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Psychodynamic Psychology: The History Of Psychodynamic Psychology

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The history of Psychodynamic psychology originated with Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century. Freud proposed a psychodynamic theory to which personality consists of the id. The Id is present at birth and it resides in the world of unconsciousness. Freud also said that the unconscious is also a place where human instinctual biological drives reside. The drives direct our behaviour towards choices that promise to satisfy our basic human needs. The drives ensure our survival like drinking water and eating food, the desire for reproduction and the necessity for aggression. In contrast, behaviourism looks at environment contingencies surrounding learning rather than mental processes as opposed to psychodynamics which looks at things happening in the mind …show more content…

Our personality is shaped as the drives are modified by different conflicts at different times in childhood during psychosexual development. In comparison behaviourism believes the opposite. They believe that as Freud’s theories cannot be scientifically proven. Freud’s psychodynamic theory was to understand the unconscious mind and the reasons behind certain behaviors which later led him to investigate the meaning of dreams. The Behaviorist approach to psychology was to study observable behaviour and argued that the psychodynamic approach lacked validity and was not quantitative research. In 1905 Freud proposed that psychological development in childhood takes place in a series of fixed stages. These stages were dived into 5 parts; Freud said personality will be developed by the time one is a teenager. They are called psychosexual stages because each stage represents the fixation of libido known as sexual drives or instincts on a different area of the body. Fixation is part of our sexuality left behind at an earlier sage of psychosexual development. The psychosexual stages

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