Discuss the psychodynamic approach to psychology.

Freud also believed that there were three levels of consciousness: the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious. The conscious is the thoughts that you are currently focusing upon. The preconscious mind consists of information that can easily be retrieved into consciousness. The unconscious mind is the information that is very hard, nearly impossible, to bring into the conscious mind. Freud was the first to introduce the concept of the 'unconscious mind' and because of this it has helped people to evaluate rational and irrational concepts of the human personality. As you can see that as Most of Freud's theory is based upon internal processes like the ones above, it is very difficult for his theories to be tested therefore rendering it as speculation only.

An important part of Freud's theory was the different stages of psychosexual development in the early personality development in a child. In each stage the child's energy or 'libido' is concentrated a particular area of the body.

) The Oral stage. This occurs from birth to about 18 moths. During this stage the child experiences gratification from eating, breastfeeding and other activities involving the mouth.

2) The Anal stage. This occurs from around 18 to 36 months and involves the child receiving gratification from either withholding or expelling faeces.

3) The Phallic stage. This occurs between 3 and 6 years of age and the genitals are the main focus of libido in this stage. At the age of five the boys develop the Oedipus complex. This involves the child having sexual desires for the mother, therefore seeing the father as a rival and becoming jealous of him. They then begin to fear the father who might realise what is gong on then castrate the boy. A process called Identification resolves this complex and this is where the boy adopts the father's attitudes and attributes and developing a superego. The same process also happens in girls of the same age but they develop an attraction to the father not the mother and instead develop a fear of the mother and of losing her love. This results in Identification with the mother.

4) The Latency stage. This lasts from about 6 until the start of puberty. During this stage girls and boys spend very little time together.

5) The Genital stage. This starts and puberty and carries on through to adult life. The libido is again focused on the genitals in this stage, but generally involves sexual exploration with a partner.

Conflict in each of these stages and between the structure of the personality is very important in Freud's theory. The conflict must be resolved in each stage of the development. If it is not then the libido becomes fixated in this stage, leading to anxiety in later life. There are certain processes used by the Ego to reduce the amount of anxiety caused by conflict.

) Repression. This is where a painful or guilt provoking thought is kept out of the conscious mind.

2) Displacement. This is where an emotion from the person who has caused conflict is redirected on to a third party.

3) Projection. Unknowingly displacing ones own unacceptable thoughts on to someone else.

4) Denial. Denying the existence of something threatening or guilt provoking.

5) Intellectualisation. Coping with a threatening thought or event by removing the emotion and therefore trying to rationalise it.

6) Reaction formation. Adopting an attitude diametrically opposed to ones real feeling.

Freud's theory was developed mainly in the late 19th century and was based upon a group of abnormal individuals who had come to him for guidance. Because of this fact and the fact that his subjects were nearly all white, middle class, middle aged women, it shows that his subjects only represented a tiny part of the population at the time. The study was not cross culturally valid and ignores other social influences. Despite this however, many key concepts of Freud's theory showed a great insight to human nature and therefore have endured the test of time.