Objective Psychology and Psychoanalysis

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1. Objective psychology and psychoanalysis have much in common. Wulff compares these studies on page two hundred and fifty eight by stating “both reject unaided introspection as a means of gathering fundamental data.” In other words, in neither psychoanalysis nor objective psychology, can a person take an observation made from themselves about themselves and consider it fundamental data. Another similarity would be “that human conduct is the outcome of complexly determined casual events that lie outside awareness” (258). In this particular case, both types of science believe that the way we act is an outcome of more than one event that may have occurred outside of our knowing. An example could be being stressed out or feeling anxiety. Both psychoanalysts and objective psychologists “are [considered] the self-conscious products of a positivistic and materialistic world-view [that are] dedicated to saving humankind from its deep-rotted delusions and self-defeating ignorance” (258). This point in particular relates to the idea that both studies believe they are saving people and society from what is not real. A point in case would be if a person were a person believed in God. Because you cannot feel, touch, smell, or see God, he would be considered unreal scientifically. Wulff points out that both “have issued radical challenges to religious faith” (258). However, both sciences share the view of empirical science meaning the both agree that the studies should be based on sensory experiences.

Although psychoanalysis and objective psychology have many similarities they also have a few dissimilarities. The difference that is most observant would be the one of subjectivity. The best way to explain the subjectivity was wr...

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...in 1950 that “whatever the origins of a religious expression may be, its significance or meaning in the present must be viewed independently allowing for possibility of fundamental change” (317). One example of this is “Freud’s . . . view that, contrary to appearances, religion has undergone no real historical development” (317). Although Freud was wrong on a few aspects of religion he taught scientists many things. Wulff states on page three hundred eighteen that “among the lessons we have learned from Freud is the insight that nothing is ever as simple as it first appears . . . psychological phenomena prove again and again to be indefinitely complex . . . on a variety of different levels.”

3. Melanie Klein was a psychoanalyst who emphasized an “unprecedented degree [to] the early modes of infantile sexuality and the principle of the death impulse” (328).

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