From the onset of birth to death an individual experiences psychological, emotional, social and cognitive changes. These changes influence their behaviors through-out their lifetime which impact the human experience within their lifespan (Kail, 2018). It is therefore important to understand the growth and development that individuals experience through their life span to enable the comprehension of their behavior and the impact it has on others around them like such as families friends and those in the societies that they coexist in. To enable this comprehension one needs to understand the different developmental learning theories and how they relate to the learning and implementation of behavior.
There are numerous development theories such as the cognitive, psychoanalytic and behavioral theories. The cognitive theory entails the use of thoughts and mental processes influence behavior. These thoughts and mental processes are usually as a result of internal and external factors. The psychoanalytic theory expresses that individual behavior is motivated by abstract influences that are regulated by the conscious rational thought. These abstract influences include the Id, Ego and Super Ego. The behaviorism theory focuses on observable behavior acquired through influences on environmental conditions. The cause of behavior under the behaviorism theory is based on types of conditioning that include classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
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This paper will focus of the psychoanalytic theory on development as it illustrates the causes of behavior across the lifespan of a male friend of mine. The following entails an illustration of the lifespan of my twenty four year old friend called Daniel Otis whom I interviewed to acquire this information. It elaborates on the aspects of his behavior across his lifespan based on the psychoanalytic theory.
Conception and Birth
Daniel Otis was born to an immigrant mother and father and as a result he was raised in an economically challenged environment. Daniel’s father worked as a foreman and his mother was a stay at home mother. As a result of their economic constraints Daniel’s family lived in a relatively poverty stricken neighborhood. This predisposed him as a fetus to teratogens that would be caused by environmental toxins. Exposure to these environmental toxins by Daniel’s mother which is a characteristic experienced in low income neighborhoods would have predisposed Daniel to impaired cognitive development once he was born. These would have impaired his intellectual development and even caused him to experience learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dyscalculia.
Daniel was however, lucky enough not to experience any of those teratogens. He was born healthy. During his development as a child he did not exhibit any impairments in terms of his responses in cognition and mental abilities.
Early Childhood
During his early childhood Daniel’s parents separated. His father moved to the New York City to get a better job and after a while he stopped contacting Daniel’s mother. This resulted to Daniel feeling abandoned thus causing him to get stressed. This affected how he socialized with his fellow friends. He had a hard time making new friends during his early childhood, which can be attributed to low self-esteem and stress as a consequence of the feeling of abandonment.
Daniel also could not afford most of the toys he wanted to play with as a child. As a result he developed a behavior of taking other children’s toys without permission which would land him in trouble once he was discovered. The cause of this behavior can be attributed to the Id in his development stage. During this period of Daniel’s development the Id which is the most primitive part of the mind sought immediate gratification which prompted Daniel to act without thinking of the morality of his actions.
Middle Childhood
Growing up, Daniel used to listen to hip-hop music. The community in which he grew up in maintained the cultural practice of listening to hip-hop music as a form of entertainment. Some of the lyrics portray violent acts which influenced Daniel’s childhood. He tried to enact some of these violence acts from the lyrics he heard from the music he listened to. This was different to the kind of music I listened to while I was of his age. This consequently creates a contrast in the kind of behavior I portrayed at that age compared to Daniel since I was not a violent child and even experienced bullying due to my passive nature.
Another cultural aspect shared among Daniel’s family are family reunions. They usually hosted and were hosted in family reunions which included not only special days like Christmas and thanksgiving but also normal weekends. This was an ethnic culture that was new to me considering that members of our family only met on special occasions. As a result of being in constant interaction with his extended family Daniel became socially active.
Adolescence
As an adolescent Daniel became predisposed to peer pressure. His peers from the community in which he had grown up entailed sexually active individuals who engaged in irresponsible sexual behavior, and drug and substance abuse. Daniel has a girlfriend with whom he is sexually intimate with. He however, maintains that they have never indulged in sexual activity without protection. He is aware of the consequences of irresponsible sexual behavior such as having unprotected sex. He also does not indulge in drug and substance abuse. This he attributes to the knowledge he has acquired from school on the vast effects of drug abuse on the youth. He even expresses his first-hand experience in witnessing these effects among some of his peers.
Daniel’s non-indulgence in unprotected sex is not a common practice among the youth in his community. Consequently, unwanted teenage pregnancies have become a common experience as the chart below shows:
Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/index.htm
As the chart shows black girls are among the highest affected by unwanted teenage pregnancies which causes a high rate of school dropouts. To deal with this issue more awareness should be conducted to the girls in low economic areas. This can be achieved by setting up workshops around these areas.
Discussion
Using the psychoanalytic theory, Daniel’s lifespan can be explained from his childhood to his current age as a young adult. From his early childhood which is when he first exhibited behavior the Id was his the sole motivator of his actions. By stealing other children’s toys, he wanted to satisfy his instant gratification without any consideration to the consequences of his actions on himself or others (Gabbard, 2014).
As he grows up he becomes more aware of the social and moral values. This acts as an ethical constraint on his behavior which is based on the cultural values of the community that he exists in. This is as a result of the super-ego. His actions at the adolescent stage not to indulge in drug abuse and irresponsible sexual behavior is evidence of his consideration of consequences based on what he has learnt from society on the difference between right and wrong.
He also establishes a balance of the Id and the super-ego using the ego which is the logical and conscious part of the mind. His indulgence in sexual behavior despite not being married and knowing to use protection is evidence of the application of the balance that implies the use of the ego.
References
Division of Reproductive health. ( 2019, March 1 ) About Teen Pregnancy. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/index.htm
Kail, R. V., & Cavanaugh, J. C. (2018). Human development: A life-span view . Cengage Learning.
Gabbard, G. O. (2014). Psychodynamic psychiatry in clinical practice . American Psychiatric Pub.
