Essay example --

Compare and contrast the assumptions of behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Explain why these approaches made the assumptions they did, and critically evaluate each approach. Behaviorism and psychoanalysis are two influential theories of psychology that are pole apart. The most basic difference between these two theories is in the way they define a behavior. While behaviorists believe that that almost every human emotion is conditioned by habit and can be learned or unlearned, psychoanalysts believe that everything humans do is completely controlled by the unconscious mind at some level. Psychoanalysis is based on the theories proposed by Sigmund Freud. Freud proposed the idea that mental functions are on both conscious as well as unconscious levels. He believed that childhood events have a powerful psychological influence throughout a person’s life. With psychoanalysis, Freud tried to interpret the causes of patients ’problems by gaining an insight or revealing the unconscious processes to the conscious awareness. According to Freud, the mind can be divided into three different levels: the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious. The conscious includes everything that we are aware of. Preconscious includes our memory, feelings and thoughts, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness. Finally, the unconscious contains all the feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that are outside of our conscious awareness. The contents of the unconscious mind, Freud believed, are mostly unpleasant. He believed that the unconscious is mostly important because it continues to influence our behavior and experience, even though we are not always aware of these underly... ...minated. In his book, Psychological Care of the Infants and Child, he crititicized child rearing practices prevalent in those times. He advocated a regulatory rather than permissive system of child rearing. In this way, we can see that even Watson believed that childhood experiences were important in building the personality of an individual. He stressed the importance of encouraging children to be productive from an early age. However, while Freud suggested an entirely sex- driven instinct in children and infants, Watson originally accepted idea of instincts, but later said they were merely due to conditioning He insisted that psychology restrict itself to objective study of behavior. While Freud’s psychoanalysis used hypnosis, free association and talk therapy to understand the causes of behavior and disorders in patients’, Watson claimed that observation is .