What are limitations of the Psychodynamic approach?

• A. It relies exclusively on experimental, quantifiable data.
• B. It is based on case studies and lacks methodological reliability; limited falsifiability and potential biases.
• C. It provides universally applicable results with strong falsifiability.
• D. It has no cultural bias.

Answer: (B)

At the heart of this is the way the psychodynamic approach builds its evidence. It relies mainly on case studies, which give rich, detailed pictures of individual lives but involve small, non-representative samples. That means findings aren’t easily generalizable to larger populations. Because many of its core ideas—unconscious processes, psychosexual stages, defense mechanisms—aren’t directly testable with controlled experiments, the approach struggles with falsifiability. If you can’t design a clean test that could prove the theory wrong, it’s hard to separate genuine psychological truth from subjective interpretation. Added to this are potential biases from the therapist or researcher and the retrospective nature of much of the data, where past experiences are recalled and interpreted rather than observed in real time. So, the combination of non-experimental methods, limited generalizability, low falsifiability, and susceptibility to bias makes these a central set of limitations for the psychodynamic approach.