Psychodynamic Perspective

I primarily believe in the behavioral perspective. However, on the topic of obsessive compulsive disorder I find that I favor the psychodynamic perspective. OCD is classified as a long lasting disorder, in which a person has recurring thoughts and behaviors they feel need to be completed repetitively. I tend to favor the behavioral perspective because I agree with the idea that outside factors influence a persons responses and behaviors. Throughout childhood and even more on, one is constantly taught about their environment and they learn everything they need to know in life through this perspective. Whether that be conditioning a child as they grow, so that they are able to learn and differentiate good from bad through reward and punishment. To understanding why an individual acts a certain way and what

Dylan’s has been diagnosed with depression. As with all mental health problem, the psychological explanations have contrasting views within different perspectives. The proposed causes involve the biological, psychodynamic, humanistic, behaviourist and cognitive models. All the perspectives have their own methods of treatment, but also come with strengths and weaknesses. Throughout this essay I will be evaluating Dylan’s behaviour from three different approaches which are the cognitive, psychodynamic and biological model.

Focus is on the unconscious mind and its influence over conscious behavior (such as nail biting, nervous rituals)

1. The seven perspectives of modern psychology are psychodynamic, behavioral, humanistic, cognitive, biological, evolutionary, and sociocultural. • Psychodynamic Perspective is an approach to understanding behavior and mental processes developed by Freud, which focuses on unconscious processes, unresolved conflicts, and past experiences. Therefore, a psychodynamic perspective view may suggest that Kyra at some point in her early childhood, encountered conflict, in which she either failed or did not achieve a desired grade on an assignment that she had hoped for.

First, I believe the object relations theory places less importance on biologically based drives and

Psychology is a subject which like most applied sciences is divided into several opposing schools of thought. Each of these approaches take a different stance in explaining, describing and predicting human behaviour by applying contrary methods and theories. This written piece will look into the degree of which the biological, cognitive and humanistic approach demonstrate human behaviour. The biological approach views human behaviour from a scientific stance and support this by carrying out experiments in a laboratory whereby the variables are controlled. This provides a better understanding of the outcome and the correlation between them.

According to the 2014 U.S. census there are approximately 318 million people residing in the United States and 1 in 5 people are diagnosed with a mental condition. As a society we have continued to evolve physically, mentally, and emotionally. With this growth, we have become better equipped to handle many situations that we once found difficult to understand and treat, such as mental conditions. With the rise in the number of people diagnosed with a mental condition, society has become more interested in studying the causes and possible treatments of these conditions. Not only are mental conditions widely studied by scientists, the entertainment industry has capitalized on our fascination and has made many others aware of the mental conditions

Freud interprets Dora’s dream using the method of free association. According to MacMillan “Within limits like those of experimental error, the data obtained with free association were valid, that is, true.”(114). Regardless of Macmillan’s validation of the technique, there are still some arguable aspects about it. The first being the possibility that Dora was biased by previous ideas put into her head from previous sessions with Freud. It is natural to human nature to be influenced by someone’s words even if that was not the purpose, and this influence becomes even greater when the ideas come from a recognized and specialized person. Although Freud argues that:

To bring her to an analyst in the first place is out of the ordinary considering his reasoning revolves around the fact that he does not believe his daughter that his good friend would make sexual advances on her, or that she did not like them. He also wants her to believe he is not having an affair with Frau K and eventually convinces her of that, even allowing Freud to try to convince Dora of having homosexual feelings for this woman. Her father is overbearing and aggressive towards Dora, not once believing she could possibly have her own thoughts and feelings. The three main male characters of Frau K, Dora’s father, and Freud all dismiss everything Dora is saying and feeling, calling it hysteria, because she is a woman. During the nineteenth century, more women were diagnosed with hysteria than men, I believe because when a woman would not submit to a man this was seen as crazy. Dora, I believe, did not have hysteria. She was right for walking out in the middle of her analysis because she stood up for what she believed in and no longer let a man tell her what she was

Throughout Dora, evidence of Freud’s patriarchal views can be seen on several occasions. In the psychoanalyst-patient relationship, a certain amount of authoritativeness is to be expected on the part of the analyst, as the expert on the subject. However, at times Freud just seems to shut down Dora’s opinion on the matter, undermining her personal and emotional feelings in favor of his conclusions on the cause of her hysteria. As a child, Dora was continuously treated as a sexual object by her father and her father’s best friend. Though she suffered a childhood of many broken relationships, predominantly the one with her father, Freud attributes her hysteria to repressed sexual desires, making her an object of sex.

Psychoanalysis began with a dream. When he was a boy, Freud dreamt of his mother’s death and how she was “carried into a room by people with bird’s beaks” (Kitcher,1995 p.104). Later, Freud determined the significance of his dream, which was the desire of having a sexual relationship with his mother, also known as the Oedipus complex. The Oedipus complex is defined by Freud as “a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feeling of jealousy for the father” (Dwell and Myers, 2015). Freud developed psychoanalysis to be the “cure to mental illness” (McLeod, 1970). It is defining as a personality theory that “attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders” (Myers and Dewall, 2015). Freud believed every dream was important, and should be analyzed. This started with his most famous case study Anna O. With studying cases, Freud developed two primary procedures, free association and the

Anna Freud was an Austrian Psychoanalyst who is considered one of the founders of child psychoanalysis. She was born in Vienna, Austria on December 3, 1895 to her mother, Martha Bernays, and her notorious father, Sigmund Freud. As a child, she was quite close to her father and was constantly seeking his attention. She trained to be a teacher and moved to Italy, where she taught at the grammar school that she had attended as a child. While working as a teacher, Anna’s father began psychoanalyzing her which propelled her to pursue a career in psychology. In 1922, Anna submitted the results of her psychoanalysis titled, Beating Fantasies and Daydreams, which explored to the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society. The next year she began her own

One of Freud’s first cases was about Dora, and eighteen year old girl, who went to see Freud due to her father urging her to. However, the case of Anna O marked a turning point for Freud, and it even went on to influence psychology as a whole. Both Dora and Anna O. suffered from hysteria, a condition in which the patient shows physical symptoms without an apparent physical cause. For example, paralysis, loss of speech, and convulsions. Her doctor Josef Breuer went on in treating Anna by helping her recall forgotten memories of traumatic events. During discussions with her, it became apparent that she had developed a fear of drinking when a dog she hated drank from her glass. As soon as she had the chance to make these unconscious thoughts conscious her paralysis

Freud continued his work on repression, memories, and past experiences of trauma to be the motive for all neurotic symptoms. Trauma in past experiences was not always the key determinant for hysteria cases, there needed to be another component for the cause. The combination of past trauma and present trauma awakened memories of the earlier trauma which constituted the true aggravation (Storr, 1989, p. 15). However, he began to see a common factor in his work. Next Freud noticed that a common denominator of all his hysteria cases was premature sexual experiences. Sex encompasses many emotions through mind, body, and spirit that can influence a great deal of character if repressed. Storr pointed out that, “Freud became more and more convinced that the chief

From the neurobiological perspective, outside factors mentioned may have affected the way her brain functions, factors such as the death of her father and the departure of her only child. These events may have lead to her developing a sense of loneliness and depression, and which may have led to other disorders that caused her to not function the same as she has before. The “variety” of life changes may have caused a change in routine or other, making her feel disorganized in her life, which may have translated into the way that she teaches.