Evaluation Flashcards
What are the key points of the Nature VS Nurture evaluation point?
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.
What are the key points of the usefulness evaluation point?
Highlights the fact that childhood is a critical period in development.
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.
What are the key points of the reflects the complexity of human behaviour evaluation point?
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.
What’s an example for the reflects the complexity of human behaviour evaluation point?
Freud’s method of psychoanalysis seeks to uncover deep meanings and acknowledges that understanding behaviour is a length process.
What are the key points of the reductionist evaluation point?
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.
What’s an example for the reductionist evaluation point?
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.
What are the key points of the determinist evaluation point?
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.
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.
What are the key points of the can’t be proven wrong evaluation point?
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.
What did Popper (1934) suggest?
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.
