Evaluation Flashcards
Nature VS Nurture
It takes into account both sides of the nature - nurture debate.
Freud states that personality is the product of innate drives and childhood experiences. The Id is instinctual and the biological aspect of our personality.
The influence of nurture comes in the form of the psychosexual stages that every child is considered to go through.
Usefulness
It highlights the fact that childhood is a critical period in development.
Who we are and become is greatly influenced by our childhood experiences.
Ideas put forward by Freud have greatly influenced the therapies used to treat mental disorders. Freud was the first person to recognise that psychological factors could be used to explain physical symptoms such as paralysis.
Psychoanalysis has been widely used to help people overcome psychological problems.
This is therefore a useful approach for helping to understand mental health problems.
Reflects the complexity of human behaviour
The psychodynamic approach can be seen as an approach that’s holistic.
It recognises that human behaviour is influenced by multiple factors which can’t be separated.
Freud’s explanations reflect the complexity of human behaviour and experience.
The psychodynamic approach improves on those other approaches that reduce explanations for human behaviour to one factor.
Reflects the complexity of human behaviour - example
The behaviourist approach proposes that recovery from a mental disorder can be achieved through re - learning and doesn’t require any consideration of what may have caused the disorder in the first place.
The problem with this approach is that the original symptoms may simply reappear again because the actual cause has been ignored.
Freud’s method of psychoanalysis seeks to uncover deep meanings and acknowledges that understanding behaviour is a length process.
Reductionist and oversimplified
The psychodynamic approach can be seen as being reductionist.
It can be accused of “mechanistic reductionism” because it simplifies the human behaviour to the mechanics of the mind and early childhood experiences.
This approach ignores other important influences on behaviour, such as biochemistry and genetics.
Reductionist and oversimplified - example
1950s and 60s - one of the main explanations for autism was that some mothers were very distant from their children.It was seen that autism was a withdrawal from the lack of involvement.
Such a psychodynamic explanation was an oversimplification of the underlying processes of autism.
Determinist
Freud saw infant behaviour as determined by innate forces (libido) and adult behaviour determined by childhood experiences.
It therefore follows that we have no free will in who we become or how we behave.
We call this a determinist viewpoint.
It sees our personality as shaped by forces that we can’t change or don’t have a choice about.
This is a weakness as we’re able to change the way we behave if we want to.
This determinist viewpoint may give some people a plausible excuse for behaving unreasonably or an excuse for criminal behaviour.
It also implies that people can’t be held responsible for their behaviour.
Can’t be proven wrong
Freud’s theories are problematic to falsify.
For example:
All men have repressed homosexual tendencies - this prediction can’t be disproved if the tendency is so repressed they are never aware of it. Therefore, the prediction can’t be falsified.
However, Freud predicted an inverse relationship between guilty and wrongdoing which was supported by research.
Mackinnon (1938)
Individuals who cheated at a task tended to express less guilt when questioned about life than those who didn’t cheat.
Popper (1934)
A good theory is one that can be tested to see if it is wrong.
If you can’t evidence beyond all probability that it is right then you can only falsify a theory.
If there is no way to prove that it’s wrong, how can you prove that it’s right.
