Name: Ahmad Arif

Section: A, SAP: 70077836

Subject: Psychology
Mid Term Assignment
Question 1: Analyze and evaluate the key concepts of at least three of the major
psychological perspectives with examples. According to you which one of them
is more useful in understanding the human behavior keeping in view the
Pakistani context.
Perspectives of psychology:
There are several perspectives of psychology, let discuss three major of them.
1. Psychodynamic Psychology
2. Behavioral psychology
3. Cognitive psychology
Psychodynamic psychology:
Psychodynamic psychology was started by Sigmund Freud back in early 1900s and
he came up with the idea of unconscious mind and it's existence.
Let discuss about the mindsets
• Pre conscious Mind:
The things which are stored in our memory that we can easily recall for example if
I ask you what did you have for breakfast this morning you'd be able to tell, if I ask
you what's your mom's name so you can easily tell, these are the things you can
easily recall.
• Unconscious mind:
It's just huge and it's filled with the things we are not even aware of because we
can't reach them consciously because they are so deeply submerged in our mind
that we don't have access to them with our own.
We do the things that we do have because of repressed memories. Things that
have happened to us or we have experienced that we have pushed into our
unconscious mind whether we have done deliberately or undeliberally.
Childhood experiences that have taken place it's been so much time since we
have had that experience that's been forgotten and it's in our unconscious mind.
As theorist says ' Majority of our unconscious mind is filled with the things that
are needs that we have. That may or may not even realize our needs or they're
unfulfilled wishes that we have, that maybe it's too threatening to really think
about this because we are afraid they won't ever happen so we just push them in
our unconscious mind.

Behavioral perspective:
Our behavior and our mental processes are determined by our environment. The
things we have learned as a result of simply being live, these aren't anything
we've been born with but with simply things that we have been taught in our
environment.
The ways that our parents raised us. For example the things we have learned in
our school about how to behave in a classroom or how to get along with people.
How teachers or our parents convince them, they usually punish us if we don't
follow them. How our teacher get us to do homework, they give us grade in
return.
It's simply the associations we make between behavior and consequences that
follow. We do things to get rewards and to avoid punishments.
Why we do the things? Because we observe other people doing things and then
we repeat their behaviors.

Cognitive perspective:
Cognitive means thinking, the things that are mental. Our behavior or mental
processes are result of our mental interpretation of our experience. How do we
process the information we are experiencing in a given moment. The way we
think about our situation determines how we behave or how we process it.
For example, our thinking affects our behavior. If I think someone is upset with
me, it will definitely change the way I deal with that person.
If I think someone doesn't like me I might avoid that person or I might talk
negatively about that person.
Our knowledge, our memory is part of our thinking process. Our feelings about
things will affect our behavior for example if I am very sensitive person and I
watch a movie the cat dies in the end and that sort of the thing, my feelings about
that love that might have felt like I had attained during or something cause me to
cry and my beliefs about can cause me to do things. If I think something is wrong
then I won't do that particular behavior.

More useful in understanding human behavior:

I've studied perspectives of psychology in detail by my teacher and I believe there
is not any one “right” way to understand the way people think or behave. What if
my friend say a certain behavior to biological factors such as genetics while I
might consider early childhood experiences to be a more likely explanation for the
behavior. Because we as student might emphasize various points within
psychology in our observation and analysis of behavior.
But according to me I guess cognitive perspective is more useful in understanding
Pakistani people's behavior because the society we live in, is so biased. People
have dual faces and they usually discriminate others without knowing the facts
and figures. If we see a girl without a burqa or hijab, people might say that she is
not a good girl, she don't belong to a good family or she don't have ethics and
what if the same girl wear veil, people will say that how she can survive in such a
hot summer in under burqa. They will only have perceptions or thinking, and are
unaware of actuality. May be that girl is nice but wears western dressing so we
will say that she's characterless. In Pakistani society and the people in a Pakistani
society have not true facts but they have the vast amount of imagination and that
imagination, that perceptions are most in negative. People will judge you, people
will comment on you, they won't see you happy, they won't allow you to survive
in your own way. And that kind of culture is from our forefathers, we think first,
we know later.

Let's talk about positive cognitive perspective:

We live in a society where we want to be the perfect and more human than
human. We want to be the superior. As we see the ads on television, we see the
ad of a shampoo a girl who is having a long, beautiful, shining hair that are so
manageable, so glamming. So that will convince us to buy that product to look
beautiful like her. We haven't used that product before, we are just persuaded by
that model girl in TVC to look like that. We don't know that we're not gonna look
like her but still we perceive that we'll look like her and let us in our imagination.
After using that product, you might feel yourself Kareena Kapoor because that Ad
make you to feel like that but you're not actually looking like her. That may affect
your behavior and definitely happens in our middle class Pakistani families.
This, might later, cause dissonance.
Question 2: There has been an ongoing debate on whether early or late
experiences are more important in determining aspects of later life. What is
your opinion? Do early experiences rule us for life? Justify your answer.
Well, it's really a long debate to discuss and I've to say on both things to clarify my
opinion. I'll put myself and the people whom I've observed since my childhood as
examples to discuss.
What are early life experience?
This is a life-long process but there is a huge interest in how early-life experiences,
maybe like stress or exposure to high foods in childhood or even before birth by
our mother, have impacts that can last long into adult life.
Affect on personality:
The recognition and memories of life experiences might influence our thoughts,
feelings, behaviors, and accordingly, personality traits, attachment security might
function as a moderator of effects of life experiences.
My own experience:
I've been experienced through childhood trauma. When I was three, I was
kidnapped twice with gap of two months and I was mentally tortured by the
people who did this. They told me that they have killed my mother and that lady
(who was my caretaker) is your new mother now. Well, when I got home after
three days, I was okay but that thing remained in my unconscious mind maybe.
That was tragic incident for me, I had nightmares and all time I see that someone
is killing my mother or open blank places or someone very giant. That maybe a
post-traumatic disorder which lead toward nightmares.
But that thing had affect on my teenage a very little but didn't affect my
personality now in my adult life. Like I remember all the incident that took place
in past, and is stored in my pre-conscious mind. That's not affecting me now, I
don't have any insecurities.
How it affect people?
Some good early experiences help the brain to develop well and experiences of
neglect and abuse can literally cause some genetically normal children to become
mentally retarded or to develop serious emotional difficulties.
So early experiences rule in life as well as. There are maybe 30% cases in my life
who had moved on like me and their past experience didn't affect their later life
but I'm gonna talk about those who are ruled by early life experience.

1. Childhood trauma (Multiple personality disorder):

I've watched a drama made in Pakistan named 'Ishq Zahenaseeb' where the lead
character suffers from Multiple personality disorder. After mid night, he does
makeup on his face and become a girl. He was a child and his father died soon
after. He was then raised by his step-mother. Because of traumatic experiences in
his childhood, he developed split personality disorder.
Flashbacks show the abuse Sameer was inflicted to during his childhood at the
hands of step mother and his nanny Shakra. Shakra was a victim of rape at the
hands of Sameer's father and had a baby boy as a result of it. His father ordered
the child to be killed, driving Shakra to seek revenge. She poisoned him and
emotionally tortured Sameer, causing him to develop an alternate identity of a
girl. This shows how his childhood trauma leads in his adulthood personality.

2. Inferiority complex:
We usually use to hear this word and is feeling of insecurity, deriving from actual
or imagined physical or psychological deficiency, that result in behavioral
expression ranging from the withdrawal of immobilizing timidity to the
overcompensation of aggression or maybe excessive competition.
This complex is frequently traced to abusive or negative childhood experiences,
the effects of which can persist well into adulthood. But that's not the only
possible cause.
Like my very close friend, she always been taunted for not having position in her
class and always compared with her siblings that make her feel inferior. That
trauma leads her so bad in her adulthood life that she has quit her studies and as
well as started chain smoking. Maybe she started hating herself due to inferiority
complex.

3. Sissy boy syndrome:

Well you may see many boys who behaves like girls or have girlish style mainly
called 'Sissy' in society. Sissy referred as pejorative term for a boy or man who
violates or does not meet the standard male gender role( typically) .That's so
pathetic but that's reality.
That specific boy is ragged and bullied in school and public just for behaving a bit
girlish.
Example:
One friend of mine behaves so sissy still in his adulthood and I heard many other
cases like this before too. He is one brother of 5 sisters and lived between them
along with mother and his father was in abroad. Obviously he grew up in females
so his walking style, his accent, his likings, his behavior all were like those of
females (stereotypically). When he got young (after puberty), when he started
going in public, school or college, people started making fun of him. They started
bullying him that you're so girlish , sissy or gay. This definitely hurt and break you
inside.
Everyone see the appearance, no one see what other person has went through.
This early life experience affect on his life. Later on he started grooming himself,
but no one helped him in sorting out from this personality trait.

4. Childhood sexual abuse:

Child sexual abuse may result in both short-term and long-term harm, that can
include psychopathology in later life effects include
• depression
• anxiety
• eating disorders
• poor self-esteem
• somatization
• sleep disturbances
• dissociative
• anxiety disorders
• post-traumatic stress disorder
While children may exhibit regressive behaviors such as thumb sucking or
bedwetting, the strongest indicator of sexual abuse is sexual acting out and
inappropriate sexual knowledge and interest.
One of child I know in my life was raped by the a boy and later on, it becomes his
sexual interest in it. This changes his sexual orientation, he started taking interest
in boys. This affected his adulthood personality.
Some children who have been went through sexual abuse may self-harming or
suicidal thoughts. learning disorders, including poor language and cognitive
development or developmental delay.

Conclusion:
People say that unresolved childhood trauma can be healed but through my
observation and analysis, traumas are stored in your unconscious mind and
somehow in you pre-conscious mind. Even without your will, that traumas affect
your later life. Early life experience has affect on your later life. There are feeling
of being insecure or people constantly seek validation from others. The examples
I gave above, I guess were enough to justify my answer.