Sigmund Freud and BF Skinner?

Question

What are the good things and the criticisms about Freud's and Skinners theories on personality. Freud's was the Id, Ego and the Superego and Skinners was all based on operant conditioning. Any help would be great :)

Answer 1

I think the main contribution of Freud was that he showed that events that occurred in the brain could affect external events.  He brought people's internal thinking processes out in the open and attempted to explain it through the interaction of environmental events and biological maturation.  The main problem with his theory is that it does not lend itself well to experiments and the testing of hypotheses.  Freud's theory is mainly explanatory and is not really a theory because it does not lend itself to forming hypotheses and testing them experimentally.  It is a good story.  The fact that Freud brought s*x out of the closet should not be overlooked.

Skinner stressed the observation of the effect of environment upon behavior.  His theory lends itself to scientific exploration of hypotheses, but it is overly simplistic.  When more then one factor is involved, it becomes very difficult to define how the factors relate to behavior and what the relationship is between the factors.  In theory, his approach is elegant, in practice it becomes difficult.  Situations are rarely static and even as you observe to find a relationship, the situation changes.  Still, people have found it to be very applicable in many situations.