Chapter 1: Psychological Theories

Major Theories:

Philosophical Scientific
(function of man) (structure of man)
• Psychoanalysis • Cognitive
• Behaviourism • Biological
• Humanism • Evolutionary

Psychoanalytic Theory:

Sigmund Freud

• Focuses on the unconscious determinants of behaviour to explain personality,

motivations, and mental disorders.
• Unconscious exposes true feelings, emotion & thoughts of the individual.

Psychosexual Stages of Development

First 3 are the most important.

1. Oral
2. Anal
3. Phallic
4. Latency
5. Genital

Advantages:

• Emphasizes importance of childhood experiences.

• Initiated and address the importance of the unconscious, sexual and aggressive drives
that make up the majority of all human being’s personalities.
• Explains defence mechanisms and why every individual reacts differently to similar
situations.
Personality Elements Characteristics
• pleasure principle
• driven by internal and basic drives
and needs instinctual: hunger, thirst,
Id libido
• avoid pain, seek pleasure
• impulsive
• unaware of implications of actions
• reality principle
• balances id and superego
• achieve id’s drive in most realistic
ways
Ego • rationalize the id’s instinct & please
the drives that benefit the individual
in the long term.
• Helps separate what is real and
realistic of our drives as well as being
realistic about the standards that the
superego sets for the individual.
• morality principle
• acts in connection to the morality of
higher thought and action.
Superego • Unlike the id, it works to act in
socially acceptable ways.
• Employs morality
• Judging our sense of wrong & right,
and using guilt to encourage socially
acceptable behaviour.
Behaviourism Theory:

John B Watson & B.F. Skinner

• Focuses on objectively observable behaviours and discounts any independent activities

of the mind.
• Behaviour theorists define learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new
behaviour based on environmental conditions.
• Behaviour: Reflexes produces by a response to certain stimuli in the environment or
consequence of individual’s history (reinforcement & punishment) along with
individual’s current motivational state and controlling stimuli.

Operant conditioning Classical conditioning

B.F. Skinner Pavlov
Modification of voluntary behaviour by Modified through the association of stimuli.
effect they produce
Operates on environment and is maintained Conditioned stimulus paired with an
by its consequences unconditioned stimulus.
Reinforcement (reward) and punishment

Contribution to Psychology:

Brought psychology credit from the mainstream sciences.

Humanistic Theory:

Abraham Maslow & Carl Rogers.

• Belief in basic goodness and respect of humankind.

• Based in existential psychology.
• Understanding and acceptance of one’s own existence and responsibility.
• Humans: Free + rational.
• Focus on the present.
• Reality-based.
• Psychologically healthy people take responsibility for themselves, whether actions are
positive or negative.
• Individual – human – has inherent worth.
• (Negative action does not negate value of person)
• Life Goal: Achieve personal growth and understanding.
• Self-improvement + self-knowledge = happiness.
• Opposes deterministic theories of Psychoanalysis (primitive sexual desire) &
Behaviorism (research on animals).
Contribution to Psychology:

Concept of Self Efficacy

• One’s belief in one’s ability to succeed in specific situations or to accomplish a task.

• Plays major role in how one approaches goals, tasks and challenges.

Person/Client Centered Therapy

• Deals with the ways in which individuals perceive themselves consciously rather than
how a counsellor can interpret their unconscious thoughts or ideas.
• Counsellor works to understand an individual’s experience from their perspective.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

5 interdependent levels of basic human needs that must be satisfied in strict sequence starting
with the lowest level.

• Self-actualization: person’s full potential + realization of that potential.

• Esteem: self-esteem + self-respect
• Love/Belonging: friends, intimacy, family
• Safety: personal & financial security, health + well-being
• Physiological: human survival (air, water, food, clothing, shelter)

ADDITIONAL:

• Dream interpretations
• Insight into the unconscious
• Free associations: transference, projection, resistance

Popularity in medicine, arts and literature brought psychology into mainstream culture.
Cognitive Theory:

Jean Piaget & Noam Chomsky

• Refers to mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge.

• The process of thinking and consciousness.
• Focused on individual’s thoughts as the determinate of his or her emotions + behaviour
and therefore personality.
• Without thought processes, no emotions/behaviour, therefore cannot function.

Biological Theory:

• Maintains that human behaviour can be explained in terms of bodily structures and
bio-chemical processes that allow organisms to behave.
• (Psychology’s early roots in physiology renewed interest in biological theory)
• Brain specialization and lateralization.
• Influential in today’s study of human behaviour.

Evolutionary Theory:

• Examines behavioural process in terms of their adaptive value for members of their
species over the course of many generations.
• Focuses on Darwin’s Natural Selection [reproductive or survival]
• Influential and gained prominence due to evolutionary biology.
• Specialist Areas: sexual behaviour, personality, development, decision making,
language.

Darwin’s Natural Selection: Biological evolution theory – all species of organism arise and
develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s
ability to compete survive and reproduce.