Psychologists’ goal is to understand the reason why people and animals behave in certain manners. (Eysenck, 2000, p 3). To achieve this, psychologists have adopted various approaches including cognitive, biological, humanistic, psychodynamic and behavioural. Psychodynamic and behavioural perspectives. Both are important approaches within psychology due to their great impact within society.
This essay seeks to evaluate psychodynamic and behavioural explanations of human behaviour by reviewing their differences and similarities in relation to aggression. Evaluation of methods, limitations, ethical issues and today’s contribution to society will be discussed.
Psychodynamic perspective defends its views based on Sigmund Freud’s theories on human development. According to Freud, human behaviour is determined by hidden biological/innate sexual (Eros) and aggressive (Thanatos) instincts/drives (Eysenck, 2000, p 16). For example, slips of tongue unconsciously reveal hidden thoughts. E.g. ‘nice to beat you’ instead of ‘nice to meet you’ when a man meets his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. Moreover, psychodynamic approach also assumes that behaviour and feelings present in adulthood have their roots in childhood experiences. For example, hair plucking could be due to a childhood trauma. McLeod, S. A. (2007).
Another assumption
E.g. in the case of David Reimer, nature influence proved successful over nurture. David Reimer, initially called Brenda, was born a boy. His parents were advised to be raised as a girl, due to an accident during a circumcision surgery. until the age of 13. At this age he was told the truth about his identity consequently, decided to become a boy again, following his natural
There is no one causal factor, or single identifying marker that determines violent behavior in individuals. While studies show characteristics associated with violent offenders, no single variable predetermines such offenses. It is instead a number of factors that come in to play, that have shown an association to such reactive aggressive behavior. Factors such as environmental demographic (Hughs, 2008) (Barnes, 2012), biological and genetic predispositions to mental illness (Miller & Barnes, 2013), prenatal brain development (Michalska & Kinzler, 2011), abuse, psychological factors, and many other variables that somehow coincide to create a recipe for such violent actions. Strides to determine these factors, and what sets the stage for such pathology is as important as it is controversial. The closer we get to arrive at possible causal factors, the closer we are to preventing such acts from happening, and providing help and better treatments for those with such disorders early on.
The research reviews and excerpt from the PBS video, "The Violent Mind", presented in this paper strongly support the evidence of a biological basis for violence in the brain.
Psychology is the study of the behavior of living organisms. The people that study the behaviors are called psychologists. There have been many studies done by these people to try and figure out why people or animal do the things they do. Psychology's four main goals are to describe what occurred, explain why it occurred, predict what event is likely to occur next, and to change to prevent unwanted outcomes. Psychologists study the process of thinking, learning, cognition, emotions, motivations, and personalities. An example of one study that has been done would be why a dog salivates to the sound of a bell and show. This behavior is due to a conditioned stimulus becoming a conditioned response. Another experiment done was with a baby and a white mouse to see if the baby would be scared if something happened while grabbing for the mouse.
The psychodynamic approach lends itself to being a controversial yet highly influential theory in the history of psychology. The theory has become one of the most significant psychological approaches and its originator, Sigmund Freud, has become a major influence in modern psychology. The psychodynamic approach largely focuses on motivation and past experiences which develop and individual’s personality. Freud used the iceberg metaphor to outline the three states of consciousness and argued that only twenty percent of the mind represents the conscious. In addition he theorised that there was a pre-conscious mind which represents general memory. Finally, the unconscious mind which is essentially the reservoir of repressed or hidden experiences and desire.
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, was the principle proponent of the psychoanalytic personality theory. Psychoanalytic personality theory is tells us that the majority of human behavior is motivated by the unconscious, a part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings urges, drives, and instincts that the individual is unaware, and that only a small part of our psychological makeup is actually derived from the conscious experience. The problem is our unconscious mind disguises the meaning of the material it contains. As such, the psychoanalytic personality theory is ver...
The biological approach assumes that all behaviours have a physiological basis and certain behavioural characteristics can be transmitted genetically from one generation to another (W.E. Glassman 2009). The behaviour has a physical cause in the same way as physical illness. The causes of abnormal behaviour can be explained by understanding nervous system and the endocrine system. The psychoanalytic approach assumes that human behaviour and feelings as adults are determined by
One of the most researched topics in the history of psychology is aggression. One goal of social scientists has been to define aggression. Some believe that aggression is biologically preprogrammed, others look toward situational factors and this study suggests that aggression is learned. This study was conducted by Albert Bandura and his associates in 1961 at Stanford University. The researchers proposed that the children be exposed to adult models with either aggressive or nonaggressive ways, they would then be tested without the models present to determine if they would imitate that aggression they observed in the adult.
Freud believes that aggression is a primal instinct, and civilization thwarts this instinct, making man unhappy. Civilized society controls man's tendency toward aggression through rules and laws and the presence of authority. These mechanisms are put in place to guarantee safety and happiness for all individuals in a society. However, the necessity of suppressing the aggressive drive in m...
The psychoanalytic perspective grew out of subsequent psychoanalytic theories (1901, 1924, and 1940) following decades of interactions with clients with the use of an innovative procedure developed by Sigmund Freud that required lengthy verbal interactions with patients during which Freud probed deep into their lives. In a nutshell, the psychoanalytic perspective looked to explain personality, motivation, and psychological disorders by focussing on the influence of early childhood experiences, on unconscious motives and conflicts, and on the methods people use to cope with their sexual and aggressive urges. The Biological perspective on the other hand looks at the physiological bases of behaviour in humans and animals. It proposes that an organism’s functioning can be described in terms of the bodily structures and biochemical processes that cause behaviour. This paper attempts to examine the similarities and differences between the psychoanalytic perspective and the biological perspective with the key focus on the core assumptions and features of these perspectives as well as their individual strengths and weaknesses.
The term psychology has many meanings to different people, even to those who work within the psychological field. The word psychology derives from two Greek roots; 'psyche' refers to 'soul' or 'mind' and logo refers to 'the study of'. A more update definition of the word psychology can be found from Atkinson, et al (1991) “The scientific study of behaviours and mental processes.” However on Google Definitions the definition of psychology is “the mental characteristics and attitudes of a person” [accessed 16 September 2011], which gives somewhat of a contradiction. In this assignment I will be outlining and evaluating four key psychological perspectives. The psychological perspectives I have chosen are the behavioural approach, biological approach, cognitive approach and the psychodynamic approach.
The five major theoretical perspectives in psychology are biological, learning, cognitive, psychodynamic, and sociocultural perspectives. Each one of these perspectives searches for answers about behavior through different techniques and through looking for answers to different kinds of questions. Due to the different approaches, each perspective form their own assumptions and explanations. Some perspectives are widely accepted while others struggle for acceptance.
The field of psychology has opened different hypothesis from a variety of theories with the aim of studying the behaviour of humans being as a result they concluded with five psychological perspectives. Behaviourist, Biological, Psychodynamic, Cognitive and Humanistic perspectives are the deduction after a depth study of mental activity associate to human behaviour. In this essay I will be comparing two psychological perspectives according to aggressive behaviour.
Mental disorders are dismissed by people today because they are internal. When a person has a cold they cough, when a person has sunburn they turn red or peel, but when a person has a mental disorder they… and that’s where the debate begins. Do mental disorders truly exist? What are the causes? As a result of mental disorders some people exhibit a change in behavior or do things outside of what is status quo. That leads me to my topic - the psychoanalytic approach vs. the humanistic approach. One supports and provides reasoning for mental disorders and specific behavior, while the other states that behavior is based off of personal decisions. Although both the psychoanalytic and the humanistic approaches are well developed theories it is conclusive that the psychoanalytic approach is more useful and instrumental in treating mental disorders.
The thought process that drives the psychodynamic theory is that our histories greatly influence the people we turn out to be. The psychodynamic theory emphasizes the importance that relationships, especially those developed in the early stages of life, have on our development. This theory is also motivated by the assumption that our emotions or states of mind are the driving forces behind our actions (Dean, 2002). This theory focuses on childhood trauma, and how this can influence the way a person acts for the rest of his or her life. Freud was the first practitioner to make the parallel between internal and external factors. He realized that people
Personality is an individual’s characteristic pattern of feeling, thinking and acting. Psychodynamic theories of personality view human behavior as a dynamic interaction between the conscious mind and unconscious mind, including associated motives and conflicts (Myers & Dewall, pg# 572, 2015). These theories focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences. Psychodynamic theories are descended from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, which is his ideology of personality and the associated treatment techniques. Psychoanalysis attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. This theory also includes the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions. He proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality. Freud’s historically significant psychoanalytic theory became part of the human cultural legacy.