Theoretical Position - Research Paper Example

Hence, it has been considered important to discuss their perspectives individually so that the reader gets a better idea of the differences in their theoretical perspectives. Sigmund Freud Sigmund Fred was the Austrian psychiatrist, psychologist and neurologist and is regarded as the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud’s psychoanalysis theory beholds that there are some childhood experiences that an individual holds back into his unconscious mind without showing any disapproval to these experiences when he was a child.

These experiences are coupled with his sexual individuality regarding one or both of his parents. Thus, his psychological functioning is predicted based on these experiences. The physician has to bring out these experiences or memories from the patient’s unconscious for the treatment. This was a new approach for psychoanalysis referred to as Freud’s couch (Matthis & Szecsody, 2009) in which the patient is made able to recollect his past experiences. Freud’s theory is thought to be more inclined towards the libido concept or the sexual identity of an individual.

His theory of the unconscious mind states that the psychological functioning of an individual contains several layers in itself which are not just controlled by the conscious mind. The behavior is just as well controlled by what has been stored in the unconscious mind since early childhood. The goal of psychoanalysis, according to Freud, is to make the unconscious act like conscious. However, this theory has been criticized by other psychoanalysts. Carl Jung Carl Jung also studied analytical psychology and the role of unconscious on human behavior and coupled it with spirituality.

He discussed the interpretation of dreams, art, mythology and religion in the context of psychoanalysis. He was of the view that human psychological functioning cannot be explained through simple logics. Although Freud and Carl worked upon the same context, that is, the unconscious mind beyond the logical rules; however, some basic concepts of the Freudian theory regarding the legitimacy of psychoanalysis led to disagreements between the two. Jung divides his psyche theory into three portions: ego.

Personal unconscious, and collective unconscious (Boeree, 2006).His personality theory describes the introversion and extroversion attitudes of humans and the four functions that control human psychology: feeling, thinking, sensation and intuition. A person behavior is controlled by two functions at a time when the other two can remain suppressed. Alfred Adler Alfred Adler is known as the neo-Freudian psychoanalyst and he also studied the unconscious part of the brain. Adler is known for his contribution more toward the development and research on psychotherapy, teacher training and counselling.

Apart from looking into the basic concepts of personal psyche, he made efforts to make the fact be realized that mental illness can b e prevented by implementing social equality. He studied the effects that social relationships can have on the human behavior or psychological functioning. Thus, he makes a shift from the intra-psychic phenomenon and emphasizes more on the inter-psychic phenomenon. His approach is referred to as individual psychology which focuses on the individuality of a person rather than Freudian concept of behavior universality.

He believed that the