Ideas from the past are used in this present day to understand individual actions. “Why someone might behave in a certain way”? For example Freud’s psychodynamic theory explains personality as a factor. From the above category I will be outlining the psychodynamic approach and Behavioural by Skinner. I will also explain the similarities and differences between the two perspectives. Along with understanding if both perspectives are more similar or more different.
The psychodynamic theory comes from the idea of Freud’s that explains how individual personality develops with regards to how we think and behave. ‘Psycho’ means the mind and ‘dynamic’ suggests the appearance of personality. Freud is convinced that we who own our mind are not aware of certain motives, he refers to this as our “unconscious minds”. He claims that we only have 20% access to our conscious minds and 80% access to our unconscious minds Schacter et al. (2011). The thoughts and behaviours we project during adulthood is merely influenced by our past, therefore situations that have happened during our childhood influence later in life. This goes on to explain Freud’s psychosexual stages of development where by our personalities are shaped through specific stages of development such as the oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital stage.
These stages
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Also if a child is stuck on a stage whether they get help or not can affect if they stay fixated on that stage or move on to the next one. Skinners theory is purely about the environment because he says that we are all born a blank slate, our experiences and knowledge come from our surroundings such as parents who teach us our language. Operant conditioning is nurture, negative reinforcement can show the consequences of our own actions which inhibits us from carrying out certain behaviour therefore it is learnt. Also a stimulus can produce the response which means it has to be learnt in order for it to