Comparing Freud's Contribution Of The Psychodynamic Approach To

The psychodynamic approach is spilt into tow parts firstly the basic idea that moral behaviour is controlled by the superego. The superego is the part of the personality that comprises that conscience and the ego-ideal. The conscience represents the punishing parent and the egoideal represents the rewarding parent. Therefore Freud maintains that our moral values are acquired in response to the development of the superego which is the second part. It was Freud's theory each part of the superego is acquired through a different process of identification. Freud states that the identification process happens after the phallic stage of the psychosexual development has been resolved. The phallic stage runs between the ages of three and five to six …show more content…
Freud's theory suggests that girls in the phallic stage believe that they have been castrated due to the lack of penis and blame their mothers for this which causes hostility with the mother. Girls at this age are scared of loosing the love from their mother so they repress the romantic feelings for their father and identify with their mother ensuring the love from both parents. This identification is said to be the strongest factor in female moral development.
During the phallic stage the child internalises the rules of right and wrong held by the same sex parent. Freud believed that some children experience different levels of guilt depending on the strength of their identification. The strength of identification can be influenced by a couple of factors.
The first one being that if a parent used the threat of loss of love as punishment the child has a stronger conscience as identification is based on fear. Parents who used physical punishment and withdrawal of privileges as a means of punishment produce children with stronger consciences as strongly identified children particularly boy are thought to be physically afraid of their parents. I should point out this has not been fully supported with