Are Freud's Theories Of The Oral And Anal Personalities Like
This question immediately raises the problem, "how are we to determine which parts of Freudian theory are 'good'?" Freud may well have argued that the evidence he documented from his psychotherapy sessions was sufficient, whilst behaviourists would demand that the various aspects of a theory could only be recognised as 'good' after being exposed to the full rigours of the scientific method. I personally don't feel that one can hope to design a repeatable experiment that will decisively illustrate the existence of, for example, the Oedipus complex. On the other hand I feel that we cannot simply accept a theory that has been moulded to fit a certain experimenters observations, coloured as they must be by their own personality, prejudices, and society. Therefore in this essay I will examine the empirical evidence from studies conducted on these most controversial of Freud's theories, and where that evidence appears on balance to give support to that particular theory, I will accept it as 'good'. As I said earlier some will regard this measure of worth as too lax to be of any use, whilst others will object to the application of science to the process of personality development, a process that is infinitely complex and unique, and so b
The methods were all quite complex, but to give an indication of the sort of experimental design used I will outline how Blum and Miller graded the children on their interest in food. with parsimony and obstinacy being the most constant elements of the whole complex. Accepting this criticism Blum and Miller still found a significant correlation (P<. The oral personality, according to Kline (1984) consists of two not entirely opposed constellations of traits, the optimistic oral, associated with late weaning, and the pessimistic oral, associated with early weaning. Freud's theories of the oral and anal personality are centred around the idea that the infant is able to experience sexual sensations, and that the basis for these sensations changes during early development. However the results of the experiment do little to show the existence of an oral personality. Their experiment was designed to show a link between the primary trait of an orally fixated individual; numerous mouth and tongue movements and mouth touching, with the personality traits they had identified. Another attempt to demonstrate the existence of the oral pessimistic personality was that experiment carried out by Blum and Miller (1952). "Do you keep careful accounts of the money you spend?", and obstinacy, eg. I will therefore accept the existence of the 'anal' personality. The experiment was carried out on a class of eight year olds in a U. As both situations cause fixation at the oral stage, many traits are common to both types.
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Acceptance Essays
