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found most infants formed multiple attachments, and Field (1978) found that fathers who were primary caregivers behaved much like mothers.

Common mistakes in Psychodynamic Approach

• Saying Bowlby's controls were 'normal' children. They were also attending the child guidance clinic for emotional difficulties; they simply had not stolen.
• Claiming Bowlby showed separation causes delinquency. The data are retrospective and correlational, and Bowlby carried out the interviews himself knowing which group each child was in, which risks researcher bias.
• Mixing up the manifest and latent content of dreams. Manifest content is the remembered storyline; latent content is the hidden, unconscious meaning the analyst interprets.
• Describing the ego as the 'moral' part of personality. The superego is the moral part; the ego is the rational mediator working on the reality principle.

Try three Psychodynamic Approach exam-style questions