Download Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic

Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic
•This approach suggests that our behavior is controlled by forces outside of our
conscious awareness. Approach founded by Sigmund Freud.
•Psychologists using the psychoanalytic perspective believe:
-The unconscious mind controls a considerable amount of our thoughts and actions
-The unconscious mind can be examined by dream analysis, word association, and free
association (to find latent [hidden] meaning behind behavior and psychological
disturbances)
Sigmund Freud’s theories:
-Psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital). If people don’t resolve a
conflict in our lives during one of the stages, they can become fixated (remaining
preoccupied with the behaviors associated with the stage). During the phallic stage, Freud
theorized the Oedipus complex (boys resent their father’s relationship with mother)
and Electra complex (girls resent their mother’s relationship with father).
-Personality consists of id (pleasure principle, immediate gratification[devil on
shoulder]), ego (reality principle, negotiates between id and superego), superego (protect
conscious mind from threatening unconscious thoughts [angel on shoulder]).
Carl Jung’s theories:
•Unconscious consists of personal unconscious (individual’s personal unconscious
contains painful memories the individual doesn’t want to confront. AKA “complexes”)
and collective unconscious (Contains archetypes – universal concepts we all share as
humans)
Alfred Adler’s theories:
•Downplayed the importance of the unconscious and saw ego’s conscious role at higher
importance. Believed people were motivated by failure, or inferiority, and the desire to
achieve, AKA superiority.
Erik Erikson’s theories:
•Stages of psychosocial development: Trust vs. Mistrust, Autonomy vs. Shame and
Doubt, Initiative vs. Guilt, Industry vs. Inferiority, Identity vs. Role Confusion, Intimacy
vs. Isolation, Generativity vs. Stagnation, Ego vs. Despair.
•If a person doesn’t confront the challenges of a stage, they will be expected to cause
problems for the person in the future.
•Neo-Freudians (New Freudians) believe social and cultural influences are important.
They think inferior feelings can develop into drives that become major motivators in
personality. Apart from Freud’s theories, they believe personality can’t exist apart from
interpersonal relationships. They also refute Freud’s emphasis on psycho-sexual theories.
•Freud developed the theory, but psychoanalysis has changed. Today, psychoanalysis is
based of the ideas:
-Individuals are unique
-Factors outside awareness (i.e. – unconscious thoughts, feelings and experiences)
influence thoughts and actions
-Past shapes the present
-Humans are engaged in the process of development throughout life.
Behavioral
•Stresses the study of observational behavior, unlike the psychoanalytic study of
unconscious
•Suggests the environment controls all aspects of human behavior
Ivan Pavlov’s theories:
•Classical conditioning: Unconditioned stimulus creating unconditioned response.
Neutral stimulus paired with both. After conditioning, neutral stimulus becomes
conditioned stimulus, creating the conditioned response.
•Aversive conditioning used for negative responses, like with Little Albert. Albert was
conditioned to fear a white rat and generalized, fearing other white, fluffy things.
B.F. Skinner’s theories:
•Operant conditioning based on the associations of consequences and behaviors.
•Skinner box used food to reinforce the act of pressing a disk. Shaping used by
rewarding the rat for gradually making steps toward pressing the disk. Acquisition: rat
learns to press lever to receive reward. Extinction: rat ceases to press lever after reward
isn’t given. Spontaneous recovery: rat begins to press bar again after
extinction. Generalization: the rat begins to press other things in
box. Discrimination: teaching a rat to press a bar under certain conditions with a
discriminative stimulus.
•Positive reinforcement: adding something pleasant. Negative reinforcement: removing
something unpleasant. Positive punishment: adding something unpleasant. Negative
punishment: removing something pleasant.
John B. Watson’s theories:
•Emphasized external behavior and their reactions to situations. The analysis of behaviors
and reactions was his objective method to examine the insight in human actions.
•Thought psychology should focus on an individual’s behavior, not their
consciousness.
•Sided with nurture, not nature. Had famous quote, “Give me a dozen healthy infants,
well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take
any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor,
lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his
talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”
Albert Bandura’s theories:
•Believed human behaviors learned through others. Bobo Doll experiment showed how
children will learn behaviors (like aggression) by simply watching others. Social
cognitive theory explains that portions of one’s knowledge acquisition can be related to
observing others.
Humanistic
Psychologist involved: Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, and Elisabeth KublerRoss.
Main Ideas:
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One of the major strengths of humanistic psychology is that it emphasizes the role
of the individual. This school of psychology gives people more credit in controlling
and determining their state of mental health.
It also takes environmental influences into account. Rather than focusing solely
on our internal thoughts and desires, humanistic psychology also credits the
environment's influence on our experiences.
Humanistic psychology continues to influence therapy, education, healthcare and
other areas.
Humanistic psychology helped remove some of the stigma attached to therapy
and made it more acceptable for normal, healthy individuals to explore their abilities
and potential through therapy.
Abraham Maslow: During the 1950s, Maslow became one of the founders and driving
force behind the school of thought known as humanistic psychology. His theories
including the hierarchy of needs, self-actualization and peak experiences became
fundamental subjects in the humanist movement.
Hierarchy of Needs:
The lowest levels of the pyramid are made up of the most basic needs, while the more
complex needs are located at the top of the pyramid. Needs at the bottom of the pyramid
are basic physical requirements including the need for food, water, sleep, and warmth.
Once these lower-level needs have been met, people can move on to the next level of
needs, which are for safety and security.As people progress up the pyramid, needs
become increasingly psychological and social. Soon, the need for love, friendship, and
intimacy become important. Further up the pyramid, the need for personal esteem and
feelings of accomplishment take priority.
Carl Rogers: Carl Rogers is best-known for his nondirective approach to treatment
known as client-centered therapy.
Client-centered therapy, also known as person-centered therapy, is a non-directive form
of talk therapy that was developed by humanist psychologist Carl Rogers during the
1940s and 1950s. Today, it is one of the most widely used approaches in psychotherapy.
Is non-directive. Therapists allow clients to lead the discussion and do not try to steer the
client in a particular direction.
Emphasizes unconditional positive regard. Therapists show complete acceptance and
support for their clients.
According to Carl Rogers, a client-centered therapist needs three key qualities:
Genuineness:
The therapist needs to share his or her feelings honestly. By modeling this behavior, the
therapist can help teach the client to also develop this important skill.
Unconditional Positive Regard:
The therapist must accept the client for who they are and display support and care no
matter what the client is facing or experiencing. Rogers believed that people often
develop problems because they are used to only receiving conditional support;
acceptance that is only offered if the person conforms to certain expectations. By creating
a climate of unconditional positive regard, the client feels able to express his or her
emotions without fear of rejection.
Empathetic Understanding:
The therapist needs to be reflective, acting as a mirror of the client's feelings, thoughts.
The goal of this is to allow the client to gain a clearer understanding of their own inner
thought, perceptions and emotions.
By exhibiting these three characteristics, therapists can help clients grow psychologically,
become more self-aware and change their behavior via self-direction. In this type of
environment, a client feels safe and free from judgment. Rogers believed that this type of
atmosphere allows clients to develop a healthier view of the world and a less distorted
view of themselves.
Sociocultural Psychology
Psychologists involved: Erving Goffman, and Lev Vygotsky
Main Ideas:
-Sociocultural theory is a theory in psychology that looks at the important
contributions that society makes to individual development. This theory stresses the
interaction between developing people and the culture in which they live.
-Sociocultural theory grew from the work of seminal psychologist Lev Vygotsky,
who believed that parents, caregivers, peers and the culture at large were responsible for
the development of higher order functions.
Lev Vygotsky: Some of the major theories developed by Lev Vygotsky include:
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Zone of Proximal Development: According to Vygotsky, the zone of proximal
development is "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by
independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined
through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable
peers." Parents and teachers can foster learning by providing educational opportunities
that lie within a child's zone of proximal development.
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Sociocultural Theory: Human development results from a dynamic interaction
between individuals and society. Through this interaction, children learn gradually and
continuously from parent and teachers. This learning, however, can vary from one
culture to the next. It is important to note that Vygotsky's theory emphasizes the
dynamic nature of this interaction. Society doesn't just impact people; people also
impact their society.
Ervin Goffman and the theory of social stigma:
The three forms of stigma recognised by Goffman include: Mental illness, physical form
of deformity or undesired differentness; and an association with a particular race,
religion, belief.
Social stigma can result from the perception or attribution, rightly or wrongly.
Attributes associated with social stigma often vary depending on the geopolitical and
corresponding sociopolitical contexts in different parts of the world.
Stigma comes in three forms:
1. Overt or external deformations, such as scars, physical manifestations of anorexia
nervosa, leprosy (leprosy stigma), or of a physical disability or social disability,
such as obesity.
2. Deviations in personal traits, including mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism,
and criminal background are stigmatized in this way.
3. "Tribal stigmas" are traits, imagined or real, of ethnic group, nationality, or of
religion that is deemed to be a deviation from the prevailing normative ethnicity,
nationality or religion.
Cognitive:
- How we encode, process, store, and retrieve information
- Someone working from the cognitive perspective might study how our interpretation of
a situation affects our anger and how our anger affects our thinking
Neurobiological:
- How the body and brain enable emotions, memories, and sensory experiences
- Someone working from the neurobiological perspective might study brain circuits that
cause us to be “red in the face” and “hot under the collar”
Evolutionary:
-Examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern
evolutionary perspective
-Main objective is to identify which psychological traits are products of adaptation
- An approach that views human nature as the product of a universal set of evolved
psychological adaptations
- Argues that the mind has a modular structure similar to that of the body, with different
modular adaptations serving different functions
- Not simply a subdiscipline of psychology but that evolutionary theory can provide a
foundational, metatheoretical framework that integrates the entire field of psychology, in
the same way it has for biology
-Evolutionary psychology has been derived from Charles Darwin’s theories
In The Origin of Species, Darwin predicted that psychology would develop an
evolutionary basis:
“In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will
be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power
and capacity by gradation.”
—Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859, p. 449.
-In sum, evolutionary psychology bases psychological traits off of instinctive needs to
survive and procreate.