Psychodynamic Perspective Essay

The Psychodynamic Perspective
The psychodynamic perspective focuses on the effects of unconscious factors effecting the nature in which we behave. This perspective also focuses on the relationship of childhood experiences effecting adulthood thinking and actions. This theory has many benefits such as being able to provide explanations for the various human behaviors. By looking back at childhood experiences it is believed with the psychodynamic perspective you will be able to find an explanation for the behavior in question. This perspective also has a comprehensive framework to describe the different human personalities. Part of this framework includes the theory of personality having three structures, the id, the ego, and the superego. The
psychodynamic perspective believes that defense mechanisms are used to deal with conflicts in life. These defense mechanisms are often used to protect the individual from unwanted feelings such as anxiety due to unconscious thoughts. While this perspective has many benefits, it also has many shortcomings. The Psychodynamic approach ignores this influence of outside factors such as genes, memory, and thinking patterns but instead believes behavior is predetermined. It also lacks scientific evidence to back-up the theories believed which in turn makes it unfalsifiable. When used in therapy this theory leaves too much interpretation to the therapist, making it possible to become biased.
The Behavioral Perspective
The behavioral perspective believes that we have different behaviors because we learn them.
Benefits of the behavioral perspective include it being scientific. Often the behaviors studied are only ones that can be observed and manipulated from the outside. Because of this, you can compare behavior without having a biased view. Classical conditioning is another benefit of the behavioral perspective meaning we learn a “connection between an originally neutral stimulus and a naturally evoking stimulus that produces an automatic reflective reaction”. In layman’s terms, it is a pattern of stimuli and responses. Classical conditioning has made this perspective very applicable to the real world and psychological treatments for phobias and mental disorders. Operant conditioning is also a benefit in which it is believed that reinforcements help an individual learn different behaviors. The use of reinforcements increases the likely hood of an individual doing that behavior again. Some of the shortcomings for the behavioral perspective include the perspective suggesting that behavior can be broken down to the same conditioning process no matter how complex. This implies that individuals are not unique but rather similar to each other. This perspective also usually focuses on only present which excludes possible underlying issues. A big shortcoming for the behavioral perspective is the fact that often experiments are done on animals in which the responses do not always carryover to
humans.

In my opinion, while it does have its flaws, the psychodynamic perspective makes the most sense due to the emphasis on both the unconscious mind and the link between childhood experiences affecting adult behaviors. I feel the biological perspective makes the least sense for it focuses only on physiological abnormalities of individuals leaving out the possibility for life experiences and environment to affect behaviors.