Major Perspectives of Psychology

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Major Perspectives of Psychology
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Perspectives

• Psychoanalytic
• Behaviorism
• Humanism
• Cognitive
• Evolutionary
• Biological/Biomedical

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Psychodynamic

• Originated Sigmund Freud.
• Emphasizes the role of the unconscious mind,
  early childhood experiences, and interpersonal
  relationships to explain human behavior and to
  treat people suffering from mental illnesses.

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• Our personality is a conflict between our
  unconscious Id and our superego (our moral sense)
  and our ego (our sense of reality).

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Defense Mechanisms
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Psychoanalysis

• Psychoanalysis is the form of treating
  psychological disorders, invented by Freud.
• It is famous for the couch.

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A. What are Psychoanalytic methods of therapy (4
of them)

• 1. Free Association patient reports anything
  that comes to his/her mind.
• The psychoanalyst listens for links themes
  that might tie the patients fragmentary thoughts
  or remarks together.

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B. Dream analysis

• Dreams have two types of content
• Manifest content- actual events in dream.
• Latent content hidden message in dream.
• Freud thought that each dream represents a form
  of wish fulfillment. The wish may be disguised,
  but it is always there.

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C. Transference

• Feelings of love or other emotions (hatred) are
  expressed toward the therapist.
• These feelings are actually unconsciously felt
  toward others the patient is projecting these
  feelings onto the therapist.
• This provides clues about the clients feelings
  about these other people.

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Hypnosis

• Hypnosis is a psychoanalytic therapeutic
  technique.
• Supposedly reaches into the unconscious

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Personality assessment

• Psychoanalysts use projective tests like the
  Rorschach Ink Blot test or the TAT test

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Assessing achievement motivation

• The TAT Thematic Apperception Test

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Criticisms of Freuds theory

• 1.   Freud had no scientific data to support his
  theories.
• 2.   Freuds theories (unconscious, libido, etc.)
  cannot be observed.
• 3.   Theory explains behavior (post-hoc) after
  the fact.
• 4.    Observations not representative of
  population (very sexist and not multicultural).

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Pros of Freuds theory

• 1. Argued that childhood experiences are
  important in personality development.
• 2. Information outside of awareness does
  influence us.
• 3. Defense mechanismsgood descriptions of some
  of our behaviors.

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Behaviorism
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Behaviorism

• By the 1950s, Psychoanalysis seemed very
  unscientific.
• Behaviorists will bring science back into
  psychology, even if they overdo it a little.
• Behaviorism is NOT interested in the unconscious
  mind since it cannot be observed in a laboratory.

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Very telling quote!!

• Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and
  my own specified world to bring them up in and
  Ill guarantee to take any one at random and
  train him to become any type of specialist I
  might select -- doctor, lawyer, artist,
  merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and
  thief, regardless of his talents, penchants,
  tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his
  ancestors.--John Watson, Behaviorism, 1930

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Law of effect Edward Thorndike

• Basically, he was Skinner lite.
• Responses closely followed by satisfaction will
  become firmly attached to the situation and
  therefore more likely to reoccur when the
  situation is repeated.
• Conversely, if the situation is followed by
  discomfort, the connections to the situation will
  become weaker and the behavior of response is
  less likely to occur when the situation is
  repeated.

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Ivan Pavlov

• Discovered classical conditioning.
• Classical conditioning is associative learning.
• He trained a dog to drool to a bell.

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Dog associates food with bell.
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B.F. Skinner

• The most famous of the Behaviorists.
• operant conditioning (aka shaping)
• learning through reinforcements (rewards) and
  punishments.

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Behaviorism

• Albert Bandura did a famous experiment that said
  our behavior does not have to be classically
  conditioned or operant conditioned.
• We can simply observe behavior and copy it.

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Behaviorism

• The behavioral perspective can explain why people
  get addicted to gambling (positive
  reinforcement)

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Behavioral Therapy

• Focuses on maladaptive behaviors (mal means bad)
  and changing them.
• Token economy uses positive reinforcement to get
  large groups of students or mental ward patients
  or employees to do something like clean up or
  attend group therapy.
• (ex pizza party if you all pass your test)

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Behavioral therapy

• Systematic desensitization treatment of phobias
  and anxiety. Treat the behavior of not freaking
  out over spiders (or pickles).

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Behavioral therapy

• Aversive conditioning There is a drug called
  Antabuse. When mixed with alcohol, it makes you
  sick. Motivated alcoholics will take this pill
  and begin to associate the sickness with alcohol
  and possibly stop drinking.

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Behaviorism Summary

• Behaviorism says we do what we do because of
  classical conditioning, operant conditioning or
  we simply learn the behavior from watching or
  copying it.
• In its extreme, they think we are simply rats in
  a cage pressing buttons. WE HAVE NO FREE WILL!

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Humanism
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Humanistic

• In the 1960s in reaction to psychoanalysis and
  behaviorism.
• Focused on each individuals potential and
  stressed the importance of growth and
  self-actualization.
• The fundamental belief of humanistic psychology
  was that people are innately good.
• We are not rats in a cage! We are not id-driven
  animals! We are humans with free will.

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Humanism

• Abraham Maslow said we have a hierarchy of needs

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Humanism

• Carl Rogers revolutionized talk therapy.
• Therapy is client-centered, where the client has
  all the answers instead of the therapist.
• Therapists positive regard (no judgments).
• Group therapy comes from Humanism.

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REAL
IDEAL
Incongruent self neurosis
REAL
IDEAL
Incongruent self psychosis (shattered self)
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Fully-Functioning Individual Congruence! Open to
experiences Freedom from society Creativity
Carl Rogers fully functioning Individual
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Humanism summary

• Touchy-feely
• Rogers and Maslow put the human element back
  into psychology and therapy.
• Their philosophy We are all humans striving to
  maximize our potential. A therapists job is to
  remove obstacles to self-actualization.
• Positive psychology comes from Humanism

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Cognitive Psychology
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Cognitive Perspective

• It is the study of how people perceive, remember,
  think, speak, and solve problems.
• Cognitive therapy is about changing the
  maladaptive thoughts of a person.

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Cognitive Psychologists

• Jean Piaget studied cognitive development in
  children.

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Cognitive perspective on depression

• We are depressed because we are irrational. Our
  expectations are too high and misplaced. We want
  everyone to love us and accept us. We want every
  thing to go our way. We stay angry about stuff
  that happened a long time ago.
• WE MUST CHANGE THE WAY WE THINK TO BE HAPPY AND
  SUCCESSFUL.

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Cognitive Therapy

• Cognitive therapy is about changing the
  maladaptive (bad) thoughts.
• Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck and William Glasser are
  famous for reality therapy.
• They challenged his patients to ask, Are my
  thoughts realistic or rational?
• Cognitive therapy also educates the client,
  teaches him/her proper behaviors/thoughts

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Evolutionary Psychology

• Evolutionary psychology examines psychological
  traits such as memory, perception, or language
• It seeks to identify which human psychological
  traits are evolved adaptations.
• functional products of natural selection or
  sexual selection
• Attractiveness

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Evolutionary Psychology

• Why do women spend so much money on a weekly
  basis but men will surprise their wives with a
  brand new car (without asking her)?
• Evolutionary psychologists try to explain this
  behavior with comparisons to hunter-gather
  cultures.
• Why do women have more bug phobias?

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Biological Perspective

• Most respected right now.
• They focus on our brain, nervous system,
  neurotransmitters and hormones to explain our
  behaviors.

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Biological Perspective

• I dont know why you are depressed or anxious.
  But here is some medicine!

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Surgeries

• The Lobotomy damages your frontal lobe to relieve
  you of anxiety.

• Cut the corpus callosum to keep seizures from
  spreading to other side of brain.

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Electroconvulsive Therapy ECT
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Common medicines

• Prozac antidepressant blocks reuptake of
  serotonin.
• Xanax anti-anxiety (side effect of drowsiness)
• Thorazine replaced the lobotomy

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Social-Cultural Perspective

• Says that much of your behavior and your feelings
  are dictated by the culture you live in.
• Some cultures kiss each other when greeting, some
  just bow.
• Does your culture place value on individual or
  the group?