Tabula Rasa a Blank Slate in Behaviourism

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Several psychological theories try to give reasons for human behaviour, but this essay aims to give a brief outline of the key concepts of the psychodynamic theory and the behavioural theory. Also looking at an individual’s health and behaviour in this case, phobias. (NHS, 2018) Phobias are divided in to two different types: Specific or simple phobias and complex phobias. Common specific or simple phobias include phobias to: animals, environmental, situation, bodily or sexual phobias. The two most common complex phobias are agoraphobia and social phobia.

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Someone with agoraphobia feels anxious when in a situation where they feel escaping may be difficult.

Social phobia is when a person feels anxious in social situations. The Psychodynamic theory and the Behavioural theory can both be used to explain why someone may live with a phobia. According to the NHS website ‘A phobia can develop during childhood, adolescence or early adulthood.’ (NHS, 2018). ‘Psychodynamic theorists explain that phobias emerge because individuals have impulses that are unacceptable, and they repress these impulses’ (Mind Disorder, 2018) and the repressed impulses are then transferred onto another object or subject causing a phobia towards it.

Whereas Behaviourists believe that people are born tabula rasa meaning a blank slate, believing that all behaviour is learned. (McLeod, 2010). Behaviourists believe phobias are learnt behaviour. And believe all behaviour can be unlearnt. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) developed the psychodynamic approach to human behaviour. Different to other approaches, psychoanalytic ideas are based on case studies of individual patients, instead of experimental studies. Freud argued that the mind ‘consists of three parts: the id, ego, and superego.

’ (Eysenck, 2002, p139) The id deals with motivational forces, the ego being our conscious thinking, and the super ego is concerned with moral issues, i.e. Guilt or shame for behaving badly, pride on behaving well.

Freud’s work concentrated on five psychosexual stages in psychological child development; oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. You have to overcome a conflict in order to move through each of the stages. Psychodynamic theorists also think that defense mechanisms are used to protect us from guilt and anxiety and ‘with the ego, our unconscious will use one or more to protect us when we come up against a stressful situation in life.’ (McLeod 2017).

In healthcare today, there are many different techniques used in psychodynamic therapy to help support people to overcome phobias. Therapies such as free association and interpretation therapy are where the patient is encouraged to talk freely in the hope that they uncover the repressed impulse or traumatic event which caused the phobia and achieve catharsis, which is the ‘elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it expression’ (Merriam-Webster. 2018). This technique takes a lot of time. Less time consuming is group psychodynamic therapy which is where a therapist either construes an individual in a group setting, the group interprets all the team member’s or the therapist interprets the group as a whole. This group could be with a friend, your partner or family.

Challenging the psychodynamic theory is the behavioural theory. As it was difficult to provide evidence of Freud’s theory because he was dealing with the unconscious mind, in 1913, J.B. Watson established the behavioural theory. John Watson (1876-1958) believed his theory offered a scientifically testable reason for the way humans and animals behave. Focusing on the basis that behaviour is learned from the environment in which they live. Behaviourism believes that ‘you are born with your mind as a blank slate and you learn all your behaviour from the environment you live in.’ (Fritscher, 2018) This is also known as tabula rasa.

Learning theories such as classical conditioning; where a person’s behaviour becomes an automatic response to a continual stimulus and operant conditioning; where the person changes behaviours or learns behaviour with positive reinforcement rewards or negative punishments are used to explain the key concepts of the behavioural theory.

Early investigations carried out by Ivan Pavlov ‘Pavlov’s Dog’s’, where he conditioned the dogs to salivate (response) whenever a bell rang (stimulus) as the dogs related a bell with food. J.B. Watson also experimented on a young baby called ‘Little Albert’ where Watson would produce a stimulus in the form of a loud, startling bang whenever Little Albert was in the presence of a white rat. associated with the rat, be it something white or furry, evoked a negative and fearful response from Little Albert helped to provide evidence of behavioural conditioning and reinforce Watson’s argument for this theory ‘to be truly scientific, it was necessary for psychology to concern itself only with that which could be directly observed, namely the behaviour of organisms.’ (Hayes and Statton. 2003) Edward Thorndike’s (1898) principle of learning, ‘the law of effect’ proposes that ‘responses that produce satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in that situation’ (Gray, 2011, pp 108-109). This was the basis of B F Skinner’s operant conditioning.

With this in mind Skinner focused on learning from the consequences of behaviour. Skinner’s most widely known experiment called the Skinner Box; where an animal is in a chamber with a key to manipulate, such as a level, and when pressed the animal would get food or water seen as a reward, a positive reinforcement or an electric shock seen as a negative reinforcement. Skinner believed that, unlike Pavlov and Watson’s suggestion that behaviour is a reflex response of a stimulus, behaviours were dependent on what happened following the response be that a reinforcement or punishment. Another example of operant conditioning in relation to a person is spheksophobia, when running away from a wasp our anxiety is reduced resulting in the behaviour of avoiding the wasp is reinforced.

Operant conditioning and classic conditioning can both be useful in therapy. Classical conditioning such as systematic desensitisation aims to keep the patient relaxed using an anxiety hierarchy. Newman and Adams (2004) used this to treat a 17 year old boy who had a fear of dogs. ‘They used a 10-point anxiety hierarchy beginning with showing photograghs of dogs and working up to being around unleashed dogs in a park.’Healthcare workers can use the education of these theories to enable an understanding of why a patient may be presenting with a phobia. With this knowledge they can offer empathetic support and guidance on how to get help and explain the kind of help they may receive. Enabling the patient to feel safe and comfortable reducing anxiety levels.