Tag Archives: Psychology

Psychoanalysis

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One of my childhood friends, Karla, grew up in a very narcissistic environment. Being part of a prestigious school district meant she had to deal with the pressure of social statuses throughout all of her middle school and high school career. She confessed to me that in middle school she started to care too much about what others thought of her, which completely disrupted her personality. She is now one of the most insecure girls I have ever met, and it is all because of the way she was brought up.

This gradual change in personality is due to the scientific theory of psychoanalysis, developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud in the early 1900s. Psychoanalysis states that a person’s behavior is greatly influenced by their childhood experiences and events. Karla has an insecure personality because of the influence that her middle school peers had on her. Any traumas or life-changing occurrences that a child experiences are also likely to shape how they will behave in the future. When I was three years old I moved from Spain, the country I was born in, to America. That sudden change in my early life had a significant impact on the way I am today, since I act more like an American than a Spanish person because that is the culture I grew up around. Our unconscious mind adapts to our early life stages and significantly changes the way we behave as adults.

Freud started to notice the relationship between past experiences and personality through his clinical work with patients who suffered a variety of psychological problems. By listening to their life stories, Freud concluded that these problems were the result of their unconscious adaptation to the conditions they experienced in their early lives. His theory of psychoanalysis was published in the book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and had a significant impact in the study of the mind, and in the field of psychology as a whole.

 

 

 

 

Citations

 

 

Cherry, Kendra. “Psychoanalysis.” About.com Psychology. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2014.

 

“Psychoanalysis.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Jan. 2014. Web. 02 Feb. 2014.

Behaviorism in Every day Life

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Behaviorism in Every Day Life

            Behaviorism is a holistic theory of development that can be seen everywhere in our daily lives. It focuses on the concept that the environmental experiences can shape us and create the person that we are today.  Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner all focused on behaviorism and its effects.  However, in my case, I want to focus on Skinner’s learning theory, operant conditioning.

As a sophomore, living with three other roommates in an apartment can become very hectic. The trash fills up, the bathroom is gross, and someone “accidentally” eats your food. Our biggest problem, however, was the dirty kitchen. There was always a huge pile of dishes in the sink. While I always dutifully rinsed my dishes and put them in the dishwasher, it seemed that 2 of my other roommates liked to toss their dirty dishes into the sink and wait a week. Instead of someone doing the dishes, the pile would just get bigger and bigger. Every time I walked into the kitchen, I would grimace and clean the dishes myself. As an experiment, I stopped cleaning the dishes and waited for either one of them to do it themselves. When one of them finally did it, I made a huge show of it. I thanked them, and marveled at “how clean” the kitchen finally was.

It didn’t take long before my roommates got the point and started picking up their own slack. I was surprised at how easily I got them to clean up after themselves, without yelling or awkwardly pointing it out to them. Just by simply using positive reinforcement, I was able to have a clean kitchen and still maintain good relationships with my roommates. By reinforcing their good behaviors and ignoring the bad ones, I was increasing their good behaviors without any animosity. It’s a simple idea, but when put to practice can show a lot of information about the human brain and how it works.

Neurons and Traumatic Brain Injury

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neuronsDuring the first part of class, we discussed the importance of neurons in psychology and the direct relationship between psychology and biology. About 100 billion neurons make up the body’s information system and there are about 100 trillion connections between them. These neurons do not only control biological aspects of one’s body but also affect behavior. Everything we do or think begins as an action by neurons in our brains. Since psychology and biology are so closely related, action or inaction by neurons in the brain can have far-reaching effects on other parts of the body.

A family friend experienced this firsthand. When he was in college, he was sitting on a milk crate in the back of his friend’s van on the way home from a party. Not far from campus, the van struck a tree and, since he was not wearing a seatbelt, our friend was thrown from the vehicle. He suffered a traumatic head injury. My dad drove to visit him right after the accident. Our friend could not speak, eat or perform normal daily functions on his own. My dad and mom, who visited our friend later when he was in rehab, both said it was as if their friend was a child trapped in the body of a 21-year-old.

This change occurred because traumatic brain injury directly affects neurons and can even kill them and the connections between them. Since neurons all work together, these losses can have devastating effects on many areas, since biology and psychology are linked. Different neurons have different functions and control different areas of the body and brain. When our friend experienced head trauma, the neurons for certain functions, such as speech and memory, were negatively affected. He lost the ability to control these parts of his body because the neurons stopped firing and sending information to the brain and other necessary areas.

Fortunately, he eventually made a full recovery after lots of therapy and rehab. This experience epitomizes the link between neuropsychology and biology and shows the importance for all neurons to be working properly. Neurons control everything we do and without some functioning properly, the results can be devastating.

Citation: http://dana.org/Cerebrum/2012/The_Neurobiology_of_Brain_Injury/

Picture: scientificamerican.com