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r/psychologystudents•
CaptainTwoBines

Anyone have any good insight or sources I can look at when comparing psychoanalytic and behaviorist approaches for an assignment? 😊

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The question is asking me to ' Compare and contrast the Psychoanalytic (Psychodynamic) and Behavioural approaches in the understanding of human behaviour (Max 1000 words).'

If anyone has any good websites or anything they can point me to that can spark some talking points in my head i'd be really grateful, every little helps! c:

Posted Dec 17, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

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the_counselors_guild•

They’re polar opposites. Behavioralist believe people our born as a blank slate and personality is developed through learned experiences in the environment. Freud with his psychosexual stages of development and Id, ego, and superego,

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CaptainTwoBinesOP•

When comparing and contrasting, could you argue that Freud's superego and Erikson's stages of psychosocial development are examples of behaviourism’s operant conditioning?

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[deleted]•

Behaviourism was a reaction to psychoanalysis. They wanted to remove the "pseudoscentific" black box of the mind, but in doing so they couldn't sufficiently explain behaviour (i.e., behaviour without intentionality). I highly recommend Glenn Newberry's book 'Knowing you, knowing me' because it goes through both and is very easy to understand.

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CaptainTwoBinesOP•

Interesting, thank you. The part about behaviourism being a reaction to psychoanalysis would segue nicely from one approach to the other.

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JD7270Graduate student (Masters)•

Uh, what? I'd be very curious to hear you elaborate on that. Contingencies are used to explain behavior regardless of what one's intent was.

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[deleted]•

Correct, but you can only get so far with that. You can't fully explain behaviour without intent, and you can't explain intent without the mind.

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JD7270Graduate student (Masters)•

You can explain intent with motivating operations.

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[deleted]•

How so?

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soggy_again•

The Freud Museum has a pretty good series on their site:

What is Psychoanalysis, is it weird?

As for behaviourism, crash course is a start: How to train a brain

The main difference is that behaviourists did experiments to acheive replicable empirical results - based on the theory it was almost impossible to study 'the mind' you could only reliably study behaviour.

Freud thought the opposite; the really interesting stuff was going on, not just in the mind, but in parts of the mind we aren't conscious of, the unconscious. He thought thought association, introspection, slips of the tongue, dreams and talking to an analyst could bring what was unconscious into consciousness.

Both have serious flaws but some attractive ideas!

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CaptainTwoBinesOP•

Thank you for the links 🥰

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JD7270Graduate student (Masters)•

Check out the website for the association for contextual behavioral science. You'll find a lot of information regarding behaviorism, how it differs from psychoanalysis, and how it has progressed based on cognitive psychology's criticisms.

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CaptainTwoBinesOP•

Already finished and handed the assignment in, but thanks, I'll have a gander for my own interest (:

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00Wow00•

One of the first things would be to make references to your text book(s) to show that you have read the material. You can always use their citations in your paper if you have looked the information up and quote from the original source. Your school's virtual library should provide you the access you need to find the sources to download and read.

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CaptainTwoBinesOP•

My reference list for the whole 3 tasks is about 1 and a half pages long 🙈

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