Psychodynamic counselling is great at looking at the past, what’s happened, how it’s affected you, looking at your behaviour, feelings and emotions: looking at the way the different aspects (ID, Ego, and Superego) affects you and which is the stronger force. In Counselling with me – if one is more dominant than the other – I would raise this in the session with you so we can work through this and help you to even out the balance of the 3 so the internal conflicts can be stopped.
Psychodynamic approach is based on a view that looks to explain your personality – by looking at the conscious and unconscious parts of you, your desires and beliefs. The founder of Psychodynamic theory (Sigmund Freud) created an approach where your personality consists of 3 different aspects: ID (responsible for instincts and pleasure-seeking), the superego (which attempts to obey the rules of parents and society), and the ego (which mediates between them according to the demands of reality). Psychodynamic counselling is great at looking at the past, what’s happened, how it’s affected you, looking at your behaviour, feelings and emotions: looking at the way the different aspects (ID, Ego, and Superego) affect you and which is the stronger force. In Counselling with me – if one is more dominant than the other – I would raise this in the session with you so we can work through this and help you to even out the balance of the 3 so the internal conflicts can be stopped.
Assumptions which are made when using a Psychodynamic approach
- Your behaviour and feelings are powerfully affected by your unconscious.
- Your behaviour and feelings as adults (including psychological problems) are rooted in your childhood experiences.
- All behaviour has a cause (usually unconscious), even slips of the tongue, therefore all behaviour is determined.
- Personality is made up of three parts: the id, ego and super-ego.
- Parts of the unconscious mind (the id and superego) are in constant conflict with the conscious part of the mind (the ego). This conflict creates anxiety, which could be dealt with by the ego’s use of defence mechanisms.
- Personality is shaped as the drives are modified by different conflicts at different times in childhood (during psychosexual development).
The ego attempts to keep these conflicts and their discomfort from reaching consciousness by employing a variety of defence mechanisms, usually at an unconscious level
- Denial: you can deny the source of the anxiety (I didn’t fail my exam, it must be a mistake) denial tends to show up in daydreams or fantasies, about how things might have been: which is a common way you cope with anxiety.
- Repression: getting rid of the memory, of the old, bad memories or even current ones
- Regression: moving backwards, when you are stressed, you give up the adult coping strategies and move back to the stage where you are fixated e.g. stressed.
- Reaction formation: excessive behaviour – doing or thinking the opposite e.g. a woman who is angry at her boss may become kind and courteous.
- Projection: ascribing an unwanted desire to someone else
- Rationalization: Finding a rational explanation for something you may have done wrong e.g. your boyfriend breaks up with you and you rationalize that you never really liked him that much anyway
- Intellectualization: Turn the feeling into a thought e.g. someone finds out his/her partner has cancer: will deal with it by focusing on the disease and becoming an expert on it rather than focusing/dealing on the emotions.
- Displacement: Moving a desire from one object to another e.g. anger at work, take it home and let it go on a partner or a pet.
- Sublimation: transforming your desires into something constructive e.g. when you’re angry go out and chop wood.
- Intellectual and emotional insight into the underlying causes of the client’s problems
- Working through or fully exploring the implications of insight
- Strengthening the ego’s control over the id and the superego
- Individual Psychology (Alfred Adler)
- Analytical Psychology (Carl Jung)
- Will Therapy (Otto Rank)
- Interpersonal Relations School (Harry Stack Sullivan)
- Emphasis is placed on the unconscious conflicts
- The belief issues develop from an early childhood
- Everybody has an unconscious mind
- Issues will re-arise in clients, the therapist’s relationship may consist of transference and counter-transference
Psychodynamic approach is based on a view that looks to explain your personality – by looking at the conscious and unconscious parts of you, your desires and beliefs. The founder of Psychodynamic theory (Sigmund Freud) created an approach where your personality consists of 3 different aspects: ID (responsible for instincts and pleasure-seeking), the superego (which attempts to obey the rules of parents and society), and the ego (which mediates between them according to the demands of reality).
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