Psychodynamic psychology emphasizes the systematic study of the psychological forces that underlie human behaviour, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience.
Consciousness is the awareness of the self in space and time and is defined as human awareness to both internal and external stimuli.
Most psychodynamic approaches use talk therapy to examine maladaptive functions that developed early in life and are, at least in part, unconscious.
Self is the archetype symbolizing the totality of the personality. It represents the striving for unity, wholeness, and integration.
Persona is the mask or image a person presents to the world. It is designed to make a particular impression on others, while concealing a person’s true nature.
Shadow is the side of a personality that a person does not consciously display in public. It may have positive or negative qualities.
Carl Jung (1875-1961) distinguished two general attitudes–introversion and extraversion–and four functions–thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting:
- Introvert: Inner-directed; needs privacy and space; chooses solitude to recover energy; often reflective.
- Extravert: Outer-directed; needs sociability; chooses people as a source of energy; often action-oriented.
- Thinking function: Logical; sees cause and effect relations; cool, distant, frank, and questioning.
- Feeling function: Creative, warm, intimate; has a sense of valuing positively or negatively. (Note that this is not the same as emotion.)
- Sensing function: Sensory; oriented toward the body and senses; detailed, concrete, and present.
- Intuitive: Sees many possibilities in situations; goes with hunches; impatient with earthy details; impractical; sometimes not present
Introduction to Psychology: introduction to major perspectives:
1. Sociocultural psychology
2. Biological psychology
3. Psychodynamic psychology
4. Behaviourist psychology
5. Humanist psychology
6. Cognitive psychology
7. Evolutionary psychology
