Approaches to Psychology Essay

The psychoanalytic approach was started and demonstrable master(prenominal)ly in Europe amidst 1900 and 1939 by Sigmund Freud, a Viennese fix who specialized in neurology. As a doctor, he became interested in the vault of heaven of hysteria the manifestation of fleshly symptoms without physical causes and became convinced that unconscious mental causes were responsible, and could be responsible for only mental disorders and blush our personality.He created the theory of personality, and based his ideas upon intense incase studies of a considerable spue of patients, especially his infamous study on Little Hans, a young son who Freud carried out psychoanalysis upon. Bowlby (1946) applied Freuds theories when he used psychoanalysis on a large group of children with versatile ages on a study of frequent 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. Freudian slips. Freud said that we all relieve oneself instinctual drives wishes, desires, needs, or demands, which argon hidden and suppressed from the intelligence 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 entertainment principle and its goal is immediate bliss and reduction of tension caused by incorrect 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 set of society organism internecineised. According to this approach, we all undergo psychosexual demos oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital which gradually motivate the individual to reduce on the libido, and dismiss be link with the Oedipus complex. The libido is described as psychic thrust behind primary drives of hunger, assault, sex and illogical impulses. Fixation at any of these stages can lead to behaviour in our maturity reflecting earlier stages of our childhood, which are caused by unresolved conflicts.For example, fixation at the oral stage can cause adult behaviour that is centred on the mouth (eating, smoking, etc. ) The resolve of psychoanalysis was as a therapy to shroud mental disorder by office of treating the unconscious mind. The methods that Freud used for investigating the asphyxia were by means of case studies, and loggerheaded analysis and interpretation. Free association involves the abandoned expression of thought association, no outlet how bizarre or embarrassing, from the client to the analyst. breathing in analysis involves the analyst attempting to decode the symbols and melt d confess the hidden meaning (the latent content) of a dream from the dreamers underwrite (the manifest content). Freud used his theory to relieve a number of topics. He explicateed that the festering of personality came from fixati ons or defence mechanisms, and that aggression was caused by hydraulic drives and displacement. Ab commonity was seen as the consequence of early traumas and repression, which subsequently could deflower 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 much(prenominal) as psych new(prenominal)apy and developmental theories, and to a fault beyond in art, literature and other sciences, some 100 years since Freud low gear-year developed his ideas. His theory has had some experimental support in certain areas, such(prenominal) 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 dilate collection of data were scientific, yet galore(postnominal) psychologists today argue that his theories and ideas are besides biological, that is that they rely too much on the influence of staple fiber instincts and physical drives. nearly 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 object lens 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 invoice for behaviour. Freuds ideas have been accused of being irrefutable, and are therefore theoretically unscientific. some other 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 back to environmental events ( stimuli), rather than any innate factors.The view that behaviour should be the sole subject matter of psychology was first advanced by the American psychologist bum B. Watson in the early 1900s. His position came to be called behaviourism. He believed that psychologists could not afford to conjecture upon the unobservable inner workings of the mind, since they are too private to be canvas 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.