What are the strength and weakness of psychoanalysis as a major perspective towards developmental psychology.

-- Margaret Dowuona (maggie_dowuona@hotmail.com), October 27, 2001

Answers

Response to Psychology

This is a very broad question. I suppose one strength is that it was one of the first theories to take a stage-wise approach to development, recognizing that the child faces particular kinds of challenge at particular ages. One weakness, however, would be that there is a great deal of doubt that Freud captured the right challenges at the right ages.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), October 27, 2001.

Hi Margaret, well it seems that critics always point out the weakness in anything Freud did is that it is difficult to empirically varify - by current standards and practices of the "empirical" community. And they will often say, there are no strengths to Freud's perspective towards developmental psychology. What you can say Freud did was focus a lot of attention on child development, a lot of research came out of that. With regards to the issue of strengths of the psychoanalytic perspective, I guess you have to read Freud yourself and come to grips with what he says, and then reflect on his method and ask yourself if it is convencing to you. You have to do this yourself because the waters are so muddy with critism now; alot of that critism was written by - enemies of his, people with strong methological biases. Perhaps begin with Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis translated by James Strachey; it's a short and easy to read book. One strength has got to be, in the beginning he is a doctor/neurophysiologist of merit who is denied the easy life of a succesful scientist because of his race, at the top of his game he is meeting his patients on their own terms trying to figure out the mental processes of what was then called hysteria. You'll find no theories based on slobbering dogs, confused rats, or starved pigeons here; this business focuses on people caught up in emotional problems as they try to get on with life. The story is a great read. Good luck, David

-- david clark (doclark@yorku.ca), November 07, 2001.

This sounds like a great question to ask on an exam in a developmental psych class. I expect that most comprehensive texts of developmental psychology include a discussion of this topic.

-- Warren Street (warren@cwu.edu), November 09, 2001.