Psy 2012
Prof. Smith
February 5, 2015
Essay 1 Chapter 1 The seven major perspectives are biological, behavioral, psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive, and evolutionary and last sociocultural. They all allow psychologist to understand behavior and mental processes. Biological approach is where phycologist focus on the brain and the nervous system basically the body. The behavioral approach focuses on observing behavior. The psychodynamic approach emphasizes on unconscious thought like early child hood family experiences, Sigmund Freud is the founding father of this approach. Humanistic approach tells about someone’s positive qualities and their positive growth. The cognitive approach is about the mental processes involved in knowing, basically how we think, remember or solve problems. Evolutionary approach emphasizes on adaptation, reproduction and natural selection, explaining specific human behaviors. Lastly sociocultural approach tells the relationship between social behaviors and cultural environments. Each of these approaches explain how a person may develop depression differently. First you have to ask yourself what is depression and why is it caused? Well depression is a mental illness often caused by consistent feelings of sadness or emotions no matter what situation someone may be in. Depression can also be described as a strange low mood that a person is unable to snap out of. For the Psychodynamic approach Freud thinks that depression can be caused by early childhood experiences and he thinks the cause can be found through their social experiences. Depression with the Biological approach, may be caused by low levels of a neurotransmitter, also if a person is depressed all the time from the beginning it could have been passed on genetically. Humanistic approach suggests depression occurs when a