The Psychodynamic Model of Abnormality

It assumes that mental illness arises from unconscious and repressed conflicts at a young age, like Freud’s Oedipus Complex. It explains the causes for mental illness as behavior that can be explained in terms of the factors that motivate it. Unresolved, unconscious conflicts form in early childhood and create anxiety, like the death of a parent and then repressing the associated feelings. If the associated feelings are then re-experienced later in life for example, it could lead to previously unexpressed anger directed inwards towards the self, causing depression.

This anxiety is dealt with by the ego defenses such as projection or repression, however if the defenses are overused it can be the cause of disturbed behavior, which could then lead to neurotic behavior.

Freud also said that there are three aspects to your personality that determine how you behave, the id, ego and superego. The id demands immediate satisfaction of needs, the superego contains your morals and the ego that controls the fight between the two.

Assumptions of the causes of abnormality in this model include the fight between id and superego causing abnormality because of the conflict between the two. It assumes that mental illness is the result of psychological rather than physical causes.

Another assumption of the causes of abnormality is a fixation at a psychosexual stage due to conflict. Freud believed there were numerous stages that individuals go through during development. Major conflicts can cause an individual to become fixated at that stage, at times of great emotional stress a person may regress to that earlier stage of development.

The Psychodynamic model uses methods of treatment such as free association, in which the therapist asks a question and the patient is encouraged to talk freely about anything that comes into their mind, rich interpretation, where the therapist explains the patients thoughts and feelings, analysis of dreams because its thought they express the innermost workings of the mind and transference where the patient gives insight into their other relationships, sometimes revealing other problems to be dealt with.

In evaluation of this model, Freud’s emphasis on early conflicts means that present conflicts may be overlooked, which undermines it’s effectiveness to treat mental illness. Psychoanalysis has a limited applicability, only being suitable for motivated intelligent and verbally able patients. This however could be explained by the poor research evidence he used, which was largely of middle-class Viennese women suffering from mental disorders. It is a big generalization from this sample to that of the normal development of children.

This model is also only suitable for those mental illness where some insight into the past is retained. Recovery depends on insight and working through past problems.

Freud was overconcerned with sexual factors and made little reference to the influence of social factors on development, this may reflect the culture in which he lived where there was much repression of sexual feelings.

This model is a reductionist model because it suggests that the patient is controlled by instinctual forces and only expert help can resolve past problems. It’s also a determinist model because it is based on innate, biological mechanisms of psychosocial development with some room for cultural influences.

However this model was very influential and was the first attempt to explain mental illness in psychological terms. It was supported by extensive theory and practice and still has enormous influence on our understanding of normal and abnormal behavior in literature and the world in general. Much of this understanding has been absorbed into our culture so we are not aware of it.