Psychologist And Their Own Theories example essay topic

Based on the past information and the information I acquired during the duration of this course I chose to do my evaluation on Erik Erikson using the classical psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers using the non-Freudian / interpersonal approach from Adler and Jung. Since there is no way to tell if either theory is right or wrong it is imperative that we discover our own theory among the popular ones and derive our own method of practice based on our current knowledge. This is done by comparing and evaluating each psychologist and their own theories to derive a common ground among each of them. In response to Erik Erikson and his approach on ego psychology he was an insecure child growing up who had problems with identity confusion. According to Freud and the classical psychoanalysis, this could possibly be a reflection of his Oedipus complex in where he can not identify with his father nor can he get close to his mother. Since he is dealing with his own confusion of his own identity he can no longer have feelings of closeness with either parent causing him to feel abandoned.

His father abandoned him at an early age and so he never had that feeling of closeness with his father. Being as though he did not have that male role during his growing up he can not feel that sense of love coming from either parent which caused him to come up with the ego identity model in his own practices. Freud didn't exactly invent the idea of the conscious versus unconscious mind, but he certainly was responsible for making it popular. The conscious mind is what you are aware of at any particular moment, your present perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have you.

Working closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious, what we might today call 'available memory:' anything that can easily be made conscious, the memories you are not at the moment thinking about but can readily bring to mind. Now no-one has a problem with these two layers of mind. But Freud suggested that these are the smallest parts! Freud created a sense of super ego where you internalize the parental standards, ideas, and prohibitions. Since Erikson had no parents to identify with his sense of standards were nonexistent.

He had a feeling of inferiority in related to his childhood and adolescence. This can be attributed to the sense for love and Freud's other drive models. In order to profoundly psychoanalyze Erikson and his feeling of ego and love we must first understand how his family was and how his parents treated him. He felt as though he was treated unfairly according to his siblings. He created a sense of feeling inferior to his other siblings and his parents did not react to that. He had no father and his mother was not really around for him either.

This created a sense of not belonging to anything which provoked him to create his own theory about ego development. Since it is important for a child according to Freud to develop with love, death, hate, hunger, sex, aggression, among other drive and Erikson was not surrounded by not many if any of these drives it also provoked him to analyze his own childhood and come up with his own theory. In emergency situations, many people find them selves completely calm and collected until the emergency is over, at which point they fall to pieces. Something tells you that, during the emergency, you can't afford to fall apart. It is common to find someone totally immersed in the social obligations surrounding the death of a loved one. Doctors and nurses must learn to separate their natural reactions to blood, wounds, needles, and scalpels, and treat the patient, temporarily, as something less than a warm, wonderful human being with friends and family.

Adolescents often go through a stage where they are obsessed with horror movies, perhaps to come to grips with their own fears. Nothing demonstrates isolation more clearly than a theater full of people laughing hysterically while someone is shown being dismembered. I have to wonder if the reason Erikson created such a radical theory was because of his traumatic event of his father leaving when he was younger. He repressed that memory of his father leaving and in return repressed the feeling of wanting ness from both of his parents. This caused him to have a big drive to create something better in his life.

The second theorist I decided to look at was Carl Rogers. I looked at him from the perspective of the non-Freudian / interpersonal perspective. Carl Rogers also grew up with a sense of insecurity and inferiority on the basis of his parents and family life. According to such psychologists as Adler this is a case where he is striving to be superior but not succeeding in that department do to his own insecurities. He had anxiety in his own life which grew into adult hood forcing him to create his own theory of personality. He was resentful towards his parent's authority which goes back to the feeling of superiority.

He tried to get that superiority with his parents because he was getting a negative result from them. Psychologists like Adler created an interpersonal definition of personality which applies to Rogers in that he had a strong need to counter react the dependency and the feeling of his own striving for greatness and create his own theory of personality. Rogers was rebellious towards his family and their religious beliefs. He had demands on his parents against the feeling of superiority to others. This corresponds to Adler's definition of self-actualization. Where eventually you will strive against people to becomes better for yourself and reaches that high level of self fulfillment.

This is called self-actualization and was symbolized with Rogers when he finally got over the grief of his parents trying to control his life. There is a sense of anxiety present in Rogers's life as well due to the fact that he rebelled against his family's religious background. Among the many things that we instinctively value is positive regard, Rogers umbrella term for things like love, affection, attention, nurturance, and so on. It is clear that babies need love and attention.

In fact, it may well be that they die without it. They certainly fail to thrive -- i.e. become all they can be. Another thing -- perhaps peculiarly human -- that we value is positive self-regard, is, self-esteem, self-worth, a positive self-image. We achieve this positive self-regard by experiencing the positive regard others show us over our years of growing up.

Without this self-regard, we feel small and helpless, and again we fail to become all that we can be! Rogers did not have many of these qualities growing up bringing him to evaluate his own life into adulthood and create these senses of events that are crucial growing up. Striving for perfection was not the first phrase Adler used to refer to his single motivating force. His earliest phrase was the aggression drive, referring to the reaction we have when other drives, such as our need to eat, be sexually satisfied, get things done, or be loved, are frustrated.

Rogers was not loved by both parent and his feeling of inferiority and insecurity backed that up. It might be better called the assertiveness drive, since we tend to think of aggression as physical and negative and Rogers possessed both. Adler says it's a matter of being overwhelmed by our inferiority. If you are moving along, doing well, feeling competent, you can afford to think of others. If you are not, if life is getting the best of you, then your attentions become increasingly focused on yourself. Obviously, everyone suffers from inferiority in one form or another.

For example, Adler began his theoretical work considering organ inferiority, that is, the fact that each of us has weaker, as well as stronger, parts of our anatomy or physiology. Some of us are born with heart murmurs, or develop heart problems early in life; Some have weak lungs, or kidneys, or early liver problems; Some of us stutter or lisp; Some have diabetes, or asthma, or polio; Some have weak eyes, or poor hearing, or a poor musculature; Some of us have innate tendencies to being heavy, others to being skinny; Some of us are retarded, some of us are deformed; Some of us are terribly tall or terribly short; And so on and so on. Both Erikson and Rogers possessed different qualities that can be attributed to other psychologists to evaluate themselves and their performance in the world of psychology. Each different theorist created a different contribution to psychology and neither one is right or wrong.

It is up to each individual person to create their own image of what is right or wrong and what they want to teach in their lives and use in their every day life..