Compare And Contrast Any Two Psychological Perspec Essay

Compare and contrast any two perspectives in psychology.

This essay is going to discuss the comparisons and differences between the psychodynamic and the behavioural approaches to psychology. The essay will look at the way both approaches explain the cause of mental illness and depression and how they would treat it. The psychodynamic perspective was introduced by Sigmund Freud and in contrast with the behavioural approach he completely ignored the science surrounding the subject and instead tried to get into the minds of the individuals and try to make sense of the way they see the world. Freud believed that the mind was like an iceberg with the majority of it being hidden away, he called this the unconscious part of the mind. He believed that people repressed feelings, thoughts and memories that were painful and usually from childhood into the unconscious part of the mind to forget about them, but they would be unaware that those feelings were there. Freud’s psychodynamic theory believed that our behaviour and psychological problems as an adult stemmed from something that happened to us in childhood and that all behaviour had a cause or a reason, he called this psychic determinism. In contrast to the psychodynamic approach behaviourists believe that we are all born a blank slate they use the term ‘Tabula rasa’ to describe this. Behaviourists such as Watson believe that people do not have free will and that our environment determines the way in which we behave, either by reinforcement or a stimulus response. The behaviourist approach believes that psychology should be seen as a science with behaviour being observed and measured and not thought of internally like thoughts and emotions. Behaviourists believe that there is very little difference between the way humans and animals learn and therefore see this as an advantage as they can