Exemplar Work
AS exemplar work.
Abnormality Exam Answer: Grade A
“Despite its weaknesses, the psychodynamic model is still useful in understanding and treating psychological disorders.”
Outline key features of the psychodynamic model of abnormality and consider its strengths and/or limitations (18 marks)
The psychodynamic approach to abnormality suggests that it is as a result of unresolved childhood conflicts encountered by the individual. Freud developed two strands to childhood development. The first of these being the approach to personality. He believed that we are all born with individual differences, his ID. This is pleasure seeking and hedonistic in approach. Basically, do what you want when you want. Such an attitude may well be acceptable to society from a young child, most certainly it would be looked upon as abnormal behaviour in a grown human! To counter the effects of the ID Freud argued we develop an Ego, which is really a reality principle. We are socialised into behaviour that is acceptable to society. Again it is easy to see how abnormality could result should the ego fail to develop normally. Finally Freud suggests that the conflicts which inevitably must arise due to the different demands of the id and the ego. The conflict which arise from this are resolved by the development of a conscience in the young child, what Freud termed the super ego.
This paragraph has good AO1 and AO2. It goes straight into answering the question set so wastes no time. The id, ego and super ego are covered but are also related back to the question, namely that failure to develop these three aspects can result in abnormality in adult life.
The second approach adopted by Freud was the notion of psychosexual development. This suggest that in early childhood the bodies erogenous zones actually move around the body, these changes result in different stages of development over time. Freud named these stages ‘the oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital’. Of these the first three carry great importance due to their occurrence in the first three to four years of life. Freud believed that it was possible that people would take longer to pass through a stage than they should. This he called ‘fixation’. Such fixations could in fact lead to abnormality in later life. Should a person not pass normally through all these stages due to experiencing conflicts which they fail to resolve, then abnormal behaviour could be the result in later life. Freud used this approach when attempting to explain the problems faced by his patient ‘Little Hans’.
Again we see in the above paragraph evidence of AO1 and AO2 and once more Freud’s views are related back to the question of abnormality.
Sometimes a person can experience conflicts which are difficult to resolve, the difficulties are such that the ego needs to protect the person, Freud’s so called ego defence mechanisms. Perhaps the most well known of these is repression. When a conflict is so severe that it causes major distress the ego will actually remove the conflict from the conscious mind and hide it away in a person’s unconscious mind. In doing this the conflict is removed from the immediate mind. This does not mean the problem is resolved, far from it. The conflict will still act on the person but they will not know how or why! A typical example of this would be a person with a phobia, be it spiders, snakes, rats etc. There is no logical explanation for this fear other than, as Freud believed we suffered a fright by a spider as a small child and that fear was repressed. There are other defence mechanisms, again a major one being projection. We project some form of our own behaviour/feelings onto others in order to resolve a conflict.
In this paragraph we see more AO2 being used to address the question set regarding the understanding of psychological disorders. AO1 while present is not as much to the fore.
It is obvious then that Freud sees abnormal behaviour resulting from unresolved conflicts which have been repressed. Consequently, if we are to attempt to cure abnormal behaviour in a person it is necessary to gain access to that person’s unconscious mind. Freud suggests that this can be done in three ways, hypnosis, dream analysis and free association. The most common approach adopted is free association or word association as it is sometimes known. It is obvious there are weaknesses in Freud’s approach not least its lack of objectivity and support from experimental research. Freud’s methods are very subjective, some would say unsinkable as they are difficult to prove or disprove. Another weakness was the small number of case studies he undertook when formulating his theories and then generalized to the whole population. All this may be true but one cannot get away from the fact that for some abnormalities Freud’s approach is very successful, particularly when dealing with phobias. The one thing which can be said of the psychodynamic approach is that it offers an alternative explanation to that of the biological approach. Abnormality was not a by product of physical illness but rather had a psychological basis. That was usually some childhood conflict which had not been resolved.
This paragraph tackles the issue of the implications for treatment of the psychodynamic approach and gives some strengths and weaknesses of Freud’s approach.
Abnormality Exam Answer: Grade C
“Despite its weaknesses, the psychodynamic model is still useful in understanding and treating psychological disorders.”
Outline key features of the psychodynamic model of abnormality and consider its strengths and/or limitations (18 marks)
The psychodynamic approach says that abnormality is caused by a person having unresolved conflicts in early life. Freud says that personality develops in a number of stages, the ID, the Ego, and the Super Ego. He believed that there was a struggle between the ID and the Ego in everyone and if this struggle was not resolved it could lead to a person having abnormal behaviour in later life. For example if a child was ‘spoilt’ as a child it could lead to the child becoming a ‘spoilt’ and selfish adult, such behaviour could be termed abnormal.
The above paragraph has some AO1 and AO2 but both are limited. Freud’s basis theory of personality is implied but not explained, also the example quoted is ‘weak’.
Freud argues that we also develop our personality in another way, his so called ‘stage development theory’. This says that from birth to around five we go through various stages, the oral stage, anal, phallic and so on. We should move from one stage to another as a matter of course, if we are to develop into a normal adult. Sometimes however we do not move naturally from one stage to the next. When this happens it can lead to problems when we reach adulthood. He also said that sometimes things happen, such as problems occurring, in one of these stages and if this problem is not cleared up then again this can lead to problems or abnormality when we become an adult. We can see many examples of this in Freud’s work, one such being ‘Little Hans’.
We see in the above paragraph some descriptive work AO1 but it is more ‘common sense’ rather than psychological. There has been a rudimentary attempt at evaluation AO2 but the explanation lacks depth.
Freud believed that some problems were too difficult to solve and were pushed into the unconscious mind of a person. Because the problem was still there it had an effect on a person but they did not know it was doing so. This meant that behaviour in adulthood could be considered to be abnormal and the person would not know why he was behaving in this way. For example when a person is suffering from a phobia of some sort. They know they are frightened of spiders but don’t know why.
The paragraph though brief does show rudimentary knowledge of Freud’s theory of repression but it is not clear, rather it is implied. Also the example given while sound needed more description and evaluation and needed to be more clearly referred back to the question.
It is obvious that Freud believes that abnormal behaviour is as a result of things which happen in our childhood. He also says it is the things in our unconscious which cause this. So if we are to cure some abnormal behaviour we must firstly find out what problem in the unconscious is causing it. We can do this by using what Freud called ‘word association’ when the Psychiatrist says a word and the patient replies with the first word which comes into his head. By analysing the words it is possible to identify the problem in the unconscious. Freud’s theories are difficult to prove but they are also difficult to disprove. The therapist is always right because if the client doesn’t agree then he is in denial. Finally there is not a lot of experimental evidence to support Freud’s theory.
The final paragraph again touches on Freud’s theories of repression and the need to get into the unconscious mind to resolve the conflict. It is though very weak and again is not directly referred back to the question.
Abnormality Exam Answer: Grade E
“Despite its weaknesses, the psychodynamic model is still useful in understanding and treating psychological disorders.”
Outline key features of the psychodynamic model of abnormality and consider its strengths and/or limitations (18 marks)
Freud says that abnormal behaviour is as a result of what happens to us in our childhood. Our personality is made up of the ID, the Ego and the Super Ego. These three things form our personality and we are born with our ID which tells us to do whatever we want. As we get a little older it is not acceptable to do such things, for example it is OK for a two year old to run around naked in the sunshine, but would not be acceptable for a fifteen year old to do so. Society puts rules onto people this Freud called ‘our ego’ and this causes conflicts. These conflicts are solved by us developing a conscience of what is right and wrong. This Freud said was our super ego. If these three things do not develop properly we will become abnormal when we grow up.
The above paragraph is a simple common sense explanation of Freud’s theory of the development of the personality. Little or no attempt has been made to link this to the question of psychological disorders.
Freud also said that we develop in stages, one of these is the oral stage. If we do not get through the oral stage properly then we will have abnormal problems in later life. This is because we have become stuck in one of these stages. As these stages occur early in our life Freud says that our childhood is very important if we are to be normal as adults.
Again we see a very basic and flawed view of Freud’s theory of psychosexual development and no attempt is really made to refer this theory to the question set.
Finally Freud says that sometimes we experience things which are so horrible we push them into our unconscious mind to help us cope with the situation. This is why people suffer from phobias because something has frightened them when they were a child. It is very difficult to prove Freud’s theories as they were all thought out by himself, so we don’t know if he was right or wrong. Because everything happens in our unconscious mind we cannot set up an experiment to test if Freud was right. What Freud’s theory does for us is to give us an alternative explanation of why we have people who are abnormal in their behaviour that put forward by the medical model, which says abnormality is caused by physical illness.
This paragraph like the others touches on the basic theory of Freud. The essay has concentrated on the psychodynamic approach and made little effort to relate it to the question set, namely how does this approach affect our thinking about psychological disorders.