Kohler's Theories: A Comparative Analysis to Freud's Approach and Contemporary Relevance

His discoveries were significant but they also illuminated human stupidity. It’s amazing how relevant operant conditioning is to this day. I find it amazing how easy it is to condition or train someone to do something you want them

Inspiration. Although John Watson made tremendous waves in the study of behavioral psychology, he was not the first to explore it. Much of his inspiration was drawn from the ideas of Ivan Pavlov, one of his most known achievements being the conditioning of dogs. In the experiment, Pavlov was testing to see if he could make dogs, which would salivate in the presence of food, salivate over the sound of a bell by ringing it in the once the dogs were to be fed (How to Train a Brain, 2014).

His first experiment was on a 3 year old child that was blindfolded. Lamal & Windholz (1986) explained that he used a bell as the conditioned stimulus and honey as the unconditioned stimulus (p. 193). After several dozen trials, the child responded to the bell conditioned stimulus with the movement of his mouth and an increased rate of swallowing (Lamal & Windholz, 1986, p. 193). The conditioned stimulus still occurred after a two week period. In his second experiment, he conditioned a 6 year old child to respond to a bell and uses pieces of chocolate as the unconditioned stimuli (Lamal & Windholz, 1986, p. 193). He also did experiments on generalization and differentiation. His experiences were on sound and tactile stimuli.

B.F Skinner was an American Psychologist who invented the operant conditioning chamber. The chamber he set up had rats in it and a lever, once the rats pulled the lever they were given a piece of food. After this happened the rate of bar pressing would increase dramatically and remain high until the rat was no longer hungry. He was a firm believer of the idea that human free will was actually an illusion and any human

Thereby, Skinner produced experiments whereby rats would navigate through mazes to achieve the goal of a box containing food. His interest was the behaviour of the rat, taking the right turn to achieve the desired result, food. To begin with the rats would take the wrong turn but with experience, they became more skilful. The rats learning behaviour was measured in two ways, firstly the length of time it took from start to end and secondly, the reduction in errors. This was a lengthy experiment which led Skinner to produce ‘the Skinner box’. Whereby, rats learnt to press a lever and pigeons learnt to peck a key in order to attain food, also known as behaviour shaping. This experiment lacks ecological validity as the animals are kept in a controlled environment which is dissimilar to their natural habitat. However, the results which were attained could not have been possible in natural circumstances. Skinner wanted to observe if behaviour could be learned through reaching a desired outcome such as positive reinforcement which needed to be

His most famous experiment is the Little Albert experiment. He gave a little boy by the name of Albert a white furry rat. He let Albert love and play and get attached to the rat. Later on, he would give the rat to Albert and when he went to touch it, Watson would play a loud sound, frightening the child. He continued this until one day he gave Albert the rat without playing a loud noise. Albert was still frightened of the rat. This is the same thing they did to the children in Brave New World to condition them to not like or want books or nature.

The first animal life he saw was what seemed to be a primitive type of human that could not talk. Upon approaching them they were ambushed and taken captive by apes with guns on horses. These apes strangely could talk and reason. These apes captured the humans and locked them in cages like violent, dumb, dirty animals.

Jane Goodall was actually one of the first scientists to give names to her test subjects instead of numbers. Jane Goodall was also the first person to observe chimpanzees eating meat and using tools. Since she studied chimpanzees so much, she knew and discovered a lot about them.

I found that the little Albert experiment to be interesting and how fear can be classically conditioned. I found it interesting that Watson was able to make Albert be afraid of a white rat by using a loud sound that Albert already didn’t like, but also howAlbert’s fear of the white rat generalized to other things as well. Though I would have liked to know if Albert’s fear stayed with him throughout his life or if the fear eventually went away.

One of the most prominent and influential psychologists of the twentieth century, B.F. Skinner was known as a behavioral psychologist, philosopher of science, and an educational innovator. Throughout his life he did experimental work with animals to discover how patterns of behavior are learned. His initial work was primarily conducted with animals, and later in life he started to work with humans and apply his learning from his pigeon studies to human behavior. He focused on the individual and wrote about how to restructure social systems to improve the quality of life.

traps for large groups of animals. He caught a few coatlmundi,possums, an ant eater, and killed a monkey with a arrow.

After his work in fermentation, he began studying diseases. He was able to isolate the germs of diseases and create vaccines. To prove his discoveries, he did a public experiment

For my comparison, I’ll be looking at the theories of Sigmund Freud and Viktor Frankl, the creators of both the first and third Viennese Schools of Psychotherapy, respectively.

The anal stage is the second among Freud’s psychosexual stages of development. The anal stage, according to Freud, is the period of human development that occurs between the ages of one to four years old. This is around the age that a child begins the process of “potty-training”. This “potty-training” then brings about the fascination in the erogenous zone of the anus for the child. The erogenous zone is focused on bowel control. This caused Freud to believe that controlling bowel movements was the main focus of libido.

His theory came about from his observations from the dissection of animals, especially Barbary apes and pigs as he considered them similar to humans. He was forbidden to experiment on human bodies due to religious reasons, however he did see inside the human body during surgeries. Because of his limitations to only working on dead or living animals, it made his theory somewhat inaccurate because the human body and the organs inside are not completely similar to those of apes and pigs. He also relied on the existence of god in nature to explain the function and the structure of the human body.