Freud Skinner Freud vs. Skinner

Freud Skinner

Freud vs. Skinner -- the unconscious vs. optimal conditioning

According to Sigmund Freud, maladaptive behavior, including criminal maladaptive behavior, is the result of individual trauma, usually experienced during the early stages of psychosocial development. Psychological malformations of character indicate the failure of the individual to resolve early childhood conflicts. However, B.F. Skinner saw human beings, not as complex psychological entities possessing conflicts between egos, ids, and superegos, nor as the product of individual and familial social forces. Rather, Skinner saw the individual as conditioned almost immediately from birth, like an animal, by exterior pressures that rewarded or punished certain behaviors. The family, but also society, including teachers, friends, and other influences could exert these conditioning forces or stimuli.

The unconscious

For Freud, human development centers on the structure of the unconscious. Freud believed that because so much of our motivations are unconscious, human beings are not entirely in control of their behaviors. By becoming aware of the buried memories and impulses rooted in the unconscious an individual can gain control over his or her actins. Skinner also saw the individual as subject to forces beyond his or her control, but from without rather than from within. An individual was subject to rewards and punishments for certain behaviors, which formed the person's characters and behavior patterns. These patterns might exist long after the 'shaping' rewards and punishments have been withdrawn. For Freud, a drug dealer or sociopath might unconsciously pursue a certain life path as unconsciously reenacting unresolved conflicts from an abusive family environment. For Skinner, these criminal behaviors arise because the environment of the criminal has rewarded such behaviors, and did not expose the individual to rewards for other behaviors, like studying hard in school.

Childhood history

For Freud, the family romance, or the Oedipal and Electra dramas, are at the heart of psychological development, and can often result in traumas that inhibit healthy social functioning. Childhood history for Skinner is a series of learning opportunities, which may or may not facilitate healthy adult functioning.

Focus of counseling and therapy

Getting to the root of childhood traumas is at the heart of Freudian therapy. This is often done by free association, or tapping into associations that the individual might not be immediately aware of, but inhibit mature social relationships. There is also a focus on understanding how a crisis at a stage during the child's psychosexual development has lead to a regression or a fixation in one of these states, and resulted in a malformed personality, such as an antisocial personality. Therapy for Skinner is focused on reconditioning the individual to no longer perform negative behaviors, and conditioning them to perform positive behaviors.

Human learning