Jane Psychological (Psychoanalytic) Perspective According

¶ … Jane

Psychological (psychoanalytic) perspective

According to Huffman (2009), the purposes of psychology can be defined according to a four-step process. The first basic goal of the discipline is descriptive in nature. The first goal of a psychologist is to describe the behaviors that are occurring, the second goal is to explain them, the third is to predict the likelihood of what behaviors will occur in the future, and the final goal is to change the behaviors to prevent unwanted outcomes and encourage more desirable goals.

In the case of Jane, from a purely descriptive point-of-view from a psychoanalytic perspective, the therapist is confronted with a young woman whose life has almost been entirely defined by negative relationships with men. Her father was alternately abusive and overly compliant, depending on how Jane was able to use her feminine 'wiles' with him. Freud would see Jane's behaviors as the result of an unresolved Electra complex, where a young woman, after being frustrated that she cannot 'possess' her mother because she lacks a penis, views her father as a kind of surrogate, masculine-derived source of phallic power.

This relationship with the father is then transferred to the young woman's relationships with other men (the cause of Jane's pregnancy and unfulfilling marriage). Jane is likely to be the victim of abuse again, unless she can understand the causes of her behavior and find a relationship that does not replicate her relationship with her father. A psychoanalyst would likely use free associative techniques to help Jane get to the real, root cause of her negative relationships with men.

Behaviorist

The behaviorist BF Skinner focused on external, rather than internal causes of human behavior, unlike Freud. From Skinner's perspective, Jane's abusive relationships with men are the result of being 'rewarded' for being stereotypically vulnerable or flirtatious in a feminine fashion: only by acting this way is she not beaten and rewarded with compliance from men. The causes of Jane's behavior are positive reinforcement for sexual behaviors and negative reinforcement for independence in the form of physical punishment. This pattern will continue throughout Jane's life, unless she is de-conditioned from such a behavior pattern. A therapist would try to find a new, alternative system of rewards for Jane, such as encouraging her to seek out an education, where she would be rewarded for qualities other than submissiveness and sexuality.

Neuroscience & biology