Psychological Theories: Overview Of Psychodynamic, Cognitive And Learning Theories

Psychological

Theories

Key theorists

Overview of key ideas

Psychodynamic Theory

Sigmund Freud (proposed psychodynamic theory)

Carl Jung, Alfred Adler and Melanie Klein (further modified the theory)

This psychodynamic theory processes to understand the human feeling, emotions and behaviour as per early experiences. The theory explains dynamic relations between the conscious and unconscious state of mind (Marmor, 2012). This theory deals with the dynamics of the human body that are motives, forces and energy. Psychodynamic theory is inspired by thermodynamics theory of physics considering psychological energy flow in the human brain as a fact of existence. As per thermodynamic the total energy of any physical system remains in a constant state, similarly as per psychodynamic theory the energy state of the human body is always constant. Hence, the energy released from one part will appear in another part in some other form (Bateman, A., Brown, D. and Pedder, J., 2010).

As per psychodynamic theory, there are three parts of the   human personality that are the ID, the superego and the ego. ID is once own instinct and pleasure seeking desire. The superego is influenced by society and rules whereas the ego mediates ID and superego (Marmor, 2012).

According to Summers and Barber (2012), the psychoanalysis linked with psychodynamic theory works to reveal the unconscious desires and thoughts of human personality. However, this psychoanalysis approach didn’t have much support from psychologist and lacks scientific evidence.

Cognitive Theory

Jean Piaget (Studied cognitive development)

Uric Neisser (gave the term cognitive psychology)

Noam Chomsky (studied cognitive revolution)

Cognitive psychology put the concentration of mental processes development like perception, memory, thinking, creativity and intelligence (De Jong, 2010). The cognitive theory got birth from the developmental stage theory derived by Piaget’s where he states that human intelligence or cognition is acquired, processed and developed gradually starting from childhood to adulthood. He also stated that cognitive development is highly linked with biological development of the human body (Clark and Beck, 2010). The life experiences play a very major role in the normal or abnormal cognitive development of body as per this theory (Nutbeam, D., Harris, E. and Wise, W., 2010).

According to Clark and Beck (2010), the three basic components of the cognitive theory are schemas, adaptation and assimilation and development stages of life. The “Schemas” are the building materials that make up the mental representation of the world around human. These are the units of knowledge for different objects, actions and situation happening in the world. This is a stage of mental balance. Whereas the adaptation or assimilation involves the changes as per surrounding situations to deal with new objects and actions. Lastly, the third most important component of cognitive theory is development stages or biological maturation that happen with time leading to the development of cognition in the body (De Jong, 2010).

Theory

Evaluation of Theory and its application in development

Evaluation of chosen study

Learning Theory

As per this theory, learning occurs according to the social context occurring purely by observation, experiences and interactions with the surrounding. Hence, social development occurs through the learning performed as per provided stimulus (Couros, 2010). 

Learning theory explains the process of absorption, process and retaining information as per the emotional, cognitive and environmental influences occurring in the world around us.

The moral development and gender role development are part of social development highly influenced by the learning process. According to Pratt, T.C., Cullen, F.T., Sellers, C.S., Thomas Winfree Jr, L., Madensen, T.D., Daigle, L.E., Fearn, N.E. and Gau, J.M., (2010), the nature of moral development surely changes with the social circumstances where learning leads to these changes. Further, gender development depends on social interactions. For example- individual developing in highly gendered place learns to distinguish people as per their gender. Hence, social development highly depends on the learning process of mind and body.

Lisko and O'dell (2010) indicated that learning and psychoanalytical theories are best to understand social development throughout the life of an individual. According to studies of Couros (2010) the process of learning initiates from early childhood stage leading to overall social construction of humanity. Hence, social development is a part of learning performed by any individual interacting with its environment.

 Harlow (1958), Harlow’s Monkeys

Strength

The Harlow’s study on infant monkey’s experiment was positive scientific evidence that supports social attachment theory and learning theory aspects as a major part of overall development (Harlow, 1958). This study indicated that infant monkey’s also have a natural attachment capability or phenomenon to identify a dummy as a mother figure. The softness, calmness and comfort provided by dummy cloth lead to attachment in conscious of monkey with dummy rejecting the materialistic need of food in another wire gauge dummy.

This study was appropriate to support the process of learning theory but was linked with the social development phase of life. The Harlow’s experiment was more focussed on attachment and learning behaviourism (Suomi et al. 2008).

Weaknesses

This study was not able to explain the effect of learning and development on the social development because one infant monkey were the only experimented individual. Further, the experiment was not retested on any other monkey or animal. Therefore, sampling restriction is the weakness of this study.

Psychodynamic Theory

Summers and Barber (2012) stated that as per psychodynamic theory the unconscious state of mind is the most powerful part that affects the emotion and behaviour of any individual. The negative and positive emotional development is directly the outcome of the unconscious mind. No emotion occurs without a cause or reason and these reasons affect unconscious mind more than the conscious one. 

The psychodynamic theory provided by Freud explaining the conscious and unconscious state of human body links with emotional development for explaining the unconscious state of the human body.

As per psychodynamics, the emotions or behaviours like anger, mistrust, grief, fear, nail biting, hoarding, nervousness, skin picking are the outcomes of different events in initial life stages (Bateman et al. 2010). For example- nail biting is outcome of childhood anxiety event, hoarding occurs due to childhood trauma, and sexual compulsions are related to issues in sexual development stages of life.

Schore (2012) indicated that from three stages of psychodynamic ego development that are Id, ego and superego, the stage of id is highly influenced by the emotional development of the individual. The instinctual vitalities, early childhood experiences, individual desires (emotional and physical) develops the Id of that person.

 Curtiss (1977), Genie

Strength

The case of Genie (1957) “wild child” written by Susan Curtiss is a clear example that describes the involvement of unconscious state of mind the emotional and behavioural development leading to individual personality as per psychodynamic theory (Curtiss 1977). This acts of social isolation, child abuse, and traumatic conditions performed with Genie in early ages of life highlights lack of attachment in terms of emotional, personality and behavioural defects where she where she was not able to bound a health relation with any individual throughout life. Therefore, this study indicates that psychodynamics of personality development also links to the emotional and behavioural development of human (Bateman et al. 2010).

Weaknesses

This study is restricted to only one individual while explaining the psychodynamics of attachment. Further, the study is more focussed on observations rather than experiments in research.