Psychodynamic theories and perspectives give human beings an understanding of what goes on in one’s mind. In a health care setting, psychodynamic perspective helps health practitioners to develop insights on what a patient’s mind believes, in addition to behavioral characteristics.
Understanding an individual’s mind helps people to solve personal problems that may cause trauma and psychological torture. This involves assisting affected persons to accept hardships and events; the results are improvements in an individual’s welfare and relational behaviors, both private and interpersonal.
Psychodynamic theories are limited by the fact that they rely on assumptions to analyze situations and behavior (Feist & Feist, 2009). The assumptions include belief that every behavior has a cause and the aspect that unconsciousness affects emotions. Assumptions also include conviction that childhood has an impact on personal behaviors and future emotions and that identity, as well as ego, makes up one’s personality. The defense mechanisms in case of a problem include defiance, regression, desire, repression, and unstable reactions.
Psychodynamic theories affect individuals’ character in a number of ways. For instance, one may link obsessive hand washing to childhood trauma that results to such behaviors in adulthood. Other behaviors in adults that are interlinked with childhood include fear, nervousness, hair plucking, sexual compulsions, and neurotic behaviors. This may be realized in an individual’s mannerism, way of thinking, and emotional relief.
The traits exhibited include shyness, reliability, sociability, hostility, self-belief, and ambitions. The level of the impact on individuals affects personal feelings and self-motivation. This enables one to solve self-conflicts and relieve oneself from guilt. An individual’s personality is based on the possibility of viewing events, creating desires, and working towards the achievement of set goals and objectives (Leichsenring & Rabung, 2011).
This involves unconscious motives, and terrible conflicts between desire and personal obligations. The persona formed involves arts, jokes, clear accidents, unstable word use and dreams, all which are subjective. In that case, the ability to balance all these systems and the objects of interests determine how successful one becomes. Personal identity and ego reacts to pleasure and personal conscience towards life’s activities and reality principles.
The effects of psychodynamic theories on interpersonal relationships are felt greatly in how conflicts are resolved, in addition to the ability to maintain relations. The humanist approach looks at childhood and views neglect and physical deformities as some of the causes of emotional disorders. In such cases, persons are determined to achieve their own goals and thus have no business with others. Personality theories influence interpersonal relations in a manner that most people are not able to control.
Interpersonal relations are highly determined by social as well as environmental issues and conflicts that require varying levels of human knowledge to solve. In situations that a number of people are involved, the key factors in shaping character are compensation, defeat, personal beliefs, and understanding (Feist & Feist, 2009). The need for love and affection takes a great cause in shaping an individual; lack of these emotional needs brings about hostility and anxiety among the affected.
For people to work together, they must share goals and ideologies, or if not, have strong interpersonal feelings and desires to associate with others. Most interpersonal characters are developed while people engage in communal responsibilities and activities such as marriage ceremonies and social rituals that bring people together. Individuals’ personalities influence what an individual can do for self and society.
References
Feist, J., & Feist, G. (2009). Theories of personality (7th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.
Leichsenring, F., & Rabung, S. (2011). Long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy in complex mental disorders: update of a meta-analysis. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 199(1), 15-22.