Physiological Needs:
Physiological needs are the basic needs such as air, water, sleep, food, sex etc. When theses are not fulfilled we may feel sick, irritation, pain discomfort, etc. These feeling motivate us to alleviate them as soon as possible to establish homeostasis. Once they are all alleviated, we may think about other things.
Safety needs:
Safety needs have to do with establishing steadiness and consistency in a disordered world. As humans we need a security of a home and family. However, if a family is dysfunctional, i.e., an abusive husband, the wife cannot move to the next level, because she is constantly concerned for her safety. Love and Belongingness have to wait until she is no longer cringing of fear. A lot of people in our society shout out for law and order, as they don’t feel safe enough to go for a walk in their neighbourhood. In addition, safety needs sometimes motivate people to be religious. Religions comfort us with the promise of a safe secure place after we die and leave the insecurity of this world.
Love needs:
Love needs are belongingness. Humans have a need to belong to a group, i.e. religious groups, clubs, work groups, gangs etc. Humans need to be felt loved (in a non-sexual way), they also need the comfort that they belong and have been accepted.
Esteem needs:
There are two types of esteem needs.
- Self-esteem – results from competence or master of a task.
- Attention and recognition that comes from others (this is basically the same as belongingness, the desire to be needed, however wanting admiration has to do with the need for power.)
The people who have lower needs satisfied, are usually the one’s with expensive clothes, flash cars and flash house, as this makes their self esteem higher, and get the satisfaction of shouting “ Hey everyone look at me aren’t I great I can afford expensive thing.”
Self-actualization:
The need to become someone more than they are, to become everything than one is capable of becoming. These are the people who have everything can maximize their potential. These are usually middle-class to upper-class students who takes up environmental causes, join Peace Corps or go of to monasteries.
Abraham Maslow – Born 1908- died-1970. He was famous for his theory of hierarchy of need.
Burrhus Federic Skinner was born March 20th, 1904 in a small tow of Pennsylvania town of Susquehanna. His father was a lawyer and mother was a strong and intelligent housewife. Skinner received his BA in English from Hamilton College in upstate New York. He wrote for school paper, including articles critical to the school, the faculty and even Phi Beta Kappa. He wanted to be a writer and did try sending off poetry and short stories. After attending Hamilton College, Skinner decided to become a writer. Moving back home he wrote little. His entire production from the period he called his "dark year" consisted of a dozen short newspaper articles and a few models of sailing ships. Escaping to New York City for a few months working as a bookstore clerk, he happened upon books by Pavlov and Watson. He found them impressive and exciting and wanted to learn more. 1945, skinner became the chairman of psychology department at India University. 1948 he was invited to come to Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his life. Skinner was an active man who done research and guiding hundreds of doctoral candidates as well as writing many books. He became one of the best psychology writers, in a traditional behavioural approach, Skinner followed in the footsteps of and .
B.F.Skinner is a behavioural psychologist who is most famous for his work with rats using the “skinner’s Box”. Skinner made a big change to his theory, and change from testing on rats and directly testing his theories to humans. Even though rats and humans are entirely different species, skinner still believed that what was true for rats was the same for humans. Skinner even had the idea to test his theories on his own daughter, by bringing her up in a box.
Skinner with his wife admiring his daughter Debbie in the box.
“Skinners box” was basically a way of gathering a lot of data about the learning behaviour of rats and pigeons in as short time as possible. It was basically a box in which the animal was placed, a lever and dispenser for food pellets. Attached to the lever is a recording device, to tell the experimenter how many times and at what point the animal presses the lever. The advantage of using equipment like this is that it could be left alone and the experiment would still be in process.
With using pigeons, he developed the ideas of "operant conditioning" and "shaping behaviour." Operant conditioning is being taught to do things through reward. If the goal is to have a pigeon turn in a circle to the left, a reward is given for any small movement to the left. When the pigeon catches on to that, the reward is given for larger movements to the left, and so on, until the pigeon has turned a complete circle, once the circle has been completely turned that is when he will get their reward. This is a way to shape behaviour. Skinner compared this way of learning with the way children talk, the child was rewarded for making a sound that is sort of like a word until in fact they could say a whole word. Furthermore skinner believed that other difficult task could be completed and broken down through this way and taught. Skinner developed teaching machines so that students could learn gradually, revealing answers for an instant reward. Skinner expressed no interest in understanding the human psyche. Skinner was only determined to see how behaviour is caused by external force. Skinner believed that everything we do as humans is shaped by our experiences of punishment and reward.
B.F.Skinner died of leukaemia after becoming the most celebrated psychologist since Sigmund Freud.
Sigmund Freud was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1856. His father was a small time merchant, and Freud's mother was his second wife. Freud had two half-brothers who were 20years older than him. His family moved to Vienna when he was four years old, and though he often claimed he hated the city, he lived there until it was occupied by Germany in 1938. Freud's family background was Jewish, though his father was a freethinker and Freud himself an avowed atheist.
Freud was an ambitious student who studied medicine and law were. He was interested in science above all; the idea of practicing medicine. He hoped to go into neurophysiologic research, but research was hard to manage in those days unless you were independently rich. Freud was engaged and needed to be able to support a family before he could marry, so he was determined to go into private practice with a specialty in neurology.
During his training he befriended Josef Breuer, another physician and physiologist. Freud’s patient Anna O was a young women suffering from what was then called hysteria. She was temporally paralysed and could not speak Native American but could speak French and English, she couldn’t drink when she was thirsty nor eat when she was hungry, Breuer discovered that if he hypnotized her she would talk of things she couldn’t remember when she was conscience, and afterwards her symptoms were relieved, therefore it was called "the talking cure." Freud went to Paris for further study under , a neurologist known all over Europe for his studies of hysterics and use of hypnosis.
Freud didn't actually invent the idea of the conscious versus unconscious mind; however he was responsible for making it well known and popular. The conscious mind is what you are aware of at any particular moment, your current perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have you. Working closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious, anything that can easily be made conscious; the memories you are not at the moment thinking about but can readily bring to mind.
The largest part by far is the unconscious. It includes all the things that are not easily available to awareness, including many things that have their origins there, such as our drives or instincts, and things that are put there because we can't bear to look at them, such as the memories and emotions associated with trauma.
According to Freud, the unconscious is the source of our motivations, whether they be simple desires for food or sex, neurotic compulsions, or the motives of an artist or scientist. And yet, we are often driven to deny or resist becoming conscious of these motives, and they are often available to us only in disguised form. We will come back to this.
The id, the ego, and the superego
ID – Present at birth and is unconscious, unconscious impulses towards performance of needs. I demand as a child.
Ego – Mediates between super ego and ego. The capacity to delay needs for instant satisfaction and redirect it into more reasonable appropriate way to meet needs. Developing as a child.
Super-Ego - Provides a person with values by which to regulate good conduct and take pride in accomplishments;
- Not always demanding,
- Not always give away
- Balanced out.
Developing as an adult.
Unsettled disagreements between the ID – EGO and SUPER EGO can lead to obsession or blockage in the stages of development.
Each stage specializes on a different part of the body (oral, anus, etc).
A person invests their sexual energy in relationships with people and things which reflect the concerns of that stage.
Carl Rogers was born January 8th, 1902 in Oak Park. His father was a successful civil engineer and his mother was a housewife and devout Christian. As a young child Rogers education started in the second grade, this was because he could already red before starting kindergarten. Later on Rogers’s then went onto the University of Wisconsin as agriculture major; however he later switched over to religion for the ministry. After graduating from University of Wisconsin he married Helen Elliot, which did not meet his parent’s satisfaction and moved to New York, where he started to attend the Union Theological Seminary, which is a famous liberal religious institute, whilst at the Union he took a student organized seminar called “Why I am I entering the ministry?”
In 1942, Roger wrote his first book, Counselling and Psychotherapy. In 1945 Rogers was then invited to set up a counselling centre at the University of Chicago. In 1951 he published his major work, Client-Centred Therapy, this was whilst he was working at the University of Chicago, and the book Client-Centred Therapy is where he outlines his basic theory.
Rogers’s theory was that of personality and is based on self concept and the self concept on self actualization, basically saying that all animals and humans desire to live and do their best in life, when an animal becomes instinct another species will fill its place. Roger’s theory is a clinical one, based on years of experience dealing with his clients.
Carl Rogers gets his theory from working with his clients for so many years, this is what he has in common with Freud, furthermore in common with Freud is the way his theory’s are thought, they are logical with broad application. Roger’s see people as good or healthy. Basically, he sees the mental health as the normal progression of life, and he sees mental illness, criminality, and other human problems, as distortions of that natural tendency.
Rogers’ theory is quiet basic the whole theory is built on a single “force of life” he, the he calls the actualising tendency. This can be distinct as the built-in motivation current in every life form to develop its potentials to the highest level as possible. Rogers believes that all creatures make every effort to make the very best of their life.
Rogers’s theory looks at:
Why do we want air and water and food?
Why do we seek safety, love, and a sense of competence?
Why, indeed, do we seek to discover new medicines, invent new power sources, or create new works of art?
His logical answer behind theses questions is that it’s in our nature as living species to do the very best we can.
Roger’s earliest work was looking at mushrooms and seaweed, Rogers was amazed how weeds will grow though the sidewalk or cracks in the pavement, he was also amazed at how living creatures could live in the deserts conditions.
Rogers thought the idea of the ecosystem, in particular the ecosystem such as the forest, a forest has a much greater actualisation potential that a cornfield does. The rational reason behind this is that, in a forest if one insect became instinct there’s a guarantee that there is another creature that will come along and fill its place. Where as in the corn filed if a disaster was to happen there would just be left a dust bowl. Rogers’ links this idea to us humans, he sees that if live as we should we will become more and more complex, like the forest and thereby remain flexible in the face of life’s little and big disasters.
In the course of actualisation and their potentials, people have created their own society and culture, as humans have created a culture it has created and life of its own, which singles out humans to nature. Rather that staying close to other aspects of nature, culture can become a force in its own rights. If the culture were to die out, the humans would die out with it.
This is Carl Rogers’s theory on self concept and the self concept on self actualisation.
How each different psychological approach explains certain behaviours that encounter the police, Fire brigade and Military
Skinner:
Skinner was a behavioural psychologist whose theory was based on operant conditioning: Being taught to do things through reward. He famous for “skinners Box” which was basically a way of gathering a lot of data about the learning behaviour of rats and pigeons in as short time as possible.
To connect this with the public service is that the fire service, police and military train to achieve their goal to what regiment of the services they want to go into. The recruiter’s train hard achieve the drill work and the reward is passing the training, this is because once they have passed they feel pleased with themselves, as they know their have achieved the goal they were expecting and this is their reward to themselves.
Maslow:
Maslow’s theory was the hierarchy of need; you cannot go up one step before you achieve the step before. Going by the hierarchy of needs for the public service is would be:
Physiological needs:
You join your chosen public service.
Safety needs:
In you public service such as army, police or fire service, with your job you meet new people and help them.
Love needs:
In your job most of the time you get respect especially in the army, fire and police service.
Self-actualisation:
Once you have fulfilled all of your dreams and qualified in your job you might get promoted and this leaves you with satisfaction knowing you have done well.
Rogers:
Rogers’s theory was that of personality and is based on self concept and the self concept on self actualisation, basically saying that all animals and humans desire to live and do their best in life, when an animal becomes instinct another species will fill its place. Rogers was a humanistic psychologist, someone who believes that human beings want to do well.
In the fire service you put out a fire, you are putting the fire out to survive, you are doing something with your life.
Police, solving crimes, you are stopping crimes from happening to make yourself feel safe.
Army, you go into battle and your aim is at the end to survive that battle, you are not going into battle to die, but to fight in what you believe and to attack other people to keep yourself alive.
Freud:
Freud’s theory was that of super ego, ego and ID. Freud was a psychoanalytical psychologist, he analysed the difference between humans and put them into categories in different stages of their lives. To put his theory to the police, fire and army it would be:
Ego – To learn. The army learn things in training to survive; if they were to leave the army they would know how to cope in life as they have learnt the basic knowledge of life through the army.
Police have learnt how to solve crime.
Fire service have learnt how to protect themselves from danger, if an incident was to happen that was a danger to the public the fire service would know how to deal with it.
Super Ego- To learn from their mistakes. In the fire, police or army once they have passed their training, the only way to learn more is to learn by the mistakes they make as they go along and putting them into practise. Fire service – they learn to put out fires, when a fire occurs they are putting into practise what they have learnt.
The police, learn to solve crimes, when a crime is committed they go out and put what they have learnt into practise by dealing with the incident.
Army, learn to go into battle and help civilians, when a war is on they are putting into practise what they have learnt etc.
Assessment of my own personality type
As part of my own personality type I am a Company worker my typical features are conservative, dutiful and predictable. My positive qualities are organising ability, practical, common sense, hard working and self discipline. My allowable weaknesses are lack of flexibility and unresponsiveness to unproven ideas.
This is tested on a self-perception inventory test I done, each area of the test I had to put a number at what I felt was my strongest point and my weakest point, the higher the number the stronger my point was the lowest number the weakest are of my point. Each area could only equal up to ten. See attached information sheet for more.
