Foundations of Psychology

Foundations of Psychology

Identification of major schools of thought in psychology and examining their major underlying assumptions

The Major schools in psychology are behaviorism, Psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology and humanistic psychology.

Behaviorism

The behaviorism theory does not pay any attention to the processes, which occur, within the brain. Behaviorists' perception is that what information is provided to the brain, the brain will respond to that information as an output. The behaviorism theory is traced from Pavlov Classical Conditioning and Skinner operant conditioning. The basic assumption involved in this theory is that psychologists suggest that brain relates to the information, which it had stored previously and respond. They believe that previous stimulus condition the human behavior and brain does not refer to internal processes while making decisions (Comer & Gould, 2013).

Psychoanalysis theory

Psychoanalysis is the most famous though produced by Sigmund Freud. In the theory of psychoanalysis, Freud has divided the brain into three segments of consciousness that influence the human activity. The three factors are id, ego and the superego. The id provokes the innate desires of the individual, which include food, reproduction and safety. The Superego increases the drive cultural and societal objectives of the individual. The ego manages the id and superego of the individual while maintaining the personal desires of the individual. The basic assumption underlying the psychoanalytic theory is that the unconscious and the subconscious brain control the human activity. It equals the brain activity of the human being to that of animal. The human has no control over the id, which creates the drive for the basic desires. Behaviorism and the psychoanalysis share similar features and provide a very weak view of the human psychology. Behaviorist's views humans as machine with behaviors while psychoanalytic suggest that the desire levels of humans is similar to that of animals (Comer & Gould, 2013).

Humanistic Psychology

Maslow humanistic psychology emerged after the development of behaviorism and Psychoanalysis theories. The theory proposed that the human needs are made up of a ladder or pyramid which moves upward after successful achievement of each level. It assumes that human has basic needs of food, shelter and security, after the human strives for social needs, esteem needs and then self-actualization. This theory assumes that all of the humans have a fixed pattern, which they strive to achieve during the course of life. It acknowledges the driving forces and desire but failed to answer, that how these ...