Freud came up with five stages of psychosexual development and argued that adult personality depends on experience of early childhood, especially problems at any of these stages. The first is the oral stage which usually occurs between birth and two years and is when the mouth is the source of pleasure. The anal stage is usually between ages two to three and the child is now aware of its bowels and controlling them. Next is the phallic stage between the ages of three and six and this is when a child is now aware of its genitals. Freud described the Oedipus complex as when a boy unconsciously develops a desire for his mother and jealousy of his father which leads to fear his father will castrate him. This is resolved by the boy identifying with his father and trying to copy him and this is when the super ego is formed. In girls the equivalent is the Electra conflict which derives from unconscious penis envy and results in the girl coming to identify with her mother and adopt her moral standards. (Eysenck 1996; Benson 1999; Hayes & Orrell 1998) This part of Freud’s theory is criticised as there is no real evidence that boys fear castration. It might be expected that identification with a father would be greatest if the father was threatening as Freud argued it was based of fear. However boys tend to identify more with warm and supportive fathers. (Mussen & Rutherford 1963 cited in Eysenck 1996 ) The other stages of Freud’s psychosexual development are latent between ages six and eleven, where children ignore the opposite sex and the genital stage from eleven onwards where we desire the opposite sex.
Freud put forward that problems at any of these stages could lead to fixation and unresolved conflicts could lead to problem in adulthood. When faced with problems we use defence mechanisms. Freud talked of defence mechanisms as strategies that the ego adopts in order to protect itself against threat. (Hayes & Orrell 1998) Displacement diverts energy into another act when we cannot or don’t want to do something. Repression pushes unwanted memories, fears and wishes into the unconscious.
Freud’s theories have been used to treat mental illness and involved accessing the conflict in the unconscious mind and coming to terms with the repressed memories.
The humanistic perspective which was developed in the 1960’s adopted an unscientific view of the mind. It focuses on the individual with a large emphasis on conscious experience which is the complete opposite to Freud’s theory of the unconscious. The humanistic theorists concentrated on positive aspects of the human mind such as happiness and ecstasy, whereas we can see that Freud’s theory seemed to focus on the negative aspects such as jealousy and fear.
Abraham Maslow ignored non-conscious processes and believed we have a innate human motivation to achieve our potential. We can compare this to Freud’s view that we are motivated by two innate drives as they both say that we are born with these motivations although they are very different. He thought that it was important to understand the person as a whole rather that separate parts of behaviour. Maslow therefore developed a theory of self actualization and the hierarchy of needs. This consisted of seven different levels with physiological needs at the bottom which included basic needs such as food and drink, and self-actualization at the top which was growth motivation and realizing your full potential. You start at the bottom and need to satisfy each need before you can move up to the next level. It is possible to reach different levels and move up and down the ladder each day. This hierarchy can be applied to specific situations such as in the work place to motivate and train staff and also in teacher training to help with motivating students. (Eysenck 1996, Mcilveen & Grogs 1999)
Carl Rogers saw the personality as one unit and not broken up in separate sections or parts as Freud did with the id, ego and super ego. Rogers emphasized the role of the self concept which consisted of the ideal self, self image and self esteem. The ideal self is the person we want ourselves to be and the self image is where we see ourselves now. The self esteem depends on the gap between these two. A person with a large gap will have a low self esteem. This approach has had a major impact on therapy for self improvement. (Benson 1999) This was where the therapist tried to reduce the gap between a persons self image and ideal self. Rogers argued that we all need unconditional love from our mother and we all have a need for positive regard which we need before we can have a positive self-regard which consists of self esteem and self worth. Rogers developed a set of criteria which he said we must achieve before becoming a healthy and fully functional person. These included creativity and openness to experience. According to Rogers each persons view of the world was completely unique and this is what shaped our lives. He believed that even when our personality is formed we can change it by reforming at any time. (Mcilveen & Grogs, 1999)
The humanistic perspective focuses on unique unpredictable events in human lives and states that we are individuals striving for growth and improvement which gave the need for self-actualisation. These help develop the human personality. This is a big contradiction to Freud’s theory which argued that “a healthy personality is one where the tensions of each different part of the mind have been reduced to a manageable level.” (Hayes & Orrell 1998) The humanistic theorists showed that there is potential to change in later life with unconditional positive regard whereas the psychodynamic theory saw personality as fixed and unchanging once the person had reached adulthood mainly in the first five years of a person life and we see the basis of this in Freud’s psychosexual theory. Another large contradiction is that Freud said that the unconscious affected the way that a person acted and felt but the humanists argued that it is human experience that affects the ways that a person acts and feels.
As we can see there are many differences between the psychodynamic and the humanistic theory, however, they both share a big similarity as many of the theories in each perspective are difficult to test. Freud’s theory of the unconscious and the personality have made a great impact on our understanding of human behaviour. The humanistic approach has different ideas about how the personality is formed and totally disagrees with Freud’s theory of the unconscious but although the theories contradict each other in many ways, Rogers and Freud both developed useful methods to treat patients with psychological and mental disorders.
