Understanding Psychopathology

Paper Summary:

This paper focuses on two theoretical approaches of psychopathology concerning abnormal behavior in humans, the behavioral approach and the cognitive approach. These two approaches are compared and contrasted. The paper considers their effectiveness in both explaining the origins of, and treating mental disorders. The paper's explanation of the behavioral approach includes a look at modeling, operant conditioning and classical conditioning. The cognitive model is portrayed as an evolved behaviorist model. The paper explains that cognitive psychologists believe that cognitive processes, such as thoughts and emotions, drive behavior. The conclusion drawn by the paper is that the therapies that work best are ones that use combinations and treatments of these models, such as the cognitive-behaviorist model.

From the Paper:

"The first theoretical approach that shall be focused on is behaviorism. The underlying connotations of this approach is that all human behavior, whether it being internal (mental) or external (observable), is determined by the experiences a person has undergone, and how they have learned from them. One of the positive aspects of behaviorism is that it can be tested, observed and measured easily, unlike most psychological theories and models. Behaviorists have come to the conclusion that all human behavior has been conditioned. This belief originated in the 1950's where psychologists performed experiments on the behavior of organisms and through conditioning they could be taught how to act or behave in certain predicted ways. Through this method they applied several of these methods as being the cause of human functioning and if done incorrectly then could be the cause for abnormal functioning."

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