From the five perspectives of Psychology compare and contrast any two perspectives. Which seems to be the more reliable when discussing human behaviour?

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From the five perspectives of Psychology compare and contrast any two perspectives.  Which seems to be the more reliable when discussing human behaviour?

To get a better insight to what this essay is trying to define, a brief explication of what Psychology is all about will be necessary.  “Through systematic research, psychologists aim to explore questions about the way human beings, and sometimes animals, behave and how they experience the world around them” (Malim and Birch. 1998).  The word Psychology is derived from two Greek words: psyche meaning ‘mind’ and logo which could be understood as ‘study’, therefore Psychology could be classified as ‘The study of the mind’.  It was only in 1879 with the opening of the first psychological laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt in Germany, that Psychology was considered as a distinctive and self standing scientific speciality and no longer simply as an extension of Philosophy, Physiology or Biology.  Throughout the 19th century and just up until recently, there have been many significant innovations which have lead to the development of different perspectives within the realm of Psychology, the five most supported are: the Cognitive; the Humanistic; the Biological; the Psychoanalytic and the Behaviourism.  Throughout this composition, the two perspectives that are going to be compared and contrasted will be the Psychoanalytic perspective and the Humanistic perspective, therefore it is essential to understand what exactly these two approaches have to offer within the domain of Psychology; their resemblances, their variations and their therapies, for this, a brief account of each will be quite helpful.

The psychoanalytic perspective concentrates largely on an individual’s unconscious and how divergences that are to be faced later in life are said to stem from early childhood experiences.  Freud argued that a person’s personality and its behaviour are the result of constant tug of war between the id, the ego and the superego; Freud believed that the id was innate, but both the ego and the superego were acquired later.  Psychosexual theory was yet another belief of Freud; he stated that an adult’s personality was sculpted by the passage of different stages throughout childhood, some of these stages being: oral, anal and phallic, he advanced that not completing correctly one of these stages could lead to the development of fixations.  His splits with Alfred Alder and Carl Jung were both due to his strong beliefs concerning the psychosexual theory; the same was to be said for his split with Erik Erikson.  One of Freud’s major contributions to the field of psychology, was the identification of what he called defence mechanisms, which allows individuals to auto protect themselves unconsciously, many non-Freudian psychologist acknowledge these as being very useful concepts.  “Defence mechanisms distort or delay reality and are essential ways of protecting the ego from distress and allowing the person to cope with life” (Cardwell, Clark and Meldrum, 2000).  After this separation, Alder, Jung and Erikson went on to enlarge Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective to a broader approach, which was called ‘Psychodynamic’ believing that the personality was influenced more by the social rather than the sexual traits of the world (Taylor, 1999).

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Carl Rogers (1902 – 1987) and Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970), were the two co-founders of the humanistic perspective or phenomenological approach, but it can also be called the third force psychology.  It is believed that each individual is profoundly good and with personal growth the personality can expand with assistance; this assistance takes the form of needs with its hierarchy.  Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs, which took the form of a pyramid, showing how and why each individual or client strives towards a psychological well being.  Through these survival needs ranging from thirst, sleep and hunger to ...

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