Malim et al (1997) state that there are five major perspectives within psychology, two of which, behaviourist and humanistic will be the focus of this essay following a brief outline of the other three perspectives, cognitive, psychodynamic and biological. The cognitive perspective places emphasis on thinking processes such as memory, language and problem solving (Medcof & Roth, 1979). An influential name within cognitive psychology is Piaget.
Piaget saw the origin of thoughts and intellectual processes as resting within the concepts of, schema, assimilation, accommodation and adaptation (Rungapadiachy, 1999). The psychodynamic perspective is perhaps the most criticised and rejected perspective than any of the others although it has made a greater impact on the lay mind (Medcof & Roth, 1979). Sigmund Freud is synonymous with psychoanalysis. Freud believed that the key to understanding human behaviour rests within the unconscious.
He saw the human mind as a battleground where instinct, reason and conscience are constantly at war (Rungapadiachy, 1999). Freud believed that many impulses which are repressed by society or parents as a child do not disappear but remain in the unconscious and possibly reappear as symptoms of mental illness or emotional problems (Atkinson et al, 2000). The biological perspective views man as a biological organism and focuses on two major concerns, the mind and body and the influence of heredity (Gross, 1996).
The biological perspective attempts to relate behaviour to the electrical and chemical events taking place within the body, much work has been done in this area by such people as Descartes who attempted to form a link between the body and the soul. Descartes felt that the soul interacted with the body through the pineal gland of the brain. However, it is the publication of Origin of Species (Darwin, 1859) that lead to a revolution in thought (Medcof & Roth, 1979). This essay will now discuss the humanistic and behaviourist perspectives, compare and contrast them and discuss the application of these approaches within a healthcare setting.
The humanistic perspective was developed in 1962 as a response to the two perspectives that were prevalent at the time, psychodynamic which viewed a person as being instinctive, irrational, being driven by the unconscious mind and doomed to conflict and the behaviourist perspective which viewed people as mechanistic and controlled by the environment (Malim et al, 1997). The humanists believe that each person has unique qualities and a person’s principal tendency is toward growth and self-actualisation. Two names whos theoretical views lie at the centre of the humanistic movement are Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow (Atkinson et al, 2000).
Central to Rogers’s theory is the concept of self, seen as a consistent set of beliefs and perceptions of oneself. However, this self image may not match others perceptions and whereby for example a person may be seen by others to be highly successful, the person may see himself as a failure. This is what Rogers refers to as incongruence (Gross, 1991). Rogers also believed that a person has a need for positive regard, that is, the need for others to respect us. To obtain this Rogers states that we develop conditions of worth and thereby suppress feelings or actions that may be unacceptable to others in order to obtain positive regard.