I have been reflecting on what I have recently read (mainly but not entirely in Wikipedia) concerning what is termed Psychodynamics. The 'neutrality' of the present Wikipedia entry is currently (25 December 2012) 'under dispute', Nevertheless, I think that the term psychodynamics does communicate something useful, corresponding as it does to a real phenomenon very much at work amongst human beings, I would therefore like to share with my readers in this less public domain some of my ideas concerning the subject. I am happy to have my limited knowledge of the historical context and the associated textual material corrected or amplified, and hope that clarification of and greater confidence in the use of the term will emerge.
My recent attempt to amend the entry in Wikipedia met immediately with objection, and was very firmly rejected by another editor with the comment: ' ....you cannot just change sourced content because you have a different idea!' So I realised that I had stumbled unwittingly upon a controversial matter, and have therefore transferred my 'public thinking' to this present page, in the hope of having a good humoured dialogue with my readers and thus arrive at a satisfactory resolution of what to Wikipaedia (at least at present) has become a somewhat impenetrable matter.
This was the first sentence - clearly a definition - that I proposed for Wikipedia: 'Psychodynamics is the study of the impact upon the total being, both psychic and somatic, of personal and inter-personal experience; of the principles governing both that initial impact and also the subsequent interaction between the persons concerned. It is the theory and systematic study of the psychological and psychosomatic forces that underlie both personal and inter-personal human behaviour.
This is perhaps a rather wordy definition and it might be possible to boil it down to something more quintessential, but let's see. Looking at a number of dictionaries, the shortest definition I have discovered is found in Collins English Dictionary: the study of interacting motives and emotions. Another rather longer offering, similar to several others, comes from Dictionary.com: 1. any clinical approach to personality, as Freud's, that sees personality as the result of a dynamic interplay of conscious and unconscious factors. 2. the aggregate of motivational forces, both conscious and unconscious, that determine human behavior and attitudes.
Looking now at my own provisional definition and these meanings given in two contemporary dictionaries, I propose to reflect on and to discuss whether my own definition is in fact too wordy, or else contains something vital that is missing from the dictionary definitions. I look forward to my reader's responses.
My recent attempt to amend the entry in Wikipedia met immediately with objection, and was very firmly rejected by another editor with the comment: ' ....you cannot just change sourced content because you have a different idea!' So I realised that I had stumbled unwittingly upon a controversial matter, and have therefore transferred my 'public thinking' to this present page, in the hope of having a good humoured dialogue with my readers and thus arrive at a satisfactory resolution of what to Wikipaedia (at least at present) has become a somewhat impenetrable matter.
This was the first sentence - clearly a definition - that I proposed for Wikipedia: 'Psychodynamics is the study of the impact upon the total being, both psychic and somatic, of personal and inter-personal experience; of the principles governing both that initial impact and also the subsequent interaction between the persons concerned. It is the theory and systematic study of the psychological and psychosomatic forces that underlie both personal and inter-personal human behaviour.
This is perhaps a rather wordy definition and it might be possible to boil it down to something more quintessential, but let's see. Looking at a number of dictionaries, the shortest definition I have discovered is found in Collins English Dictionary: the study of interacting motives and emotions. Another rather longer offering, similar to several others, comes from Dictionary.com: 1. any clinical approach to personality, as Freud's, that sees personality as the result of a dynamic interplay of conscious and unconscious factors. 2. the aggregate of motivational forces, both conscious and unconscious, that determine human behavior and attitudes.
Looking now at my own provisional definition and these meanings given in two contemporary dictionaries, I propose to reflect on and to discuss whether my own definition is in fact too wordy, or else contains something vital that is missing from the dictionary definitions. I look forward to my reader's responses.