Psychology is a scientific discipline that studies human behaviour, considering internal processes and motives. Psychologists’ main goal is to understand the reason why people and animals behave in certain manners. (Eysenck, 2000, p 3). In order to achieve this, psychologists have adopted various approaches including cognitive, biological, humanistic, psychodynamic and behavioural. Psychodynamic and behavioural perspectives are two dominant approaches within psychology due to their great impact within society. These two, are widely recognised for their achievements yet both possess some limitations. This essay seeks to evaluate psychodynamic and behavioural explanations of human behaviour by reviewing their differences and similarities in relation
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The action of causing any harm to another living being needs to be done deliberately to be considered as an act of aggression. For example, In the World Cup Final 2006, played between France and Italy, the French captain, Zinedine Zidane was sent off after having head-butted Italy’s Marco Materazzi in the chest. The fourth official informed the referee about the incident and considered this as an act of aggression hence his decision on showing Zidane’s the red card. It was later claimed that Materazz i had insulted the footballer’s sister. BBC Sports …show more content…
Even though, psychodynamic approach, founded by Sigmund Freud, generally defends its views on the nature side, recognising existing unseen drives that lead to aggressive behaviour, in this case (Thanatos- self-destructive drive). Freud, also claims that presence of aggression in adulthood as consequence of a traumatic episode during childhood, especially events happening up to the age of 5 during the psychosexual development. On the other hand, behaviourist psychologists defend their position by saying that any type of behaviour in people and animals work in similar ways is acquired by a type of learning (e.g. classical conditioning and operant conditioning) and interaction with our external environment. For example, if a man abuses his wife and child, psychodynamic approach will give some possible explanations to this such as the man is holding back his anger and unconsciously displacing it towards others, on this occasion on his family. On the other hand, behaviourist and Social learning theory approach’s possible explanation will be that the man learned through observation how to be aggressive. This could have happened within his own environment while being a child and having lived in an abusive family. Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1963). Another explanation given, the man felt provoked by the wife (stimuli) hence he reacted violently due to a disagreement
The action of causing any harm to another living being needs to be done deliberately to be considered as an act of aggression. For example, In the World Cup Final 2006, played between France and Italy, the French captain, Zinedine Zidane was sent off after having head-butted Italy’s Marco Materazzi in the chest. The fourth official informed the referee about the incident and considered this as an act of aggression hence his decision on showing Zidane’s the red card. It was later claimed that Materazz i had insulted the footballer’s sister. BBC Sports …show more content…
Even though, psychodynamic approach, founded by Sigmund Freud, generally defends its views on the nature side, recognising existing unseen drives that lead to aggressive behaviour, in this case (Thanatos- self-destructive drive). Freud, also claims that presence of aggression in adulthood as consequence of a traumatic episode during childhood, especially events happening up to the age of 5 during the psychosexual development. On the other hand, behaviourist psychologists defend their position by saying that any type of behaviour in people and animals work in similar ways is acquired by a type of learning (e.g. classical conditioning and operant conditioning) and interaction with our external environment. For example, if a man abuses his wife and child, psychodynamic approach will give some possible explanations to this such as the man is holding back his anger and unconsciously displacing it towards others, on this occasion on his family. On the other hand, behaviourist and Social learning theory approach’s possible explanation will be that the man learned through observation how to be aggressive. This could have happened within his own environment while being a child and having lived in an abusive family. Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1963). Another explanation given, the man felt provoked by the wife (stimuli) hence he reacted violently due to a disagreement