Approaches to Psychology Essay

The psychoanalytic approach was started and developed mainly in Europe between 1900 and 1939 by Sigmund Freud, a Viennese doctor who specialized in neurology. As a doctor, he became interested in the field of hysteria the manifestation of tangible symptoms without physical causes and became convinced that unconscious mental causes were responsible, and could be responsible for all mental disorders and even our personality.He created the hypothesis of personality, and based his conceptions upon intensive case studies of a considerable range of patients, especially his infamous study on small(a) Hans, a young boy who Freud carried out psychoanalysis upon. Bowlby (1946) applied Freuds theories when he apply psychoanalysis on a large group of small fryren with various ages on a study of accustomed delinquency. The central emphasis is on dynamic, biological processes especially those taking place in the unconscious mind, and involves the idea of psychic determinism, i.e. Freudia n slips. Freud said that we all prepare instinctual drives wishes, desires, needs, or demands, which are hidden and suppressed from the sentience because society disapproves of their open expression. Freud proposes three main components of the mind the id, the ego and the superego. The id operates on the pleasure principle and its oddment is immediate gratification and reduction of tension caused by irrational impulses. The ego operates on the reality principle, and controls the id in its reaction with the world.The superego operates on the idealisation principle, with norms and values of society being internalised. According to this approach, we all undergo psychosexual stages oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital which gradually motivate the individual to focus on the libido, and can be relate with the Oedipus complex. The libido is described as psychic energy behind primary drives of hunger, aggression, sex and irrational impulses. Fixation at any of these stages can le ad to deportment in our adulthood reflecting earlier stages of our childhood, which are caused by exposed conflicts.For example, fixation at the oral stage can cause adult behaviour that is centred on the mouthpiece (eating, smoking, etc. ) The purpose of psychoanalysis was as a therapy to treat mental disorder by way of life of treating the unconscious mind. The methods that Freud used for investigating the unconsciousness were by means of case studies, and deep analysis and interpretation. exhaust association involves the uninhibited expression of thought association, no matter how bizarre or embarrassing, from the client to the analyst. aspiration analysis involves the analyst attempting to decode the symbols and unravel the hidden meaning (the latent content) of a dream from the idealists report (the manifest content). Freud used his theory to explain a number of topics. He explained that the growing of personality came from fixations or defence mechanisms, and that aggre ssion was caused by hydraulic drives and displacement. Abformity was seen as the consequence of earlyish traumas and repression, which subsequently could impair our moral and gender development, the latter being the result of the Oedipus complex.The psychoanalytic approach has been greatly influential within psychology, in areas such as psychotherapy and developmental theories, and also beyond in art, literature and other sciences, some 100 years since Freud premiere developed his ideas. His theory has had some experimental support in certain areas, such as repression and fixation. Freud introduced the world to the concept of the unconscious, and regarded his case studies like Little Hans and Anna O as firm empirical support for his theory.He thought his belief in determinism and expound collection of data were scientific, yet many psychologists today argue that his theories and ideas are alike biological, that is that they rely too much on the influence of basic instincts and physical drives. Most of Freuds ideas and concepts came from only a smattering of results on the study of children. Freud could have allowed his own prejudices to shape his analysis, leading to no objective measures. His close interventions and feedback to the childs family could have changed the childs behaviour and that of its family.Psychoanalysis lacks rigorous empirical support, especially regarding normal development, and leads to reductionism, i. e. it reduces human activity to a basic set of structures, which cant account for behaviour. Freuds ideas have been accused of being irrefutable, and are therefore theoretically unscientific. A nonher approach to psychology is the behaviourist approach, which concentrates on the theory of learning and behavioural therapy, and tries to explain behaviour in terms of its relation to environmental events (stimuli), quite than any innate factors.The view that behaviour should be the sole subject matter of psychology was first advanced b y the American psychologist John B. Watson in the early 1900s. His position came to be called behaviourism. He believed that psychologists could not afford to speculate upon the unobservable inner workings of the mind, since they are too private to be analyse scientifically. For the behaviourist, much of their research focuses on objectively observable behaviour, rather than any internal process. The approach proposes that behaviour is radical, and that it is caused and maintained in this way.