Sigmund Freud was a neurologist an psychoanalyst who tried to help adults with their troubles. He talked with adults about when they were children and anything that happened during that time. Freud focused on the unconscious mind. This is the part of the mind that a person is not able to know about directly. Freud thought that the unconscious mind was important in how people think and feel. The way people think and feel can affect how they act. Freud’s ideas lead him to make his psychosexual theory. The psychosexual theory focuses on how a child’s wants are controlled in early years and the effect it has when the child becomes an adult.
Freud thought that each person’s personality is made of three parts. The parts are the id, ego, and super-ego. The three parts each have a purpose, but are almost never in agreement. The three parts not in agreement is what causes people to be unhappy and have problems.
When a baby is born, it only has basic needs. The baby needs to eat, sleep, and use the bathroom. These basic needs help the baby to live. These basic needs are what make up the id. The id only wants to take cause of these needs. The id wants the needs to be taken care of right away and not have to wait. Freud thought that young children are ruled by the id. The id does not know or care about right and wrong. It only wants to take care of its needs. This means that young children do not know about right and wrong. They only know what the id wants. Children will act on the wants of the id even when they should not. Children begin to learn that they cannot always get what they want when they want it. This causes the ego to form. The ego “is ruled by the reality principle”. This means that it knows what can really happen in the world. The ego knows if the id can get what it wants by looking at if the want can be filled. When the id’s needs cannot be taken care of, the ego controls the id and its wants. Children that have the ego formed can control their basic needs and their actions. When the ego is formed, children gain a sense of self by controlling their needs. The superego is formed by children working with their parents and others in society. The superego acts as a rule follower. It allows the child to know what is right and wrong by what society’s rules on right and wrong are. Guilt is the primary way that the superego tells children the rules of what is right and wrong.
Freud thought that children went through five psychosexual stages of development. In the stages children have to fix problems between needs and what society wants. Fixing these problems allows children to do well as adults. Problems that adults get have to do with the stage where they had trouble with. The five stages are : oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. The oral stage begins at birth and has to do with the baby’s suckling needs. The anal stage is the second and is from 1-3 year olds. It has to do with holding and letting go of urine and feces. The third stage, the phallic stage is from 3-6 year olds and has to do with the genital region. Freud thought that this stage is one of the most important stages to fix problems in. If a child does not fix the problems, he or she can develop either the Oedipus complex (for boys) or the Electra complex (for girls). These problems come from love either a boy’s love for his mother or a girl’s love for her father. To stop problems the boy or girl take up the values of their father (for boys) or mother (for girls). The fourth stage of the psychosexual stages is the latency stage and it occurs from 6-11 year olds. In this stage the superego grows the most and children get values from society. The last stage is the genital stage and lasts through adolescence. In this stage children start to like others and form heterosexual relationships.
Freud’s theory of child development is important because it was the first to point out the importance of parent-child relationships.
Erik Erikson was a follower of Freud’s ideas and started his own theory using Freud’s ideas. Erikson’s theory is called the psychosocial theory of child development. Erikson used Freud’s idea of the id, ego, and superego and his stages of development to build his own theory. Erikson thought that the ego was “of the utmost importance”. The ego was important because it lets children become an individual and add to society. Erikson added more stages to his theory than Freud did, and some of his stages are similar to Freud’s. Erikson ended up with eight stages in his theory. Every stage has a problem between two different feelings. A child's personality is shaped by how they fix each problem.
Erkison's stages
Erikson’s stages are important because they looked at society and culture and how they affect personality. Freud only focused on sexuality. Erkison's stages are also show how personality is shaped as children grow.
Erikson's vs Freud's Stages
John Watson did not like the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Erikson. Watson chose to look at behavior of people to understand how children develop. His ideas fall under the concept of behaviorism. Watson was “inspired by Pavlov’s studies of animal learning”. Pavlov’s studies focused on classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is when an animal or person learns to react to stimulus, a thing that will cause a reaction. Watson thought that children could be taught using this way. Watson decided to test his theory by doing an experiment using a nine-month old baby, Little Albert.
Watson started his experiment by testing if Albert was scared of anything. Watson wanted to see if Albert was scared of a white rat. Like most babies Albert was not scared of the white rat. Watson wanted to test if he could make Albert scared using classical conditioning. Watson discovered that Albert was scared of the sound of a hammer hitting a steel gong with a hammer. When Albert was eleven-months old,Watson went on with the experiment. Albert was given the white rat. A few seconds later, Watson made the hammer hit the gong. Albert cried when this happened. This was done seven times. After the seven times, Albert would cry when he saw the white rat. Little Albert also became scared of other things, called generalization. These things had a similarity to the white rat. They were a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat, a Santa Claus mask, and Watson's hair. Watson's experiment was important because he was able to teach Albert to be scared of something.
Watson showed that children can be taught through classical conditioning. After the experiment, Watson thought that children are affected by the environment.
Albert Bandura felt that children learn by watching others in society. After watching, children then copy what was done. His theory is called social learning theory. The copying that children perform is called modeling. The person that children copy is called the model. Bandura thought there are four conditions needed for modeling to happen.
Children are likely to model behavior if the model is of the same-sex. A girl child will copy a woman model better than a man. This is because the child wants to act like people she is like. Also, Children are more likely to model behavior if the behavior gets positive reactions from adults. When children are praised they will keep doing the behavior. They do this because they want to get more praise. A child will not always get praise for their behaviors. Instead they might get punishment. If a child gets punishment for a behavior they will not model it. A child can also chose to model behavior or not by watching what happens to the model. If the model gets punishment the child will not model the behavior. This is because the child does not want to get punishment. Bandura did an experiment to test his ideas. The experiment is known as the Bobo Doll Experiment.