Free Will Asserts That Humans

Free will asserts that humans control their own destiny; Determinism, that events are determined by causal factors. A belief in one or the others of these concepts effects psychology drastically. It is the problem of nature vs. nurture. To determinism, the ability to learn is determined at birth it is a matter of brain chemistry. Free will on the other hand, holds that work and environment can improve one's ability to learn. Brain chemicals, according to Determinism, affect social behaviors. While free will, contrarily, holds that it is not governed but able to be controlled by the individual; environment and family influence teach a person how to interact.

Free will and determinism is the argument of nature vs. nurture. Looking a psychotic behavior, a free-will person would turn to environmental factors, family life and past trauma. Therapy would be their likely solution; again the power to change is in the individual. The Determinism view would see it as a matter of brain chemistry and try to alter the undesired behavior through chemicals. A free-will person would explain Split-personality disorder as being caused by traumatic issues in a person's past. Believing that the person created the personality as a way of hiding from the trauma, they would try to hypnotize the person to help reconstruct a single personality. A Determinism person would again look to a chemical imbalance to explain the disorder.

3) Freud thinks that there are important mental events which effect how a person acts. His theory shows pieces of both free will and Determinism. He thinks actions are caused by subliminal elements in the psyche. Those events, because we don't realize they are affecting behavior, predetermine our reactions to events. But on the other hand, he thinks that a person can combat these latent-determining factors through therapy, he gives control back to the person.