The famous Sigmund Freud gave birth to Psychoanalysis and introduced the Psychosexual development of the individual. Freud’s belief is very simple: the first 5 years or the formative years in one’s life affects the adult individual the most. Hence, behavior is controlled by emotional motivations and irrational forces, biological and instinctual drives. Instincts are central to the Psychoanalytic approach. Both sexual and aggressive drives are powerful determinants why people do what they do.
The three components of the personality are the id, ego and superego. The id represents the selfish desires and instinctual drives that want instant gratification. The superego represents the ideal, but sadly not the real. And it strives for perfection. The ego is the balancing force between the two. It may apply delayed gratification on the wants of the id to adhere to the demands of the superego. Behavior, then, is the consequence of unconscious processes. How then, as a counselor, can I help people who may have abnormalities? Well, for one thing, I would have to let the person become aware of his/her overindulgence in any one of the three components. See, Freud believed that neurosis is the result of one of the components being bigger than the two. A normal person should be able to cope with life’s stresses by maintaining a balance in all three. That is why we also use defense mechanisms to cope with challenges. The defenses include rationalization, displacement, reaction-formation, denial, suppression, repression, etc. Although using any of these can help us cope, overusing any of it can also lead to mental illness or maladjustment to life. So, it is also a note for counselors to guide the clients into facing reality and not only to hide by using defense mechanisms.
For Behaviorism, courtesy of John B. Watson, together with BF Skinner, Ivan Pavlov, and the like, the focus is on the study of overt or observable behavior. The social stimuli gives way to the person’s response and it can also become a form of reinforcement.
At this point, I thought about the Filipino setting when it comes to rewards and punishment. With the current administration’s hot seat due to graft and corruption allegations, I am made to think about how people in high positions of the government are able to tolerate such immorality of using the funds of the people for their own good. Sadly, as selfish as people are now, personal rewards are given more importance than the benefit of the majority. So why don’t we punish them? Yet, in reality, how can we? When the people who are supposed to punish are also given percentages of what they are able to steal just to keep them quiet and to avoid the punishment due them.
Hmm.. How are we supposed to trust the system? When the system works only for those who made it.
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