A student asks their teacher ‘why are there so many approaches to psychology?’
Their teacher replies ‘ Because each has something different to offer to our understanding of behaviour, making each approach unique.’
Discuss what makes the psychodynamic approach unique. Refer to other approaches in your answer. (12 marks) In terms of human behaviour, psychology provides alternative perspectives, known as approaches, which give explanation to human behaviours. What makes each approach unique is that they all have their own focal points for how to explain behaviour. For example, the biological approach looks to the evolutionary processes and gene mutations/hormone levels, whilst the cognitive approach looks at how behaviour is influenced by internal mental processes. However, the psychodynamic approach is often questioned about what makes it unique when compared to other approaches. In my essay, I will discuss this. Pioneered by Freud, the first component of the psychodynamic approach that brings uniqueness is its assumptions for the root causes of behaviour. The psychodynamic approach reduces behaviours to hidden thoughts and instinctive drives, which Freud deemed as the unconscious mind. Freud argued that these instinctive drives have been present since birth, seeking to 'gain pleasure and avoid pain', influencing the choices that an individual may make and the behaviours they may produce in order to do so. This makes the approach unique because it relies heavily upon the unconscious mind, whilst other approaches such as the cognitive and social learning theory look to conscious experiences as an explanation of behaviour. The cognitive approach sees behaviour as shaped by internal mental processes, which encode stimuli in the immediate surrounding environment and produce an appropriate outcome behaviour that allows interaction with said stimuli.
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