Search results for: freud

Psychology Biographies Every Theorist, Psychologist, Physician, and Professional has his or her own unique history.  When reading about them it often becomes clear from where their theories and interests derived.  Freud for example was his mother’s favorite, Jung spoke of voices speaking to him, and Adler felt a strong need to overcome inferiority due to…

The Search for Self-Understanding All of the personality theories discussed in this text have one thing in common: They are all designed to explain who we are in man’s quest for improved self-understanding.  Many focus on the why of personality, such as Freud’s idea of psychosexual stages or Erikson’s crises that continue in different forms…

Cognitive Theory, or How to Change Your Mind As you read, the basic premise behind cognitive theory is the idea that the way we think about or perceive ourselves and others, determines how we respond to the world with our emotions and behaviors.  The goal of any treatment would have to include changing the way…

The Beginning of Cognitivism George Kelly was perhaps the first cognitive theorist.  His writings describe in detail his criticisms of the previously popular personality theories.  He wrote that Freud’s theory was not only unbelievable but went as far as to call it ‘nonsense.’  He referred to behavioral theory as a bunch of confusing arrows, R’s…

Humanistic Theory: Against the Basics of Science Humanistic theory is not one that was easily researched in the beginning.  First of all, there are few tests that a humanists would use due to their main belief that people are basically good and the focus of treatment should be on the positive rather than the negative. …

King of the Mountain Perhaps the most well known contribution to humanistic psychology was introduced by Abraham Maslow.  Maslow originally studied psychology because of his intrigue with behavioral theory and the writings of John B. Watson. Maslow grew up Jewish in a non-Jewish neighborhood.  He spent much of his childhood alone and reported that books…

The OCEAN of Personality If you look at the theories we’ve discussed so far, not only within the trait theory camp, but also those of Hans Eysenck and even Sigmund Freud, you may start to notice some commonalities.  Many different researchers, from different schools of thought have studied the aspects of personality and several interesting…

The Functionally Autonomous Central Traits Gordon Allport was born in Indiana, the youngest of four boys.  As a child he felt different from others, both in his childhood play and his interests.  After high school followed his older brother Floyd through the same educational path.  They went to the same undergraduate program, both attended Harvard…

Specific Tests used in Psychodynamic Assessment There are several commonly used projective techniques that were derived from Freudian and Neo-Freudian Theories.  These projective techniques are gaining more and more research support as they become more standardized and researched, but they are still open to a lot of different interpretations.  Ideally, most psychologists see these tests…