The Morality Of Self-Determinism By Sigmund Freud

The topic of self-determinism is one that is very important to both Christianity and Psychology. For years it’s been debated whether or not we make our own choices and decide our own fate, or whether we are just a product of God’s detailed plan or our genetic make-up. The Bible seems to state that we are both responsible for our actions and limited by factors outside our control. In this paper I will succinctly state three claims the Bible makes about self-determinism and then evaluate three developmental theories on the basis of these criteria. The first principle we can derive from scripture is that we do choose what we do and we are responsible for our actions. Support for this principle can be found in Genesis 3:22 in which we see that

The psychoanalytic theory is very focused on drives, and traditionally puts much of its emphasis on the unconscious. That being the case, the most well-known psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, would say that humans have very little, if any, control over what they do, but rather are just a product of their unconscious drives. This is not the view of all psychoanalysts, such as Erik Erikson who believed that much of human development comes from the drive to master different developmental stages, which is done by choosing how one will proceed to the next stage. Erikson’s belief is very compatible with the Biblical principle of choice as the way that one moves from one stage to the next later in life is determined by the choices they make. That being said, the earlier stages for Erikson are heavily influenced by parental activity. One of the most important for Erikson, trust vs. mistrust, is entirely based on how the parents’ interact with the child. This fits very well with the second Biblical principle of the effect of parents’ choices on the children’s outcome. If parents don’t treat their children the right way, then children can be severely affected in their potential. The third Biblical principle as to how natural abilities can affect us is where the psychoanalytic approach isn’t as clear. Erikson doesn’t specifically

I believe epigenetic systems theory fits the best as it fits all the Biblical criteria fairly well. Psychoanalytic theory is the second best theory because it fits the first two criteria, and while it most likely disagrees with the third, this is not a firm assertion. The worst fit for Biblical criteria is learning theory because it completely discounts much of the uniqueness we are given by