Views of Sigmund Freud's and Carl Rogers' Prospective of Personality

History and Theory

Germaine Murray-Davis

PSYCH 504

June 3, 2013

Dr. Melissa G. Venezia

History and Theory

In looking at the views of Sigmund Freud's and Carl Rogers' prospective of personality are viewed differently. Although that may influence areas known to both there is a wider difference. The influences of both theorists have reached numerous other theorists who have followed the practices of Freud and Rogers. A discussion of the history or Freudian construct and of Rogerian construct will be viewed from what processed contemporary psychologists use to develop these theories. Worldviews and human nature are explained in how the theorists express their aspect to these theories, the aspects that would be different if they were alive and working today. The last one is how social and cultural factors influenced the development of Freud's and Rogers' respective theories of personality.

Article Summaries

A summary of the article Review of A new Freudian synthesis: Clinical process in the next generation are reviews from the book, A New Freudian Synthesis: Clinical Process in the Next Generation provide detailed clinical discussion from a group of contemporary Freudian psychoanalysts. The group displayed their understanding of earlier theorists and how it is part of their work used in current psychoanalytic practice. The group had no knowledge of their fellow contributors which provided unobstructed snapshot of the current Freudian landscape. This process provided sharp detail of specific, unique, and interesting elements of psychoanalytic process. The primary focus in this volume is on technique. The challenge is how to bridge the gap between active attention to subjectivity in clinical process, and a theory, method-technique understanding of change (Wong, 2012). A valuable collection, illustrating how modern Freudian analysts do their work as expressed through detailed and sparkling clinical process (Wong, 2012).

The second article is The Humanistic and Behavioral Traditions: Areas of Agreement and Disagreement. The comment in this article addresses areas of agreement and disagreement between the humanistic and behavioral traditions. Agreement includes a common interest in humanism, cognition, and contextualism (Elkins, 2012). A disagreement include Hayes's analysis of humanistic psychology's historical focus on human science and qualitative research as well as his view that humanistic psychology is not scientifically based (Elkins, 2012). In the interest of collaboration, the article concludes with a request that behavioral clinicians be more cautious about extolling the specialness of behavioral approaches in psychotherapy (Elkins 2012).

Human Nature and Worldviews

Theorists in this article who follow the Freudian construct views on human nature and worldviews the same as the founder. Human nature is essentially in conflict consisting of an unconscious mind the Id, Ego, and the Superego. The Id is old biological instincts transformed in civilization. The Ego deals with the conscious rational part of taming the Id. The Superego promotes guilt in order to tame the Id.

One theoretical concept of psychoanalysis is that of a psychological unconscious. One method of understanding unconscious processes is through free association, or talking freely and openly (Wong, 2012). All authors in this article would appear to endorse these statements about theory and method regarding the psychological unconscious (Wong, 2012). A theorist can use varied techniques to approach a patient's associations (Wong, 2012). Certain basic techniques like listening for disjuncture in associative narrative, affective incongruence between narrative and feeling or dream association (Wong, 2012). Some, for example, emphasize apprehending varied states of consciousness that may be constructed mutually by patient and analyst