Behaviorism and psychodynamic theory are just two of many major factors in what affect a human being throughout their life. These two theories are known to help patients with mental disorders. Psychodynamic theory focuses more on childhood, and how experiences as a child can affect them throughout their whole life. Behaviorism focuses on the study of a human being. It focuses on how a person behaves. Both theories are very beneficial to psychologists to help them figure out more about a person.
Psychodynamic theory is a form of psychotherapy that takes you all the way back to your childhood memories. Sigmund Freud talked about how psychodynamic theory “focuses on the client reaching self-awareness of unconscious …show more content…
Psychologist John Watson invented the term behaviorism, defining it as being “the view that psychology’s goal should be to study directly observable behavior and to understand how the events in the environment outside the organism produce behavior” (Watson 17). Watson believed it was unscientific to study “Private Events” and that someone’s behavior should be directly observed. Studying a person’s behavior is not just one step, but many. These steps include watching someone’s reaction to everything. Behaviorism focuses more on a person’s behavior to the environment in which surrounds them. Many theories of psychology are focused on biology and philosophy instead of trying to understand the things we can see, which is how someone acts. “psychologists often find themselves studying and trying to observe hidden processes.” (Watson 165) Instead of putting our attention on focusing on things we can observe and touch, we put our attention to studying the unseen behaviors. Watson believes that “Psychology should make the study of behavior its final objective, rather than using behavior only as an indirect measure of unobservable mental processes. “(Watson 165) I highly agree with this quote, I think it is unscientific to focus on things we cannot see. One of the strengths of behaviorism theory is easily being able to identify the behavior of the patient, without trying to get into their head. Another strength of behaviorism is it can be easily changed. It can focus on the unhealthy behaviors that are a part of everyday life, and observing what causes those behaviors. With that, it is easier to improve unhealthy behaviors by having the patient focus on how to make them healthy again. Weaknesses of this therapy include not knowing what goes on inside the patient. All you know is how the patient reacts due to the environment. Yes, observing a behavior is beneficial, but when the patient