Throughout history, psychologists have discovered more than one way to analyze human behavior. These psychological theories have been adapted into the six main perspectives of psychology; these include the Biological, Social-Cultural, Cognitive, Humanistic, Psychodynamic, and Behavioral perspectives. The importance of these perspectives helps psychologists and individuals further their understanding in social behavior and inner emotion.
Biology is imperative in the study of psychology for a very simple reason: psychologists are trying to understand the brain. Biological psychology refers to the biological study of animals and humans, as well as the function of their immune system and brain chemistry. This is closely related to neuroscience
…show more content…
A person’s childhood, repressed memories, and biology are taken into account when labeling abnormalities in behavior. In this approach, psychoanalysis is used in diagnoses to interpret ones relationships, beliefs, and environment, but it is not scientific. The theory of whole-person psychology was founded by Sigmund Freud in the early 1900s when he discovered the psychoanalysis technique as he was treating his widely known patient, Anna O. In his discovery, his patient seemed to be curing each symptom as she talked through her situation. After each session, the symptoms would lessen until there was no problem at all. This was the beginning of …show more content…
The Id (also the it) is the unconscious instinct and feelings that drive impulses—life, death, and all the biological needs. The id doesn’t evolve and it doesn’t adjust, it isn’t affected by other people or environment: the id’s single concern is immediate satisfaction and survival. but many more psychologists contributed to his Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, and Alfred Edler; however, each psychologists believed different things. Freud believed that most of our subconscious comes from our ego and superego, whereas Edler believed we are comprised of our id.
Wundt established the first laboratory dedicated solely to studying the mind. The cognitive approach to Psychology focuses primarily to explain the behavior of everyone by examining the majority. Cognition is defined as thinking, thought processing, understanding and perceiving information, but that includes falsely perceived information. Cognition is the way the brain forms concepts to simplify the world and enhance the speed of thoughts, but often
The id is considered to be unconscious activity that strives to fulfill basic needs such as those required for survival, procreation, and aggression (Mcleod, 2013). It is also considered to be the instant gratification state that is concerned with the here and now (Myers, pg. 425). When I picture our species operating on this level alone I envision complete mayhem.
People tend to analyze the personality of someone while meeting new people. This way, they are often unconsciously evaluating how that person reacts of behaves. Out of all the personality theories I chose Freud’s theory, because it was the theory that I could identify myself the most. Sigmund Freud developed the psychoanalytical theory of personality development. He described that personality is the outcome of the interaction between three mental structure levels: ego, superego and id.
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 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.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy was developed by Sigmund Freud during the Victorian Era in Vienna, Austria. Sigmund Freud’s psychological works set the base for the profession of psychology as well as the practice of modern psychotherapy. Freud believed human behavior was motivated by “intrapsychic conflict” stemming from the three areas of the subconscious: id, ego, and superego (Murdock, 2009).
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.
Psychology is the scientific study of the mind, brain, and behavior. In psychology, and all of the other sciences, relying on opinions is abandoned in order to find out which explanations best fit the evidence or data given. Science continually forces us to question our findings and conclusions. Over time, psychology has advanced greatly and a main reason for such progressiveness is because of the change in the research model used.
Unlike other psychology fields, biological psychology usually deal with biological functions of human brain. It tends to study how different areas of brain influence human behavior and how neurons associate with one-another. Social and cognitive psychologists mainly study the human behavior through social or interpersonal aspects, which the research methods in these fields usually correlate with observation and analysis, such as experimental research and survey research. However, the research methods in biological psychology are tend to be more scientific with numerous laboratory examinations than other psychology fields. Due to one of the central purposes of biological psychology is to understand human behavior in biological perspectives,
Psychology is the investigation of the mind and how it processes and directs our thoughts, actions and conceptions. However, in 1879 Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Nevertheless, the origins of psychology go all the way back thousands of years starting with the early Greeks. This foundation is closely connected to biology and philosophy; and especially the subfields of physiology which is the study of the roles of living things and epistemology, which is the study of comprehension and how we understand what we have learned. The connection to physiology and epistemology is often viewed as psychology, which is the hybrid offspring of those two fields of investigation.
Psychology can be defined as the systematic study of mental processes, couple with behaviors, and experiences (Kalat, 2011). There are many ways in examining, mental processes and behaviors among people, and therefore psychologist uses different perspectives to understand how human beings, think, act, and behave. Some psychologist uses one perspective to analyze behaviors, and other uses a multidimensional approach. Carter & Seifert (2013) identified 7 major perspectives that are used to study people’s behavior, and mental processes. These perspectives are the biological, evolutionary, psychodynamic, behavioral, humanistic, cognitive, and the sociocultural perspective.
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.
Psychology is concerned with the assessment, diagnosis, counseling and treatment of people concerning mental health. The three theories discussed above have thus focused on providing great contribution regarding the increased knowledge to the solving mental health problems. Psychoanalysis has explored several thoughts and has unearthed the aspect of unconscious mind; there is the theory of behaviorism that gives explanation on the reasons as to why people behave in a certain manner and finally the humanistic theory that is critical in explaining the nature of human beings in the
Sigmund Freud was one of the original pioneers in the field of Psychology. The work that he accomplished throughout his lifetime laid a foundation for many theorists after him. The theorists that worked in Psychology, after Freud, were able to form their own thoughts, ideas, and hypotheses about the human mind after learning from his work. Sigmund Freud’s major contribution in the field of Psychology was his theory about the human psyche; which he called the Id, the Ego, and the Super-Ego. This theory was based on the human personality and its formation. Many of Freud’s analysis strategies became common practice in the field of Psychology and are still used today. Sigmund Freud will always be one of the most influential figures in the
Psychology is the scientific study and practical application of observable behavior and mental processes of organisms. Psychology differs from other social sciences such as: Sociology, History, or Economics, because psychology specifically deals with the study of an individual. The other social sciences will study groups, or history. Psychology is less a science of reported findings, it attempts asks and answers questions using observable behavior and what can be determined as mental processes of the subject. The symbol for psychology is the Greek letter “psi” (Ø). The subject matter of psychology is, affect, behavior, and cognition. The affect for psychology is the actual mental processes that make up: moods, feeling, and emotional state. An example for affect would be feeling sad about something happening. Behavior includes the actually actions and responses of organisms. Behavior can include the way we act in any given situation, for example when we get up in the morning. The order in the way we prepare ourselves for going out into public can be categorized as our behavior. Cognition is the actual mental events and the processes that result from them. Memories of an event are a great example of an organism’s cognition. The components and corresponding faces of psychology include the body of knowledge which is considered the teaching face, set of investigative methods or research face, and array of techniques the therapy face. The goals of psychology are: to explain behaviors, to describe behaviors, to predict behavior, and to modify inappropriate behaviors. Explaining behaviors would be a question similar to “Why does this happen?”, and example of how describing behavior could be accomplished would be asking “What causes this behavior, where does it come from?”. Predictions can be elaborated on by asking “When will the behavior occur?”. An example of a behavioral modification question is “What can be changed in the environment to alter this behavior?”. A specialized subfield of psychology that most interests me is, Forensic Psychology, because it would be appealing to me to understand a potential criminal mind and to make the determination if the criminal was sane at the time the crime was committed or if he/she was operating with full judgment. In studying the 9/11 attack on America, a Forensic Psyc...
Sigmund Freud was one of the trailblazers of modern-day psychology. After several years of clinical practice, Sigmund Freud became concern about finding a new way to cure his patients. He developed a new way of treatment, the psychoanalytic therapy based on the existence of the unconscious. According to his theory, our behavior is driven by sexual and destructive feelings. Freud mentions in his psychoanalytical theory of personality there are five stages of psychosexual stages structure of personality. However, the three main elements of a personality are id, ego and superego, which come together to generate intricate human behavior. The three essential parts of human psyche are listed below.