psychodynamic theory attributes the development of mood disorders to what?

Psychological Theories of Depression

By Dr. Saul McLeod, published 2015

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Low is a mood disorder which prevents individuals from leading a normal life, at work socially or within their family. Seligman (1973) referred to low equally the 'cold' of psychiatry considering of its frequency of diagnosis.

Depending on how data are gathered and how diagnoses are made, every bit many as 27% of some population groups may be suffering from depression at any one time (NIMH, 2001; data for older adults).

Behaviorist Theory

Behaviorism emphasizes the importance of the environment in shaping behavior. The focus is on observable beliefs and the atmospheric condition through which individuals' learn behavior, namely classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social learning theory.

Therefore depression is the result of a person's interaction with their surroundings.

For case, classical conditioning proposes depression is learned through associating certain stimuli with negative emotional states. Social learning theory states beliefs is learned through observation, imitation and reinforcement.

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning states that depression is caused by the removal of positive reinforcement from the environment (Lewinsohn, 1974). Certain events, such as losing your chore, induce depression because they reduce positive reinforcement from others (eastward.k. being around people who similar you lot).

Depressed people usually become much less socially active. In add-on depression can besides be caused through inadvertent reinforcement of depressed behavior past others.

For case, when a loved one is lost, an of import source of positive reinforcement has lost too. This leads to inactivity. The main source of reinforcement is now the sympathy and attention of friends and relatives.

However this tends to reinforce maladaptive beliefs i.e. weeping, lament, talking of suicide. This eventually alienates fifty-fifty close friends leading to even less reinforcement, increasing social isolation and unhappiness. In other words depression is a vicious bicycle in which the person is driven farther and further downward.

Also if the person lacks social skills or has a very rigid personality structure they may find it difficult to brand the adjustments needed to await for new and alternative sources of reinforcement (Lewinsohn, 1974). So they get locked into a negative downwards screw.

Critical Evaluation

Behavioral/learning theories makes sense in terms of reactive low, where at that place is a clearly identifiable cause of low. Nevertheless, one of the biggest problems for the theory is that of endogenous depression. This is low that has no credible cause (i.due east. nothing bad has happened to the person).

An additional problem of the behaviorist approach is that information technology fails to take into account cognitions (thoughts) influence on mood.

Psychodynamic Theory

During the 1960'due south psychodynamic theories dominated psychology and psychiatry. Depression was understood in terms of:

1. inwardly directed anger (Freud, 1917),
2. introjection of beloved object loss,
3. severe super-ego demands (Freud, 1917),
4. excessive narcissistic, oral and/or anal personality demand (Chodoff, 1972),
5. loss of self-esteem (Bibring, 1953; Fenichel, 1968), and
6. impecuniousness in the female parent child relationship during the first year (Kleine, 1934).

Freud'due south psychoanalytic theory is an example of the psychodynamic arroyo. Freud (1917) prosed that many cases of depression were due to biological factors. However, Freud also argued that some cases of depression could be linked to loss or rejection by a parent. Depression is similar grief, in that it often occurs as a reaction to the loss of an of import relationship.

Yet, there is an of import difference, because depressed people regard themselves as worthless. What happens is that the individual identifies with the lost person, and then that repressed anger towards the lost person is directed inwards towards the self. The inner directed anger reduces the individual'south self-esteem, and makes him/her vulnerable to experiencing low in the hereafter.

Freud distinguished betwixt bodily losses (e.g. expiry of a loved ane) and symbolic losses (east.m. loss of a job). Both kinds of losses can produce depression by causing the individual to re-experience childhood episodes when they experienced loss of affection from some pregnant person (due east.g. a parent).

Later, Freud modified his theory stating that the trend to internalize loss objects is normal, and that low is simply due to an excessively severe super-ego. Thus, the depressive stage occurs when the individual's super-ego or conscience is dominant. In dissimilarity, the manic phase occurs when the private's ego or rational listen asserts itself, and due south/he feels control.

In society to avoid loss turning into depression, the private needs to appoint in a period of mourning work, during which s/he recalls memories of the lost 1. This allows the individual to divide him/herself from the lost person, and so reduce the inner-directed acrimony. However, individuals very dependent on others for their sense of self-esteem may be unable to do this, and so remain extremely depressed.

Critical Evaluation

Psychoanalytic theories of depression have had a profound bear on on contemporary theories of depressions. For example, Brook's (1983) model of depression was influenced by psychoanalytic ideas such equally the loss of self-esteem (re: Beck's negative view of self), object loss (re: the importance of loss events), external narcissistic deprivation (re: hypersensitivity to loss of social resources) and oral personality (re: sociotropic personality).

However, although being highly influential, psychoanalytic theories are difficult to examination scientifically. For example, many of its central features cannot be operationally defined with sufficient precision to allow empirical investigation. Mendelson (1990) ended his review of psychoanalytic theories of low by stating:

'A hit feature of the impressionistic pictures of low painted by many writers is that they have the flavor of fine art rather than of scientific discipline and may well represent profound personal intuitions as much as they depict they raw clinical data' (p. 31).

Another criticism concerns the psychanalytic emphasis on unconscious, intrapsychic processes and early childhood experience as being limiting in that they crusade clinicians to overlook boosted aspects of low. For instance, conscious negative self-verbalisation (Beck, 1967), or ongoing deplorable life events (Brown & Harris, 1978).

Cognitive Approach

This arroyo focuses on people'south behavior rather than their behavior. Low results from systematic negative bias in thinking processes.

Emotional, behavioral (and possibly physical) symptoms event from cognitive abnormality. This means that depressed patients retrieve differently to clinically normal people. The cognitive approach also assumes changes in thinking precede (i.e. come before) the onset of depressed mood.

Brook's (1967) Theory

Ane major cognitive theorist is Aaron Beck. He studied people suffering from depression and institute that they appraised events in a negative fashion.

Brook (1967) identified three mechanisms that he idea were responsible for depression:

1. The cognitive triad (of negative automatic thinking)
2. Negative cocky schemas
3. Errors in Logic (i.e. faulty information processing)

The cerebral triad are three forms of negative (i.e. helpless and critical) thinking that are typical of individuals with low: namely negative thoughts about the self, the earth and the future. These thoughts tended to be automatic in depressed people as they occurred spontaneously.

For case, depressed individuals tend to view themselves equally helpless, worthless, and inadequate. They translate events in the globe in a unrealistically negative and defeatist manner, and they run across the earth equally posing obstacles that can't be handled. Finally, they meet the time to come every bit totally hopeless considering their worthlessness will prevent their situation improving.

Every bit these three components interact, they interfere with normal cognitive processing, leading to impairments in perception, memory and problem solving with the person condign obsessed with negative thoughts.

Beck believed that low decumbent individuals develop a negative self-schema. They possess a set of beliefs and expectations almost themselves that are essentially negative and pessimistic. Brook claimed that negative schemas may be acquired in childhood as a result of a traumatic event. Experiences that might contribute to negative schemas include:

• Death of a parent or sibling.
• Parental rejection, criticism, overprotection, neglect or corruption.
• Bullying at school or exclusion from peer group.

All the same, a negative self-schema predisposes the private to depression, and therefore someone who has caused a cognitive triad volition not necessarily develop depression. Some kind of stressful life result is required to activate this negative schema afterward in life. One time the negative schema are activated a number of casuistic thoughts or cognitive biases seem to dominate thinking.

People with negative cocky schemas become prone to making logical errors in their thinking and they tend to focus selectively on sure aspects of a state of affairs while ignoring equally relevant information.

Brook (1967) identified a number of systematic negative bias' in information processing known every bit logical errors or faulty thinking. These illogical idea patterns are self-defeating, and can cause not bad anxiety or low for the private. For example:

1. Arbitrary Inference. Drawing a negative conclusion in the absence of supporting data.
2. Selective Abstraction. Focusing on the worst aspects of any state of affairs.
3. Magnification and Minimisation. If they have a problem they make it appear bigger than information technology is. If they accept a solution they brand it smaller.
4. Personalization. Negative events are interpreted as their error.
5. Dichotomous Thinking. Everything is seen as black and white. There is no in between.

Such thoughts exacerbate, and are exacerbated by the cerebral triad. Brook believed these thoughts or this style of thinking go automatic. When a person's stream of automatic thoughts is very negative you would expect a person to go depressed. Quite ofttimes these negative thoughts volition persist even in the confront of opposite prove.

Critical Evaluation

Alloy et al. (1999) followed the thinking styles of young Americans in their early on 20s for half dozen years. Their thinking style was tested and they were placed in either the 'positive thinking group' or 'negative thinking group'. Subsequently 6 years the researchers establish that only ane% of the positive group developed depression compared to 17% of the 'negative' grouping. These results signal there may exist a link between cognitive style and development of low.

However such a written report may suffer from demand characteristics. The results are also correlational. It is of import to call back that the precise role of cognitive processes is yet to be adamant. The maladaptive cognitions seen in depressed people may exist a result rather than a crusade of depression.

Learned Helplessness

Martin Seligman (1974) proposed a cognitive explanation of low chosen learned helplessness. According to Seligman'southward learned helplessness theory, depression occurs when a person learns that their attempts to escape negative situations brand no departure.

As a consequence they become passive and will endure aversive stimuli or environments even when escape is possible.

Seligman based his theory on research using dogs.

A dog put into a partitioned muzzle learns to escape when the floor is electrified. If the dog is restrained whilst being shocked information technology eventually stops trying to escape.

Dogs subjected to inescapable electric shocks later failed to escape from shocks even when it was possible to do and then. Moreover, they exhibited some of the symptoms of depression found in humans (languor, sluggishness, passive in the face of stress and appetite loss).

This led Seligman (1974) to explicate depression in humans in terms of learned helplessness, whereby the individual gives up trying to influence their environs because they have learned that they are helpless as a issue of having no control over what happens to them.

Although Seligman's account may explain low to a sure extent, information technology fails to take into account cognitions (thoughts). Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale (1978) consequently introduced a cognitive version of the theory by reformulating learned helplessness in term of attributional processes (i.e. how people explain the cause of an event).

The low attributional style is based on three dimensions, namely locus (whether the cause is internal - to do with a person themselves, or external - to practise with some attribute of the situation), stability (whether the cause is stable and permanent or unstable and transient) and global or specific (whether the cause relates to the 'whole' person or just some item feature characteristic).

In this new version of the theory, the mere presence of a negative event was not considered sufficient to produce a helpless or depressive country. Instead, Abramson et al. argued that people who attribute failure to internal, stable, and global causes are more likely to become depressed than those who attribute failure to external, unstable and specific causes. This is because the old attributional style leads people to the conclusion that they are unable to change things for the amend.

Critical Evaluation

Gotlib and Colby (1987) found that people who were formerly depressed are actually no unlike from people who take never been depressed in terms of their tendencies to view negative events with an attitude of helpless resignation.

This suggests that helplessness could be a symptom rather than a cause of depression. Moreover, it may be that negative thinking generally is also an consequence rather than a cause of depression.

Humanist Approach

Humanists believe that there are needs that are unique to the human species. According to Maslow (1962) the most important of these is the need for cocky-actualization (achieving out potential). The self actualizing human existence has a meaningful life. Annihilation that blocks our striving to fulfil this need can be a cause of depression. What could cause this?

1. Parents imposing weather of worth on their children. I.e. rather than accepting the kid for who south/he is and giving unconditional dearest, parents brand love provisional on good beliefs. E.g. a child may be blamed for not doing well at school, develop a negative self-prototype and feel depressed considering of a failure to live upwardly to parentally imposed standards.
2. Some children may seek to avoid this past denying their true cocky and projecting an image of the kind of person they want to be. This façade or false self is an effort to please others. However the splitting off of the real self from the person y'all are pretending to be causes hatred of the self. The person then comes to despise themselves for living a lie.
3. As adults self-actualization can be undermined by unhappy relationships and unfulfilling jobs. An empty shell marriage means the person is unable to give and receive love from their partner. An alienating task ways the person is denied the opportunity to be creative at piece of work.

APA Style References

Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, Grand. East., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: critique and reformulation. Journal of abnormal psychology, 87(ane), 49.

Blend, L. B., Abramson, L. Y., Whitehouse, W. Thousand., Hogan, M. Due east., Tashman, N. A., Steinberg, D. L., ... & Donovan, P. (1999). Depressogenic cognitive styles: Predictive validity, data processing and personality characteristics, and developmental origins. behavior research and therapy, 37(6), 503-531.

Beck, A. T. (1967). Low: Causes and treatment. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Beck, A. T., Epstein, N., & Harrison, R. (1983). Cognitions, attitudes and personality dimensions in depression. British Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy.

Bibring, East. (1953). The mechanism of low.

Chocolate-brown, Yard. Westward., & Harris, T. (1978). Social origins of depression: a respond. Psychological Medicine, 8(04), 577-588.

Chodoff, P. (1972). The depressive personality: A disquisitional review. Archives of General Psychiatry, 27(5), 666-673.

Fenichel, O. (1968). Depression and mania. The Meaning of Despair. New York: Science Business firm.

Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and affective. Standard edition, 14(19), 17.

Gotlib, I. H., & Colby, C. A. (1987). Treatment of depression: An interpersonal systems approach. Pergamon Press.

Klein, M. (1934). Psychogenesis of manic-depressive states: contributions to psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth.

Lewinsohn, P. Grand. (1974). A behavioral arroyo to depression.

Maslow, A. H. (1962). Towards a psychology of being. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company.

National Constitute of Mental Wellness. (2001). Depression enquiry at the National Found of Mental Health http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/low/complete-index.shtml.

Seligman, M. Eastward. (1973). Fall into helplessness. Psychology today, 7(i), 43-48.

Seligman, M. E. (1974). Depression and learned helplessness. John Wiley & Sons.

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How to reference this commodity:

McLeod, S. A. (2015, January 14). Psychological theories of depression. Simply Psychology. world wide web.simplypsychology.org/depression.html

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