History of Theories in Psychology (PSYC 493)

An entire branch of art and expression is rooted in psychoanalytical ideas. Abstract art is often said to be expressions of subconscious ideas and feeling. Shapes, lines, and colors express urges, emotions, and desires that lay benith the surface. In addition to this, art can itself be considered a defense mechanism in which Id impulses are sublimated into a culturally acceptable form, art.

Any classic good vs. evil or superhero movie will most likely have psychoanalytic theory in it. One of my favorite renditions of this is in spiderman when the green goblin is struggling with his other personality or “shadow self” as we talked about in class. He finds himself battling between the self that he longs to be according to society and the evil self that seeks power and destruction. According to Freud his evil side would be his Id and the battle would be his ego trying to regulate between the Id and superego.

spiderman

This idea of the shadow self makes me think of the view in christianity that is referred to as our sinful nature. Many of the ideas behind the shadow self are similar to how we describe the sinful nature and how we are wanting to get rid of our sinful nature but it is such a struggle between the life we want to live and are called to live according to our Maker in the christian worldview and the life we constantly fall back on. Although this is a somewhat extreme example, I find myself having a similar tormented inner dialogue in life when I am faced with temptations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&gl=US&client=mv-google&v=Khu3_SpgRas&nomobile=1

We always joke about the common phrase “there is an app for that”. However, there is now REALLY an app to tap into the sub-conscious of one of Freud’s most favorite categories in his psychoanalytical studies. There is an app now developed from graduate students at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that attempts to influence how you dream. Sigmund is a new iPhone app that is priced at 99 cents that helps users choose the objects or environments they want to envision during sleep. The app was sparked from the interest of sleep and dreams in sleep-dependent learning. They studied  the role of sleep in learning new tasks and how the brain processes outside stimuli during sleep. Through this, Harvard students contact MIT to help in the development. The app is fairly simple to work. People can select up to five different subjects they want the app to softly repeat during their REM sleep cycle. The app is very subtle and it whispers to the dreamer. Dreamers can choose up to 1000 different words ranging from New York to grandmother.  They then set alarm times for the time they want to go to bed and the time they plan on waking up. Just like some common iphone apps already that use the phone to monitor sleep movement, this app gauges when someone has reached their deepest and lightest points of sleep. It is like a new form of Inception, however more practical. It is estimated that normal cycled sleepers will actually be influenced by the app about a third of the time. I definitely am considering buying this app to see if it actually works! This app reminds me of another concept that is revolved around lucid dreams. A lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming.   In a lucid dream, the dreamer can have some degree of control over their actions within the dream and/or to be able to manipulate their imaginary experiences in the dream. Talk about Inception is real life. Imagine how many fun dreams could arise out of having a lucid dream and using Sigmund at the same time.

The id, ego and super ego are in constant battle to determine our actions in different situation and reactions to various situations. As a college student, peer pressure to engage in reckless behaviors such as drug use, (excessive) alcohol consumption and sexual activity repeatedly occur. Sexual activity could be argued to be the greatest temptation of these three. Sex, as a function, is used to further populate a society. However is has been shown in media and in gossip to also be pleasurable. Students and young adults are constantly caught in the battle between the ID’s instinct to reproduce with a suitable mate and the Ego’s pleasure principle. Luke Bryan’s song “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” is a perfect example of logic and pleasure battling for power. In his song Bryan talks about a relationship that has run its course and the only thing that remains decent in the relationship is the physical aspect. This is not a healthy relationship and logic dictates that the two should break up and find partners that are more suitable, yet the pleasure they derive from the solitary decent aspect of the relationship is what holds them together.

Food is another area of psychoanalytical thinking. Healthy foods (protein, fruits, vegetables, simple carbs and simple sugars) are positive calories our bodies need to function throughout the day. Yet fast food and sweets poise a temptation due to their sweet taste, however these types of foods act as negative calories and restrict the benefits food could have for us. Healthy vs Unhealthy. Eating enough of the sweet food causes our body to be addicted to processed food and excessive sugar, making dieting and healthy eating adjustments a challenging lifestyle decision. Those who go on diets often have cravings for something sweet, and upon caving to those cravings begin to doubt whether such a lifestyle is change is even possible. The Id challenges us to be healthy and live long, yet the Ego encourages us to give in and eat the delicious, yet unhealthy food. It is the Super ego that mediates the two and says healthy meals are a must, yet on the weekends moderate consumption of sweet treats is acceptable, negating any guilt that may be felt.

Behavioral techniques are effective and longstanding techniques whose orgins have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. A huge mistaken assumption people tend to make is that because the dicipline of psychology is only a hundred years old is that it is an undefined psuedo science. In fact it it is thanks primarily to the work of the behavorialists who quantitatively measured behavior that we were able to bring psychology into the modern age. Behaviorilisim has strong history in all cultures as it is common knowledge that positive and negitive reinforcement with the proper stimuli reinforces and eliminates positive and negitive behaviors respectively. Overall Behavoral Psychology is a branch of Psychology that we Psycholigists can not do without.

I know this video might be a little cheesy and a little over dramatic but after watching this video I realized how easily our childhood or past experiences affect our future. Time and time again, we discover things about ourselves through issues that we go through and we sit back and wonder, “Why am I like that?” There are little things that I do every day out of habit because of what I was taught when I was younger. I will never leave a light on in the house if I am not in the room or not at home because when I was younger, I would get grounded for leaving lights and tv’s on if I was not in the room. We experience things throughout our lives that stick with us forever. Just like in the video, the girl is “scared” to eat because she was yelled at for eating her freshman year of high school. Now I realize this video is very much made up and a little dramatic but when you do something, whether it be right or wrong, and you are yelled at or forced against it for so long, you develop a strategy to not do it anymore. It is something that always sticks with you. You become accustom to it. The theory of psychoanalyses is that an individual experiences the development of unconscious impulses and then overcomes the conflicts. Freud’s psychoanalytical theory was was broken down into the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. Freud believed that the unconscious mind influenced our behavior and experiences, even if we weren’t aware of it. So while I still turn off everything light in the house with a conscious effort, the unconscious thoughts that influence that behavior is my past experiences with my dad wanting me to turn the light off. Same thing goes for the guy that was getting shoved in the locked. While it was a conscious effort to take his books with him and avoid the lockers, the unconscious thoughts were the bully that has made him scared of the lockers. As for the girl who wouldn’t eat, not eating was the conscious effort and the unconscious thoughts were the teacher who would yell at her. Our past experiences that create unconscious thoughts in our mind influence our behavior and experiences for the rest of our life whether we realize it or not. I just really find this topic interesting because while we have been talking about it lately, I have paid a lot more attention of the little things that I do that are provoked by my unconscious thought.

Blog Post #5: find an visual illustration of behaviorism in every day life, perhaps a TV show, an advertisement,… and explain briefly.


The clips provided are from two of the current most popular shows. The office and the big bang theory. In the big bang theory a character is teaching the other character what is acceptable behavior by rewarding her with a treat every time she does something good. In the office, one character uses the chime on his computer matched with a treat to make the other character have a physiological response to the chime.

The best example of behaviorism that I can come up with comes from my everyday experiences. I was an only child growing up, an only grandchild on my mother’s side, and was very spoiled. As you can deduce, I was the center of attention. But for some reason, I never let that go to my head. Even now my friends tell me that I don’t play the spoiled, only-child roll. I don’t strive for everyone’s attention; honestly, those kinds of people annoy me. I do however have a friend like that. She is a very dear friend, and I love her despite this flaw, but she is one of those people who has to be the center of attention all the time. She does outrageous things in order to get whatever type of attention she can. Even if it’s negative attention, its still attention, and she’ll take it happily. This friend has an older sister that was already out of the house by the time she came along, so she was basically an only child as well. The only explanation I have is that her parents must have reinforced that behavior growing up, whereas, mine did not. This is an example of conditioning a behavior that I hope I do not produce in my own children.

Behaviorist Techniques were being employed long before Skinner presented his full theory. We can see examples of conditioning employed everywhere in our advertising, and they have been useful in child rearing for millennia. Advertisers and marketers have put countless hours into understanding ways of influencing (and manipulating) our behaviors, but I guess thats another conversation. When it comes to behaviorism, we can all think of times in our past when classic or operant conditioning was used on us to encourage certain behaviors and discourage others. However, for me the main draw in behaviorism is the idea of perhaps using conditioning on ourselves to take more control of our own behavior. I suppose some goals of this would be to become less impulsive, more productive, or manage time better. These are just a few examples, and there needs to be more study into how possible it is to truly condition ones self, but if there is a way to use behaviorist techniques to take exact control of our own behavior, it could be incredibly beneficial.

Michelle getting potty trained.

While there are many adorable clips involving Michelle Tanner, in order to view the clip involving Danny potty training her you should skip to about 2:51. Within this small clip, the behaviorist model is clearly given. Danny not only shows Michelle what to do by demonstrating with Potty Polly exactly what her actions should be, he also tells her exactly what type of positive reinforcement Michelle will receive once she “rings the bell.” Danny not only gives Michelle positive reinforcement when she successfully uses the potty but he pairs the stimulus of ringing the bell with a cookie, which as most of us know who are die hard Full House fans, Michelle loves cookies. So, within this clip Danny proves that he is a smart father when it comes to conditioning his children. He perfectly models what Michelle must do to learn how to use the potty and then he allows her to learn what kind of rewards she can get when she acts in the right way. Unfortunately, the clip does not show how successful Michelle is at being potty trained but since the show continues into her adolescence I would say that Danny accomplishes his goal of potty training his daughter.