The Psychodynamic Approach

Psychologists determined that Psychology is the scientific study of the behaviour of humans and mental functions.

There are five main approaches in psychology known as the behaviourist approach, biological approach, psychodynamic approach, cognitive approach and the humanist approach.” These approaches involve certain assumptions; this includes what they think about human behaviour, how it functions, where and what to study and the type of techniques used in each approach” (McLeod 2007).

The behaviourist approach started in 1913 by John Watson drawing on work of Ivan Pavlov which was developed to study the behaviour of humans: which behaviourist believed is acquired through learning from external factors in the environment after birth. “They believed that only observable behaviour should be study because you cannot see what goes on in the mind. Behaviour is considered deterministic, free will doesn’t exist” (McLeod 2007). There are two key learning process of the behavioural approach which are classical conditioning; (learning through stimuli and reflexes). “For example, Pavlov’s experiment (dog salivate to the sound of a tone presented with food) to prove that behaviour can be learnt (McLeod

Which was done through case studies (on middle age women from Vienna) on a one to one basis in detailed investigation. McLeod (2007) stated Freud used two types of techniques called free association and dream analysis. They were used to interpret a person’s dream by decoding and unravel any hidden meaning. Then a cure could be effective. Thought Freud’s ideas made large impacts on psychology, the approach was criticized of having vague concepts that cannot be scientifically tested. It ignores mediational processes (example thinking, memory). Bias sample and considered to be too deterministic.” (McLeod