Freuds Theory Analysis: Normal and Abnormal Behavior - Assignment Example

?Freud’s Theory Analysis: Normal and Abnormal Behavior Freud in his “Psychoanalysis Theory” described it as the most comprehensive theory constructedon the development and structure of our personalities. Freud’s psychoanalytical theory is based on our normal and abnormal behaviors and how to deal with them. When determining in what shape a person’s personality, he believed that there were three major factors -instinctual needs, rational thinking, and moral standards. He theorized that when these forces were in the unconscious level and could not be brought forth by a conscious decision to is called an abnormal behavior. While when these forces were in conscious level it caused conscious decision in the form of abnormal behavior. Thus he classified the three factors were the id, the ego, and the superego. The id hence signifies the instinctual needs, the ego contains the rational thinking, and the superego is the basis of the moral standards. Furthermore, he suggested at each stage of development in our life these forces undergo adjustments as well. If the development goes smoothly, the person can move on to the next stage. If not, the person may become fixated at the current stage and inhibit further development of these processes. Freud believed that the ego would be under stress from the demands put upon it and he created 3 forms of anxiety. 1) Objective anxiety is how a person would normally react if faced with a threatening situation.2) Neurotic anxiety is a fear that the impulses that are needed to be controlled by the id would become out of control. 3) Moral anxiety covers feelings of shame and guilt. These feelings of anxiety were dealt with by the person for using defense mechanisms in times of threat. The types of defense mechanisms included were repression, projection, reaction formation, and sublimation. Modern definition of abnormal behavior is defined as the deviation from the norms of what is laid down by the society including rights or wrongs. What I believe as a normal behavior is that one who can analyze a situation and responds to it in a way which is not detrimental to the society and the people centered on him which could cause inconvenience in terms of their social, personal and cultural lifestyle. On the contrary abnormal behavior is one in which a situation of present or past demands to lose ones self control over ones normal behavior as defined in the previous statement . ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER: Biopsychosocial Model After reading the article by Dodge and Pettit (2003) I decided to review a disorder called “ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER” which is defined as “individuals with psychopathic states who do conform to a certain intellectual standard but throughout their lives exhibit disorders of conduct of an antisocial or a social nature”. The DSM-IV guidelines characterizes antisocial personality disorder as a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others that has been taking place in person since the age of 15 years, which is indicated by three (or more) of seven laid down criteria, namely: a failure to conform to social norms; irresponsibility; deceitfulness; indifference to the welfare of others; recklessness; a failure to plan ahead; and irritability and aggressiveness. Since those with these antisocial personality disorder exhibit traits of impulsivity, they have high negative emotionality and low conscientiousness, the condition is associated with a wide range of interpersonal and social disturbance. The traits acquired of this disorder may well be inherited, but people with antisocial personality disorder often grow up in fractured families where parental conflict is the norm and where parenting is often harsh and inconsistent. As a result of parental inadequacies and/or the child’s own difficult behavior, the care of the child is often interrupted and a child is devoid of parental affection and upbringing.. This in turn often leads to school truancy, delinquent associations and substance abuse. It leads to increased rates of unemployment, poor and unstable housing and inconsistency in relationships in adulthood. Though criminal behavior is central to the definition of antisocial personality disorder, but it is not the sole criteria to describe this disorder. As with most psychiatric conditions, antisocial personality disorder has a biological and psychosocial etiology. Firstly, there is evidence that there is a marked heterogeneity in the expression of antisocial behavior exhibited by young children. Moreover, there is evidence when children who offend early and do so with greater aggression have an increased heritability for this behavior. Second, differing gene/environmental mechanisms are at involved in such children. That is, children who are genetically vulnerable to behaving in an antisocial manner are likely to also suffer from harsh and inconsistent parenting that, in turn, may exacerbate by provoking further negative responses with their behavior. Decision Making: My Learning Topic In Cognitive Psychology Cognitive psychology is that branch of psychology that studies mental processes including how people think, perceive, remember, and learn. In regard to a broader aspect cognitive psychology is related to other disciplines including neuroscience, philosophy, and linguistics. The core focus of cognitive psychology is on how people acquire, process, and store information in their brain. The branch that touched me upon was decision making process because not only in our day to day life we have to take decisions but in occupations starting from simple delegation process to drive a process himself one needs to decide fast and accurately the action that needs to be generated based on the prevailing situation (input) and the consequent decision (output). So I share the concept that I have understood from the peer reviewed article (Yingxu Wang and Guenther Ruhe: The Cognitive Process of Decision Making Int’l Journal of Cognitive Informatics and Natural Intelligence, 1(2), 73-85) Decision making is one of the fundamental cognitive processes of all human beings that is widely used in determining the rational, heuristic, and intuitive selections in complex scientific, engineering, economical, and management situations, as well as in almost each procedure of daily life. Since decision making is a basic mental process, it takes place in a matter of few seconds in the thinking courses of human mind consciously or subconsciously. It encompasses multiple disciplines like cognitive informatics, cognitive science, computer science, psychology, management science, decision science, economics, sociology, political science, and statistics. Decision theories can be classified into two paradigms: the descriptive and normative theories. The former is based on an overall observation and on experimental studies of choice behaviors exhibited by individuals; and the latter assumes a rational decision-maker who follows well-defined preferences that obey certain principles of rational behaviors. The three approaches for decision making which is highlighted in that article were the: decision goals, a set of alternative choices, and a set of selection criteria or strategies. According to the theory in the article, decision makers are the engine or executive of a decision making process. If the three essences of decision making are defined and standardized, a decision making process may be thus be carried out by either a human decision maker or by an intelligent system. So I strongly feel this lays the cognitive foundation of various automated support systems and will reduce the chance of human error or lapses. Comparing Anderson’s Concept Of Cognitive Psychology and the Modern Perception What I learnt about Anderson’s schema theory was that when readers read texts, they used their prior knowledge to help them make sense of these texts. Hence, reading a particular comprehension is facilitated when readers have relevant organized knowledge packets(stored in the brain), called schemas, that they can use to interpret the information. Even when reading a narrative of a wedding, for example, readers apply their schema of typical wedding events (prior knowledge of the processional, the vows, the reception, and formalities) and fill the slots in the schema with the details of the particular wedding described in the narrative (the actual event that happened). When readers lack relevant schemas, or when they fail to activate their schemas, they understand and recall less of the incidence they want to process. He also put forward the concept that most words are learned not from explicit study but by incidental learning of word meanings from reading texts. An instructional implication of this finding which could be of an encouragement to students is to read widely for vocabulary development. This learning is fine for me and what I could correlate that a cognitive process is just a recollection of memories and matching with events to express a behavioral action from us at a particular time. So it seemed till the 1950s, behaviorism was the dominant school of thought in psychology. But in modern concept of “Cognitive Psychology” it is assumed that behavior which happens is the way how information processing takes place in the brain. By describing thinking as information processing, cognitive psychologists makes an analogy between minds and computers. This is useful because minds and computers do have some attractive similarities: both have inputs, outputs, memory stores and a limited capacity for how much information they can process at a given period of time. Just as a computer’s behavior (output) is determined by what information is feed into it(input) and how it has been programmed, so a person’s behavior is determined by (1) the information available in their environment; (2) the ways they have learned to manipulate (process) information; and (3) the capacities for information processing is inherent in the characteristic property of an individual’s brain. Read More