Psychoanalysis vs Behaviour Therapy - Essay Example

PSYCHOANALYSIS VS. BEHAVIOUR THERAPY By The of the Although there are a lot of therapeutic patterns formental disorders treatment, the effectiveness of a particular psychological therapy must be estimated not by its methods but by the ultimate recovery. Both psychoanalysis and behaviour therapy are effective even though their methods are completely opposite by their nature. The essential difference between the approaches is that psychoanalysis tends to get rid of the deep-down personal traumas in order to influence the consequences, when behaviour therapy works with the consequences changing the behaviour patterns into new ones. Psychoanalysis is a quite popular theory, created by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud, which contains a lot of psychological and psychotherapeutic techniques of mental disorders treatment. Psychoanalysis is usually a long-term lasting therapy that requires multiple different activities like hypnosis, therapeutic conversations, experiments with associations, etc. (Fancher 1998). The original psychoanalysis theory formed by Freud is based on the theory of complicated structure of human consciousness which includes three levels of personality. Freud’s Topographic theory divides human mental apparatus into three systems Conscious, Pre-conscious, and Unconscious and later the three levels of personality were called the id, the ego, and the syper-ego (Freud 1911). The Id part of personality contains human’s basic inherent instincts that in some way control people’s reactions on different stimuli and determine their behaviour. When a person grows up the instincts are pushed out to the deepest levels of consciousness so that person can’t realize their influence any more. The super-ego is the part of personality that is on the surface of consciousness (Freud 1921). Super-ego works with interaction of an individual and society and controls the person’s behaviour according to social norms by using morality and conscience. The ego level is the core of psychoanalysis as the theory mostly works with this mental level which is responsible for human’s executive functions, as ego is a mediator between inside world (the id) and outside interactions of super-ego. Ego contains all the memories from early childhood which, according to Freud’s theory, are basics for mental traumas and disorders. That’s why the role of psychoanalysis is to find out the deep stimuli (mostly sexual traumas and complexes) both from id and ego levels and to work with the basic traumas and neuroses that affect person’s behavior patterns (Elliott 2002). Therefore, the methodology of psychoanalysis is based on techniques that are aimed to reveal the childhood memories and analyze them. The therapy gets through the following stages. Firstly, a therapist collects information about a patient’s personal features and mental disorders by using either hypnosis or association-based activities and collecting the data of the patient’s dreams. Most of the activities deal with symbolism, as it is the only way human ego demonstrates itself evidently (Petocz 1999).These activities help therapist to construct the complete understanding of patient’s problems and start to interpret the symbols retrieved from his memories and dreams and this is the second stage of the therapy process. As far as Freud explains human behavior as the one determined by some hidden unconscious motives the therapy is supposed to reveal the motives and re-program them into the ones that wouldn’t be destructive for person’s life and mental health. The post-Freudian psychoanalysis developed multiple theories that started to link the original theory with all the aspects of life possible. Although, some connections of psychoanalysis with other hermeneutic and philosophical (Csordas 2012) theories can be quite applicable in psychological and psychotherapeutic tradition and also can add some new methods into the original theory and techniques. Even though psychoanalysis has become a complex theory much wider than therapeutic technique it is impossible to estimate its effectiveness apart from the entire realm of science of interpretation called psychoanalysis. Though, as a therapy psychoanalysis is definitely unique and effective as it helps people to realize the deep stimuli of their behaviour and get rid of them in order to create their personality on their own, as once they find the reason and prevent it they wouldn’t come back to the same problem anymore. Unlike the psychoanalytic approach behaviour therapy doesn’t deal with deep stimuli and unconsciousness because behaviorists assert that human behaviour is based on the information learned by a person during one’s lifetime. Although some researches claim that Psychoanalysis and behaviour therapy are incomparable because they work on opposite levels of personality even though they deal with the same mental problems like phobias and behavioural patterns. Still it is possible for them to work simultaneously, as, probably, the therapy that uses both approaches as tools can be twice as efficient (Gambrill 1977). Behaviour therapy principles are based on classical conditioning developed by Ivan Pavlov during his famous experiments and the Skinner’s operant conditioning. Classical conditioning shows that a new (neutral) conditioned stimulus can awake reflective reaction if it comes along with an action that stimulates an unconditioned reflexive response. Operant conditioning deals with reward and punishment, which can teach a person to get used to some certain behavioural pattern (Schaefer & Martin 1969). Behaviourists decline usage of hypothetic constructs in estimation of behaviour; on the contrary they focus on the objective relations (dependence) between a person’s behaviour and environment. Thus, evaluation of the objective relation helps the analysts to develop special methods and concrete steps in each and every case of their therapy. Although, the approach therapists use in treatment is the one which is considered to be the most efficient and is approved experimentally. The therapeutic process works during several stages that are essentially different from the ones of psychoanalysis. Firstly, a behaviourist doesn’t work with the system of mental apparatus in general; in fact he is interested in a particular problem that bothers his patient in this exact period of the one’s life. For example, the most common complaints of behaviour therapy patients are different phobias, insomnia, habits and obsessive syndrome, anxiety (Hopko et.al. 2006), depression, and obesity (Kanter et.al. 2005). After detection of the problem therapists uses special questionnaire in order to determine the further direction in therapy and decide which conditioning either classical or operant to use as measure of behavioural correction. One of the main rules of the therapy is to avoid going too far into the roots of the problem, as therapist’s matter is to work with problem itself, fixing it by concrete algorithms that work on behavioural level only. In fact, the nature of the therapy looks more like neuro programming except it works with reflexes, replacing the old harmful conditioned reflexive responses into new efficient ones. Even though behavioural therapy is quite popular in psychological practice nowadays, still some scientists claim that it isn’t really supposed to treat some clinical disorders, as it doesn’t deal with deep unconscious traumas (because their existence isn’t even a part of the concept of behavioural theory). Moreover, recent clinic research which participants attended a course of behavioural therapy showed that therapy is quite helpful in changing behavioural patterns of both slight and middle level problems. The therapy isn’t efficient in treatment of clinical outcomes such as “relapses, psychotic symptoms, and self harm” (Barrowclough et. al. 2010). This means that as far as the approach works with behaviour and conditions that evolve it, some definitely important aspects of personality are omitted. So the effectiveness of the therapy can be considered on quite surface level of behaviour that doesn’t have deep traumatic roots of psychical disorders. Even though both psychoanalysis and behaviour therapy are widely used in modern psychological practice they tend to work with different levels of human personality. Psychoanalysis deals with deep unconscious stimuli that determine human behaviour when behaviour therapy solves the harmful behaviour itself replacing it with a new one. References Barrowclough, C., Haddock, G., Wykes, T., Beardmore, R., Conrod, P., Craig, T., Davies, L., Dunn, G., Eisner, E., Lewis, S., Moring, I., Steel, C., and Tarrier, N., 2010, ‘Integrated motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioural therapy for people with psychosis and comorbid substance misuse: randomised controlled trial’, British Medical Journal 341(7784) 1204. Csordas, T.J., 2012, ‘Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology’, Ethos 40(1) 54-74. Elliott, A., 2002, Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition, Duke University Press. Fancher, R., 1998, Introduction to "The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis.", dspace. Mit.edu, viewed 23 December 2014, from http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/65347/sts-003-spring-2008/contents/readings/freud.pdf Freud, S., 1921, Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego, Gutenberg.org, viewed 23 December 2014, from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35877/35877-h/35877-h.htm Freud, S., 1911, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Adelaide.edu, viewed 23 December 2014, from https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/f/freud/sigmund/general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis/index.html Gambrill, E., 1977, ‘Book Review: Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy: Toward an Integration by Paul L. Wachtel’, Social Work, 22(4) 327-328. Hopko, D.R., Robertson, S. & Lejuez, C.W., 2006, ‘Behavioral Activation for Anxiety Disorders’, The Behavior Analyst Today, 7(2), 212–33. Kanter, J.W., Cautilli, J.D., Busch, A.M. & Baruch, D.E.,2005, ‘Toward a Comprehensive Functional Analysis of Depressive Behavior: Five Environmental Factors and a Possible Sixth and Seventh’, The Behavior Analyst Today, 6(1), 65–78. Petocz, A., 1999, Freud, Psychoanalysis, and Symbolism, Cambridge University Press. Shapiro, D.A., 1986, ‘Research in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis’, Journal of Medical Ethics, 12(2), 91-92. Schaefer, H.H., and Martin, P.L., 1969, Behavioral Therapy, McGraw-Hill, New York. Read More