Psychodynamic treatments for abnormality

By Sophie Baulcomb and Aaron Bray

Psychodynamic approach

• This approach sees mental disorders as coming from the unconscious mind usually from repressed thoughts or emotions from the patients childhood. Therefore the only way to correct this is for the therapist to revisit these unconscious ideas and tackle and change them

• These repressed emotions can cause fixation on one of freuds psycho-sexual stages.

• This can take place in the form of dream analysis, free association or ink blot tests.

Dream analysis

• When we sleep, it is believed that our ego’s defences are more relaxed, allowing for our unconscious to enter in the form of a dream.

• However, as this is threatening, material is disguised and we receive symbols in our dreams.

• Therapists aim to transfer the manifest content (what we remember from the dream) to the latent content (what it actually means).

Dream Analysis

• This is through dream work and can take some time and a lot of dreams need to be recorded to be more accurate about what they mean.

• There are many interpretive ways that people have created to transfer the manifest content to latent content, such as dream dictionaries.

LINK: www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/

Free association

• This treatment aims to access the repressed material by lowering the ego’s defence mechanisms. The therapist allows the patient to talk freely about experiences in both the present and the past.

• Free association was developed to change the thought patterns created by the patient in the unconscious mind, for example repression, displacement and denial.

• This treatment aims to allow the patient to cure themselves by themselves conflicting their own perception of events.

Free association

• This treatment type is very expensive and is a longer term commitment.

• It can prove disruptive to the patients life and therefore the effectiveness is questioned.

• It is a reductionist approach as it claims that only psycho-sexual development is to blame for the development of abnormality.

Psychodynamic treatment of anorexia

• The psychodynamic explanation see’s anorexia as a fixation on the oral stage of sexual development, and a refusal to grow up. Not eating can cause puberty to halt and therefore creates the appearance of a child’s body, and the desire to be cared for by their parents. It also sees sexual activity and eating connected, therefore not eating is a way of repressing sexual thoughts. During the oral stage of development the ego develops, the conflict between this and the id is what creates the self controlled adult.

• If the child's ego did not develop properly then they may become too focused on the ultimate consequences of their eating and may therefore control their eating more strictly.

• To combat this a therapist is likely to encourage the patient to discuss their childhood as there may be an under lying reason in their up bringing, by revisiting the time when the ego and super ego were developing the therapist may be able to help the patient develop them fully, allowing normal thoughts to exist.

• McDonalds Anorexic• I forgot I was anorexic. For one second I forgot about my

anorexia, my weight, my calories, everything. I don't know why but my dad was driving through the McDonald's drive through and I ordered something I would order as a kid. I could eat it all without a single pound packing on.. anyways, I ordered Oreo flurry, cheeseburger, and fries. I ate it all. I forgot that I was on a diet, that I was loosing weight. I forgot my identity. I completely forgot that I was anorexic and I would be fat if I ate "bad food" or gain any weight. well I was smiling after I ate it but then about 1 second after I smiled I realize I what I just did.. I knew I was gonna gain 5 pounds.. and then that climax type music you hear in movies started playing and I was about to scream but I woke up.