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Evaluate And Compare Two Of The The Five Major Approaches To Psychology

Author: Ciarán O'Sullivan
Five Pages 1205 Words

In this essay I hope to give a brief outline of the history & critiques levelled at the
Psychodynamic and the Behaviourist approaches to psychology and then attempt to offer a
comparison.
Psychodynamic.
Sigmund Freud's early work in psychoanalysis was the precursor to the psychodynamic
approach. His theories were later modified by others including Alfred Adler and Carl Jung.
The psychodynamic approach includes all the theories in psychology that see human
functioning as based upon the interaction of drives and forces within the person,
particularly unconscious conflict between the different structures of the personality.
(Barker, 2003)
Freud posited that the mind consisted of three areas the conscious, the unconscious and the preconscious
and that within that framework the personality of a person existed. Freud further
divided the personality into three parts. The ID a selfish unconscious area that operates on the
pleasure principal, the Ego a conscious area that operates on the reality principle and the
Superego where a persons concept of right and wrong exist. Freud used Dream analysis and Free
association (Talking therapy) as a means to gain access to a patients unconscious thought.
Freud believed that the personality has five 'Psychosexual Stages' of development that must be
experienced and resolved in order to avoid later neuroses. “Failure to resolve the oral stage
would lead to oral fixation (such as smoking, excessive drinking, or eating disorders), and
failure to resolve the anal stage would lead to excessive control and hoarding (obsessive
compulsive disorder).” (Field, 2003).
I
When
parts of the personality conflict Ego Defence Mechanisms are unconsciously employed to
protect the self from anxiety. For example, “we speak of people as 'repressed' if they appear not
to show their emotions and as 'in denial' if they refuse to accept unpalatable facts.” (Jarvis, 2003)
While Freud...