Psychoanalysis Psychology

People have a propensity to reject mental disorders today because they physically cannot be seen. When a person has a runny nose or is always coughing, coming to the conclusion that the person is sick can easily be assumed. When it comes to mental disorders though people don't normally have the ability to see it and that is where the examination begins. Do mental disorders exist? What causes them? As a result of mental disorders some people display a change in behavior or do things that are not considered normal with current social norms. These issues lead to a discussion about two historically relevant psychological approaches that look to answer all those questions - the psychoanalytic approach and the humanistic approach. Psychoanalysis supports and specifies reasoning's for mental disorders and certain behavior while the humanistic approach believes that behavior is based off of personal choices and people have the ability to constantly improve. This paper will look into both psychological approaches and define what makes each theory relevant in the history of psychology. These two visionary approaches all began with Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud and the development of psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis Psychology

The founding father of the psychoanalysis was Sigmund Freud who believed that everyone has inner conflict and he wanted to know how these certain conflicts can be resolved. In his clinical practice, Freud encountered patients suffering from nervous disorders and their complaints could not be explained by pure physical causes ("Personality," n.d.). His clinical experience led him to develop the comprehensive theory of personality and his focus on the unconscious mind. Psychoanalysis attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts and Freud came up with different techniques to treat disorders by exposing and interpreting those unconscious frictions.

Freud believed that the mind was like an iceberg. Most of the entity is hidden beneath the surface, and under the surface is where the unconscious mind is located. One technique Freud came up with to discover those unconscious thoughts was through the practice of free association. In free association, the patient lies on a couch and is encouraged to talk openly and spontaneously, giving complete expression to every idea, no matter how embarrassing, to bring the source of the patient's conscious choice (Shultz, 2012, p. 298). Through free association, Freud believed that in a patient expressing whatever comes to mind that nothing was random about the material and he believed most of what was revealed was the source of the patient's abnormal behavior.

In studying the unconscious mind, Freud developed a system of personality and broke down the mind into separate structures. He believed the unconscious mind contained certain instincts and they were the driving force behind all human behavior. He broke down these impulses into three areas: the Id, Ego, and Superego. The id is the source of psychic energy and strives for satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives and demanded immediate gratification. Ego is the rational aspect of personality and seeks to gratify the id's impulses in realistic ways while also controlling all instincts. The superego is the moral aspect of personality and focuses on how we should behave while providing standards for judgment for future aspirations (Shultz, 2012, p. 310). Freud believed there was a constant struggle within the personality as continuous and conflicting forces are always pressuring the ego.

Another one of Freud's main ideologies was his psychosexual stages on personality development. Freud believed that people's neurotic disturbances originated in their childhoods and because of this notion he believed that children pass through five psychosexual stages. The oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital stages all took place by the time a individual was around the age of five, which he believed is when adult personality is formed (Shultz, 2012, p. 311). Psychoanalysis developed outside of conventional psychology and remained so for several years. Freud's ideas and theories were developed to try to get a better understanding of a individuals unconscious mind and he believed by doing so would give way to fully understanding a patients mind. By the 1960's, psychologists became dissatisfied with Freud's negativity and obsessions with the unconscious and sexual aspects of human behavior. In response to psychoanalysis the field of humanistic psychology developed to focus more on people's unique capacity for choice, responsibility and growth.

Humanistic Psychology

Humanistic psychology was founded with the idea that human personality should not be considered with a negative aspect but rather is should stress the positive and healthy aspects of an individuals personality as well as the uniqueness of the individual. Humanistic psychologists opposed Freud's psychoanalysis and how it minimized the role of the consciousness and chose instead to put emphasis on the conscious mental process. The two distinct groundbreakers of the theory of humanistic psychology were Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.

Maslow has been called the spiritual father of humanistic psychology and probably did more than anyone else to spark the movement and present on it some degree of academic respectability (Shultz, 2012, p. 339). In Maslow's view, every individual possesses