Comparison

• Compare behaviourist and biological approach

  • focus on environmental causes and experience vs focus on internal influences (nature vs nurture).
  • Discussion of the interactionist approach
  • approaches to treatment (eg flooding vs drug therapy)
  • use of scientific methods
  • the issue of determinism
  • the issue of reductionism
  • use of animal experiments and extrapolation
  • contrasting implications (eg blame, responsibility and social stigma).
• Compare humanistic with psychodynamic

  • determinism - the humanistic approach assumes people have free choice over their behaviour, whereas the psychodynamic approach assumes that behaviour is determined by unconscious factors (beyond conscious control)
  • therapy - Rogers believed that counselling (utilising unconditional positive regard) can be used to help clients solve their problems, overcome conditions of worth and enable their potential for self-actualisation, whereas Freud believed that psychoanalysis can lead to improvements in clients through psychotherapy.
• Compare humanistic with psychodynamic

  • nature/nurture - humanistic approach assumes behaviour is affected by desire to self-actualise (nature) & our experience can provide barriers through conditions of worth and varying experience of conditional positive regard (nurture). Likewise, psychodynamic approach assumes behaviour is driven by unconscious forces, eg id/ego/superego dynamics (nature) but our coping mechanisms such as defence mechanisms arise from experience (nurture)
• Compare humanistic with psychodynamic

  methodology - both less scientific than other approaches (the psychodynamic approach assumes some aspects of behaviour can be investigated scientifically)