Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
I realise that I have not covered much of the theory in my journals as it involved so much reflection on my own development so I will attempt to demonstrate what I have learned and what I have omitted from my journals .
Innitially I was sceptical about Freud, I did not like his psycho-sexual viewpoint as I believe there are more valid interpretations. However, I can identify with his theory about how the mind works with regard to the unconscious, the Id serves as a reservoir of primitive instincts and impulses that are the ultimate motives o our behaviour, the ego , the conscious rational part of the mind, which makes decisions and deals with external reality, and the Superego, the conscience, the storehouse of rules and taboos about what we think we should and should not do.
The Ego and Superego are almost constantly in conflict with each other, the Id wants its primitive impulses to be acted upon, the ego knows that such behaviour is not acceptable by the external world and the Superego tries to make us feel guilty because what we want to do is wrong or immoral. As a result of this conflict, Freud argued that the mind developed defence mechanisms such as repression, denial, reaction formation, projection etc to protect the ego.
Not only what we consciously believe to be true is likely to be distorted by the defence mechanisms and for me this was highlighted as I read the true story of Sybil, a woman with sixteen personalities which demonstrated the uncanny power of the unconscious mind in motivating human behaviour but also how the dynamics of destructive family relationships and the denial of self realization impacted her behaviour.
For me, the book highlighted the importance of the early human need to maintain close contact with parent or mother, John Bowlby noted that the insecure experiencing resulting from inconsistent or poor parenting, involving abandonment or loss, can lead a child or adolescent to live in a constant...