Question

Apply: a 4-year-old becomes frightened of the dark and refuses to go to sleep at night. how would a psychoanalyst and a behaviorist differ in their views of how this problem developed?

Answer 1

The view of the psychoanalyst would come from the approach that when children move through a series of stages, in which they face conflicts between biological drives and social expectations. So fear of the dark reflects an unconscious motive or anxiety, an anxiety about nighttime separation from the parent for example could be a source of the fear. On the other hand, the behaviorist's approach would focus on environmental occurrences and behavioral responses. This would cause the child to be scared of the dark if a previous experience in the dark had been negative, such as hearing a loud noise late at night or a having a nightmare.