Summary of the Perspective
​HancockPrinciples of the Psychodynamic perspective
  • Behaviour is influenced by the interaction (dynamism) of drives and forces within the personality (psyche).
  • Behaviour comes from the unconscious personality.
  • Personality is shaped by relationships, experience and conflict over time, particularly during childhood.
  • The mind is like an iceberg. It has conscious, subconscious and unconscious thought, all of which can influence our behaviour
 
Types of Behaviour Studied
  • What do your actions say about your unconscious personality?
  • What do your actions say about your childhood?
 
Practical Applications
  • Issues of Mental Health – using psychoanalysis to uncover unconscious conflicts
  • Child Psychology – when should you stop being a daddy’s girl or mummy’s boy?
  • Criminal Psychology – is crime due to having too much of a naughty side?
 
Debate it strongly links with
It takes the determinist side of the free will / determinism debate as it believes that behaviour is caused and determined by the unconscious mind.
 
Strengths
  • Allows psychologists suggest causes of mental disorders
  • Allows psychologists to suggest why individuals behave in ways they cannot easily explain or understand.
  • Uses case studies providing rich, detailed data
 
Weaknesses
  • Studies often use unrepresentative samples
  • Research Methods may not be objective and are open to bias.
  • The perspective is based on concepts that are difficult to test and verify scientifically.
 
Research Methods
  • Use of case studies open to subjectivity affecting validity
  • Case studies difficult to replicate so issues with reliability of findings
 
Methodological Issues
  • Allows both qualitative and quantitative data to be gathered which provides rich, in-depth data about the behaviour under consideration.
  • Methods can be longitudinal showing development of behaviour
  • Longitudinal research can suffer from attrition of participants
 
Core Studies