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Psychology Past to Present — The Five Approaches

The Psychodynamic Approach: personality, defence mechanisms and the formation of relationships

  • 3 things to know
  • AS Unit 1

Overview

Defence mechanisms, the id, ego and superego, and how early childhood and fixation are used to explain the partners we choose.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Which part of the tripartite personality is present from birth, and on what principle does it operate?

Process

What is a defence mechanism, and which part of the personality uses them?

Key term

Distinguish displacement from projection.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What is a defence mechanism, and which part of the personality uses them?

    Model answer

    An unconscious strategy that protects the mind from anxiety by distorting reality; the ego deploys them.

  2. 2

    Define repression.

    Model answer

    Pushing a threatening memory or impulse out of conscious awareness so that it cannot be deliberately recalled, although it continues to affect behaviour.

  3. 3

    Distinguish displacement from projection.

    Model answer

    Displacement redirects an unacceptable feeling onto a safer target, whereas projection attributes one's own unacceptable feeling to somebody else.

  4. 4

    Which part of the tripartite personality is present from birth, and on what principle does it operate?

    Model answer

    The id, which operates on the pleasure principle and demands immediate gratification.

  5. 5

    What is the role of the ego?

    Model answer

    It works on the reality principle, balancing the demands of the id and the superego against what the real world will allow.

  6. 6

    When and how does the superego develop?

    Model answer

    At around the age of five, when the child resolves the Oedipus or Electra complex by identifying with the same-sex parent and taking on their moral standards.

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Psychology Past to Present — The Five Approaches
Contemporary Debates
Principles of Research and Application of Research Methods
Mathematical Requirements for Psychology (Appendix A: AS Unit 2 and A2 Unit 4)

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