- There are more than two psychological explanations but you only need to know two in great detail. However, acknowledge that others exist (such as family relations and the cognitive explanation) as you can use them for comparison/evaluation.
- Psychodynamic
- Schizophrenia is a thought process disorder which is characterised by a person’s perceptions, emotions and beliefs. (i.e. “split mind”)
- The psychodynamic approach assumes that schizophrenia is a result of unconscious processes caused by the unconscious mind.
- Sigmund Freud is the founder of this theory and he believes that schizophrenia is caused by overwhelming-anxiety due to a repressed childhood that causes conflict in later life between the id, ego and the superego (the structural model of our personality).
- This causes a person to lose their touch with reality.
- Freud believed that schizophrenia is a defence mechanism involving regression into an early stage of development.
- It is the ego’s job to control the id’s impulses and strike a compromise between the demands of the id and the moral restrictions of the superego.
- The ego is developed in the unconscious mind in early childhood and according to Freudians, some types of abnormal upbringings can result in a weak and fragile ego whose ability to control the id’s desires is limited.
- He thought that schizophrenia was associated with stressful events that people with weak egos cannot cope with. This can lead to the ego being ‘broken apart’ leaving the id in overall control of the psyche.
- If this happens, a person loses their contact with reality as they are unable to distinguish between themselves + others and their desires/fantasies + reality.
- They regress to a state of ‘primary narcissism’ very similar to that of a new-born infant, dominated by their animal instincts and incapable of organizing their own behaviour.
- Hallucinations are thought to be a result of their basic inability to distinguish between their own imaginations and reality.
Evaluations:
- Laing (1967) supported the theory as he argues that schizophrenics lose contact with reality as a way of coping with social pressure. He also claimed that it was wrong to encourage schizophrenics to conform.
- Freud used the case study of little Hans to support this theory in which he could apply many of his ideas.
- Freud’s theories are unfalsifiable (unscientific, meaning they can’t be proven or disproven)
- There is not a lot of research to support the theory because it is difficult to test the idea of an “unconscious mind”
- It is deterministic in that in overemphasises how childhood experiences are related to an adult’s behaviour.
- Freud’s psychodynamic theory = a critique of science itself because we cannot prove that the unconscious mind physically exists.
- Behavioural
- This explanation argues that apart from a few innate reflexes, behaviour is learned as a result of a person’s interactions with their environment.
- Behaviourists believe that all symptoms of schizophrenia can be explained in terms of classical, operant and social learning processes.
- The disorder tends to run in families so it is possible that people may learn to exhibit symptoms from observing other people who do.
- A person who first exhibits a symptom for no reason may maintain it through operant processes. – Positively reinforced through attention of others or negatively reinforced if a consequence of the behaviour was that it allowed them to avoid aversive situations (“we’ll leave him alone – he’s crazy”).
- Once a person has been classified as schizophrenic and placed in an institution full of other people similarly classified, there is ample opportunity for the learning of new symptoms and the maintenance of those already existing.
- If a patient can be made to unlearn each individual symptom then they will eventually be made “well”.
- The behavioural explanation is not concerned with whether a patient really is hearing voices, they are more concerned with whether they are behaving as though they are hearing voices.
Evaluations:
- The behaviourist approach is highly applicable in terms of therapy.
- It emphasis objective measurement by focussing on observable behaviour.
- There have been both animal (Pavlov’s dogs) and human (Watson & Rayner – Little Albert) research conducted into the behavioural explanation, both of which have produced similar results.
- Nydegger (1972) reported some success in reducing apparent hallucinations and delusions in psychotic patients using the behaviourist approach.
- However, it is open to question whether the symptoms actually disappeared or the patients just learned not to talk about them.
- This theory is quite reductionist in that it tries to explain a large concept using a simple explanation.
- It cannot really account for what we agree are the core features of schizophrenia – hallucinations, delusions and disorganisation of thinking.
- Experiments with behaviour modification have indicated that, whilst symptoms can be modified, the accompanying experiences tend to persist.