Unit 2 Psychology
Schools of Thought
Questions!!!
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What is personality?
What is the mind?
What is its relation to the brain?
If the mind and the brain are not the same
thing but are somehow related, how do your
study what you cannot see?
How does the mind develop and change
over time?
Psychodynamic
Theorists
Psychodynamic Theorists
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Belief that the key to understanding
human behaviour lies in unlocking the
unconscious mind
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Based on Freud’s Psychoanalytic
Theory
Freud 1856-1939
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Based on Freud’s
psychoanalysis - to probe
the unconscious mind and
treat patients anxieties and
phobias
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Studies the inner
experiences of the mind
through dreams, fantasies,
feelings
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Used to treat trauma and
anxiety
Freud’s Id, Ego and Superego
Freud 1856-1939
Conscious mind
Mind
Unconscious Mind
id
ego
super ego
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Assumption: All born with the instinctive impulse to seek pleasure and avoid
pain – id (pleasure principle)
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Superego the moral centre of our brain – acts as our mind’s conscious
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This instinct my come into conflict with the rational part of the mind, the ego
(reality principle) – Which tells us to obey the expectations of society and
family. The id and ego battle it out!
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Personality is the result of which wins, the id or ego, at various points in our
lives
Acts of the Unconscious Mind
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Id uses defence
mechanism to distort
reality in order to deal
with anxiety
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Repress
Denial
Displace
Unlocking the Unconscious
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Dream and fantasy analysis
Free association
Methods of resistance and defence
mechanism – where patients would
often project their feelings onto the
therapist – called transference
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Video Freud part 1
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Freud – development theory
Stages
Age
Id’s Pleasure focus
Signs in Adulthood that
the Id won
1. Oral
Birth – 18 m
Oral
gratification - sucking
Putting things in mouth
Overeating, smoking,
nail-biting
2. Anal
18 m – 3 yrs
Bowl
pleasure
Resisting toilet training
Meanness, obsessive
neatness, resentment of
authority
3. Phallic
3-6 yrs
Awareness
of sex organs
Oedipus /Electra complex
Selfishness, poor
opposite-sex
relationships
4. Latency
6yrs to
puberty
Same-sex
friends
Few opposite-sex friends
Lack of close friends
5. Genital
adolescence
Dating
Guilt about sexuality,
feelings of inadequacy
and marriage
Sexual energy
Freud Criticisms
Less accepted today –
 Inborn, unconscious motivations are less accepted than external
factors (no biological proof)
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Today we have a balanced focus on both nurture and nature
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Too much emphasis placed on the influence of sexual conflict in
childhood
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Freud said males were normal and females inferior
Now we adopt Neo-Freudiamsim – basis of modern psychoanalysis
Carl Gustav Jung
(1875-1967) Swiss
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Student of Freud
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Founder of analytical psychology – a way
to understand what motivates us based on
both the conscious and unconscious mind
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Believed that finding balance within the
psyche would allow people to reach their full
potential
Carl Gustav Jung
(1875-1967) Swiss
Unconscious made of:
Individual unconscious
Collective unconscious
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(memories of ancestors shared by all
humans regardless of culture) –
consisting of certain images and
symbols that appear over and over
Stones / animals / circles
Archetypes
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Jung determined that these models of
people – behaviors and personalities were
universal – Archetypes – of the collective
unconscious
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Archetypes connect us to emotions
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Mother = nurturing and soothing
Father = stern, powerful and controlling
Hero = courageous champion
Trickster = deceptive
Jung’s methodologies
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Like Freud – dreams, and fantacies to
understand the unconscious
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Also used clients art – to gain a
greater understanding of the collective
unconscious that drives them
Jung - Personality
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Introverted or extroverted
Intuition or Sensor
Thinker (reason) or Feeler (uses
emotion)
Perception or Judgment
Brian Little on personality
Behavioural Psychology
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Common 1st ½ 20th Century
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Based on a need for empirical
evidence, obtained through
experimentation
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Focus on observable behaviours and
phenomena
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
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Father of Behavioural
psychology
Russian
Novel Prize-winner
Experimented on dogs
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Unconditioned Response
Unconditioned stimulus
Conditioned stimulus
Conditioned response
Classical conditioning
Pavlov’s Classic Conditioning
B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
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Developed true
behaviourism
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Was concerned
with observable
behaviours, not
the mental
processes
behind them
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Operant
Conditioning
Skinner’s experiment
Big Bang Theory Conditioning
Humanist Psychology
2nd half 20th century
Humanist Psychologist
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2nd half 20th century
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Belief that the client should be involved hi their own
recovery, rather than relying only on the therapist’s
interpretation of the issue
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Rejects quantitative methodology –experiments
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Prefers qualitative research
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Diary accounts, open unstructured questions and
observations
Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
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Studied those that were well
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Studied Self-actualizing people and the
“peak experiences”
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Understand how they achieved the status of
having reached their full potential
Opened doors to new ways of thinking about
motivation
Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)
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Experienced Auschwitz
Observed that those that survived often had
something to hold onto – meaning
Logotherapy (study, spirit, God, meaning)
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proposes that humans are motivated by a need for
meaning.
Whereas Freud – motivation for pleasure
Whereas Adler – motivation for power
Humans also have free will meaning you can
choose how you respond to a situation – you have
the power to shape your own life
Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
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Client-centred therapy approach focuses
on the potential of each person to realize
their own growth in self-awareness and
self-fulfillment
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Therapist creates a warm safe environment
where the client can speak freely without
judgment. As clients explore their attitudes
and emotions on an issue they discover the
underlying motivations for those attitudes
Humanistic impacts of society
School
 Student centred /open learning
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Students: encouraged to take
responsibility for their own learning – to
be creative / curious
Teacher: To understand why students
behave the way they do and to learn how
to help them achieve growth
Principles of Open Education
1.
Students will learn best what they want and need to know
once they learn the skills to analyze what is important to
them and why
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Knowing how to learn is more important than acquiring lots
of knowledge
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Self-evaluation is the only meaningful evaluation of a
student’s work
4.
Feelings are as important as facts
5.
Students learn best in a non-threatening environment
Open education –
What does it look like in the classroom?
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Students get to “do the discipline” rather
than simply reading about it
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Choice in assignment is available
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Students ideas and interests are used in
instruction
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive – mental processes
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Study and application of how the brain
learns
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Believe in and consider mental states –
beliefs, motivations and desires. Is often
couples with behavioural psychology to
create methods of treating people with
mental illnesses and neurotic disorders
Albert Bandura (1925-)
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Wondered why the same
situation could generate
different responses from
different people or even the
same person
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Believes people
learn behaviour
by watching and
then imitating
others.
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Social-cognitive Theory – a
perspective on personality
that considers ones
motivation, environment and
behaviour
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Bobo doll
experiment
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Conclusions
Elizabeth Loftus (1944-)
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False memories and the
flexibility and reliability of
repressed memories
False Memories in The Visual
Age
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Believes the repressed
memories rarely exist and
can be created through the
power of suggestion
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Controversial!
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Lost in the Mall experiment.
Gerald Echterhoff found
that for 25% of people, the
memory of ding something
can be created by watching
someone else do it on TV
2. Cognitive Development Theory
- Piaget continued
Stage
Age
Characteristics (concluded from experiments)
1.
Sensorimoter
Birth –
2 yrs
Learn by touching, egocentric (don’t understand
others’ experiences), something exists only when
you can see it
2. Preoperational
2-7 yrs Understands symbols, understands that things can
exist when you can’t see them (including concepts cat, dog), Can’t understand why others can be right
and they, wrong
3. Concrete
operational
7-11
yrs
Have logic - understand principles of measurement
and size, quantities may be equal although arranged
differently
4. Formal
operational
11 yrs
+
Think abstractly – “on my right-hand side”, recognize
other’s experiences and that others may by right or
wrong