What you'll learn

• What the psychodynamic approach assumes about behaviour and personality.
• How the unconscious mind can influence thoughts, feelings and actions.
• Why Freud argued that childhood experiences are especially important.
• How to use the tripartite personality — id, ego and superego — in AO1, AO2 and AO3 answers.

The starting point: what is an “assumption”?

An assumption is a basic belief that an approach uses to explain behaviour. In Eduqas essays, assumptions are mainly AO1: you describe what the approach believes. You then use AO2 to apply those ideas to a scenario, and AO3 to evaluate how convincing they are.

Freud’s approach is called psychodynamic because it sees the mind as active and full of “dynamic” forces pushing against each other. A person might appear calm on the outside, but Freud would argue that hidden wishes, fears and conflicts may be shaping their behaviour.

Assumption 1: the unconscious mind

Freud argued that not all mental activity is available to conscious awareness. In other words, you may not fully know why you think, feel or behave in certain ways.

Conscious, preconscious and unconscious

The conscious mind contains thoughts and feelings you are aware of right now. For example, you may be aware that you are reading these notes.

The preconscious mind contains information you are not thinking about right now but could bring into awareness quite easily, such as what you had for breakfast.

The unconscious mind contains hidden wishes, fears, traumatic memories and conflicts. Freud believed these unconscious forces can influence behaviour indirectly.

The iceberg model is a useful way to visualise this: only a small part of the mind is visible above the surface, while the largest part is hidden underneath.

This idea is linked to psychic determinism, which means the belief that behaviour has a psychological cause, even when the person is unaware of it.

Freud also believed the mind protects itself from distress through defence mechanisms. A defence mechanism is an unconscious strategy used by the ego to reduce anxiety. For example, repression means pushing threatening thoughts or memories into the unconscious.

Assumption 2: childhood experiences shape adult personality

Freud believed that early childhood experiences are crucial in shaping adult personality. He argued that problems in adulthood may come from unresolved conflicts in childhood.

A key part of this is Freud’s theory of psychosexual stages. These are stages of development where the child’s pleasure and conflict are focused on different parts of the body or different developmental issues.

Psychosexual stages and fixation

Freud proposed five stages:

• Oral stage: from birth to about 1 year, focused on the mouth, sucking and feeding.
• Anal stage: around 1 to 3 years, focused on toilet training, control and independence.
• Phallic stage: around 3 to 6 years, involving family relationships, identification and the Oedipus conflict.
• Latency stage: around 6 years to puberty, where sexual impulses are quieter and energy is directed into learning and friendships.
• Genital stage: from puberty onwards, focused on mature adult relationships.

For example, Freud suggested that an overly strict or overly relaxed approach to toilet training could lead to later “anal” personality traits, such as excessive orderliness or messiness. You do not need to accept this as fact — in AO3, you can criticise how difficult it is to test scientifically.

Assumption 3: tripartite personality

Freud proposed that personality has three parts. This is called the tripartite personality, meaning a personality made up of three interacting structures.

The id

The id is present from birth and operates according to the pleasure principle. This means it seeks immediate satisfaction of basic instincts and desires. It is impulsive and does not consider rules, consequences or other people’s needs.

The ego

The ego develops to deal with reality. It operates according to the reality principle, meaning it tries to satisfy the id’s desires in a realistic and socially acceptable way.

The superego

The superego develops through internalising moral rules, often from parents and society. It operates according to the morality principle. It rewards the person with pride when they behave well and punishes them with guilt when they do wrong.

How the assumptions fit together

The three assumptions work best as a chain:

1. Early childhood experiences create important emotional conflicts.
2. Some conflicts become unconscious because they are too threatening.
3. The id, ego and superego continue to interact, creating anxiety or symptoms.
4. Behaviour can reveal unconscious conflict indirectly, through dreams, slips of the tongue, phobias or defence mechanisms.

This is why Freud’s therapy focused on making the unconscious conscious. In the wider psychodynamic topic, dream analysis is the named therapy/application: dreams are interpreted as symbolic expressions of unconscious wishes and conflicts.

Research anchors for Eduqas essays

Freud (1909): Little Hans

Freud’s classic study, Freud (1909), is known as the case study of Little Hans, a five-year-old boy with a phobia of horses. Freud did not treat Hans directly; much of the evidence came from letters and reports written by Hans’s father.

Freud interpreted Hans’s horse phobia as a displacement of unconscious fear linked to the Oedipus conflict. In AO1, this supports the assumptions because it involves childhood experience, unconscious conflict and the interaction of desire, fear and morality.

In AO3, the study gives rich qualitative detail, but it is only one case study, so it has low generalisability. Freud’s interpretation may also be biased because the evidence was filtered through Hans’s father and Freud’s own theory. A behaviourist might offer an alternative explanation: Hans may have learned fear after seeing a horse collapse.

Ethically, by modern BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct standards, there are concerns about consent, protection from harm and confidentiality. Hans was a child, so his ability to give informed consent was limited, and discussing his fears and family relationships could have caused distress.

Bowlby (1944): Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves

The later psychodynamic study often linked with this approach is Bowlby (1944), which compared 44 young thieves with a control group of 44 non-thieves. Bowlby found that many of the “affectionless” thieves had experienced early separation from their mothers.

This supports the psychodynamic assumption that childhood experiences can influence later behaviour and emotional development. However, the study is correlational, so it cannot prove that early separation caused delinquency. Other factors, such as poverty, family stress or school experiences, may have contributed.

Ethically, the study involved vulnerable young people, so modern researchers would need careful consent procedures, confidentiality, protection from psychological harm and sensitive debriefing. The label “affectionless” may also be considered stigmatising.

Evaluation of the assumptions

Strengths

One strength is that the psychodynamic approach takes emotions, childhood and inner conflict seriously. This gives it explanatory depth, especially for behaviours that seem irrational, such as phobias, dreams or repeated relationship patterns.

A second strength is real-world influence. Psychodynamic ideas contributed to talking therapies and encouraged society to take early childhood experiences seriously. Bowlby’s work, for example, influenced thinking about childcare, attachment and emotional development.

Weaknesses

A major weakness is scientific status. Many psychodynamic ideas are hard to test objectively because unconscious motives cannot be directly observed. This makes the approach difficult to falsify, meaning it can be hard to prove wrong.

Another weakness is methodological. Freud relied heavily on case studies, which are detailed but subjective. They often use small samples, retrospective reports and interpretation rather than controlled measurement.

A further criticism is determinism. The approach can imply that adult behaviour is strongly determined by early childhood, leaving less room for free will, change and later life experiences.

There are also issues of cultural and gender bias. Some Freudian concepts were developed in a particular historical context and may reflect sexist assumptions about gender roles and family life.