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Comparison of Behaviorist and Psychoanalysts on Obesity, Lack of Interest in Study Essay Example

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Comparison of Behaviorist and Psychoanalysts on Obesity, Lack of Interest in Study Essay Example
Both the Psychoanalysts and the Behaviorist believe that all humans have needs. They also believe that humans (organisms) work to satisfy their needs. One such need is food. Hull a behaviorist theorist "acknowledged that people do not just have needs they have what he called cravings, which are desires for reinforcement even when they do not satisfy a need." (Funder, pg.412)
Taking this into consideration, it is possible for one to say that a person becomes obese because they are continually eating, not because they are hungry but because they are craving a specific food and they want to satisfy that craving. Every time a person has a craving they will eat, thus they will become obese.
The psychoanalysts according to DR. C George Boeree in his e-text "Personality Theory", believes that "although a wish for food, might be enough to satisfy the id, it isn't enough to satisfy the organism." This need becomes stronger and stronger and continues to demand more and more of your attention. This continuous demand continues until there comes a point called the wish or drive breaking into consciousness where you can't think of anything else. Thus the individual will eat until the demand for food ceases. If the person continually eats that person will become obese.
Freud believed that all human behavior was motivated by drives or instincts, which are neurological representations of physical needs. These drives or instincts he referred to as life instincts. These instincts affect the life of the individual, by motivating him or her to seek food and water and the life of the species by motivating him or her to have sex.
If a person is always motivated or driven to eat, and they always give into this motivation, they will become obese, especially when they are eating things that are not healthy.
" Anna Freud believes that stress often causes people to abandon mature coping strategies and instead use patterns of the stages in which they are fixated." (Carver& Scheier, pg

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