Psychodynamic Approach

This assignment will describe two approaches from psychology; behavioural and psychodynamic approach. It will also compare and contrast these two psychological approaches in relation several things including nature/nurture, free will, determinism and research methods. After that this assignment will summarise primary research each using different method. Also this assignment will examine two ethical issues arising in psychological studies with evaluation.

Behavioural approach is a theory to simplify human behaviour through observations. This theory focuses on the environment as a controlling factor to human/animal and that we are the result of the environmental influences. It concentrates on stimuli that trigger’s human, animal behaviour and

Psychodynamic approach has three parts of the psyche. Human has a biological drive such as eating, sex, drinking and aggression from their id. Human wants to satisfy these needs however super ego which is the moral part of the psyche prevent us from acting on the id’s impulses by using anxiety and guilt. Between these two id and super ego, there is ego which satisfies the needs of id in a way that super ego will accept and that is in line with

Nurture refers to all the environmental variables that impact who we are, including our early childhood experiences, how we are raised, our social, relationships and our surrounding culture” ( Nature vs Nurture, 2009) Behaviourist perspective believes in nurture as it is based on the concept that all behaviour is learned from the environment. For example: Bobo doll experiment (Albert Bandura, 1961) study on aggression, it showed that children can develop social behaviour such as aggression can be developed by observation of adult behaviour. The experiment was executed via a team of researchers who physically and verbally abused an inflatable doll in front of preschool-age children, which led the children to later mimic the behavior of the adults by attacking the doll in the same fashion. This supports that the personality or behaviour is learnt from the environment which is nurture. However, such behaviour becomes part of an individual’s behavioural repertoire through direct reinforcement – when a behaviour is imitated, it receives direct reinforcement (or not).

In contrast, the psychodynamic approach requires a combination of both the nature and nurture. According to Freud, both childhood experiences as well as innate drives constitute the personality of an adult. The basis of this is dependent on developmental stages which a