Psychodynamic Approach

Psychodynamic approach is based on a view that looks to explain your personality – by looking at the conscious and unconscious parts of you, your desires and beliefs. The founder of Psychodynamic theory (Sigmund Freud) created an approach where your personality consists of 3 different aspects: ID (responsible for instincts and pleasure-seeking), the superego (which attempts to obey the rules of parents and society), and the ego (which mediates between them according to the demands of reality).

Psychodynamic counselling Birmingham is great at looking at the past, what’s happened, how it’s affected you, looking at your behaviour, feelings and emotions: looking at the way the different aspects (ID, Ego, and Superego) affect you and which is the stronger force. In Counselling with me – if one is more dominant than the other – I would raise this in the session with you so we can work through this and help you to even out the balance of the 3 so the internal conflicts can be stopped.

Assumptions which are made when using a Psychodynamic approach

1. Your behaviour and feelings are powerfully affected by your unconscious.
2. Your behaviour and feelings as adults (including psychological problems) are rooted in your childhood experiences.
3. All behaviour has a cause (usually unconscious), even slips of the tongue, therefore all behaviour is determined.
4. Personality is made up of three parts: the id, ego and super-ego.
5. Parts of the unconscious mind (the id and superego) are in constant conflict with the conscious part of the mind (the ego). This conflict creates anxiety, which could be dealt with by the ego’s use of defence mechanisms.
6. Personality is shaped as the drives are modified by different conflicts at different times in childhood (during psychosexual development).

The ego attempts to keep these conflicts and their discomfort from reaching consciousness by employing a variety of defence mechanisms, usually at an unconscious level