Once Upon A Psychological Theory Essays - Freudian Psychology

Once Upon A Psychological Theory Once Upon A Psychological Theory An Analysis of Psychological Hypotheses in Fairy Tales and Their Affect on Childhood Development INDEX I. Personal Statement II. Introduction III. Piaget A. Childhood Development i. Sensory-Motor Stage ii. Preoperational Stage ii. Stage Of Concrete Operations iii. Stage Of Formal Operations IV. Erikson A. Autonomy And Social Development i. Theory ii. ?The Goose Girl? V. Freud A. The Id, The Ego And The Super Ego i. Theory ii. ?The Three Little Pigs? B. Oedipus i. The Myth Of Oedipus ii. Theory ii. ?Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs? iii. ?Cinderella? iv. ?Rapunzel? VI. Conclusion VII. Bibliography PERSONAL STATEMENT ?The object of psychology is to give us a totally different idea of the things we know best.? -Paul Val?ry ?Once upon a time..?, perhaps one of the single most famous phrases, the key that opens the door to a world of fantasy, enchantment and entertainment, the world of fairy tales. Fairy tales can mean different things to different people, each finds a different type of sanctuary within the realm of the make belief. Children may like fairy tales because good triumphs over evil; adults may favor them because they trigger childhood nostalgia; in the end, everything boils down to the fact that fairy tales were written to be enjoyed, and have become universally beloved. For my personal project, I decided to take Paul Val?ry's notion of psychology's objective to a universal level, by psychoanalyzing the effects of fairy tales. I chose psychology because it's the field that I wish to pursue in post-secondary studies. The idea of fairy tales naturally sprung into mind after my initial choice to do a paper on psychology, as the notion of psychology and fairy tales was not completely inane, nor alien, and fairy tales are a substance with which the majority of the population has had relations. I decided to demonstrate, in depth, the hidden effects of fairy tales, to uncover a different perspective of this timeless method of amusement. After thorough research of Piaget's developmental psychology, I concluded the best way to illustrate the ?alter ego? of fairy tale repercussions was by outlining the fact that many of these mythical stories are correlated with psychological theories of behavioral conduct, and how they affect behavioral developments. Subseque ntly, I conducted a survey, of 75 adults and children, to establish the most popular of the world's fairy tales, and from the results, researched various psychological theories and where they were applied in the five important fairy tales. This project was also ideal in respects to the areas of interaction, as it encompasses the principles of Homo Faber, Health and Social Sciences, and Environment. Fairy tales, a manifestation of the human imagination, embraced the ideals of Homo Faber, as they are original and created by man. In respects to Environment, fairy tales constitute an aspect of a child's environment, as an environment is the external conditions or objects that influence the development of a person. Psychology is the science of mental health, and as it is the central theme of this project, the project directly falls into the category of Health and Social Sciences. INTRODUCTION Developmental psychology is the study of the human mind across the life span. Unlike other areas of psychology--personality, cognitive, social--developmental psychology is explicitly concerned with how the rules of human behavior change over time. All of the methods used in psychology can be, and are, applied to the study of development. These range from neurobiological studies of the brain's growth to studies of the effect of social context on a child's future behavior. There is currently no overarching theory of developmental psychology, but there are several approaches to which researchers more or less adhere. One useful way of categorizing these theoretical approaches is based on the way each theory passes the developmental trajectory. Some theories, called stage theories, divide the life span into qualitatively different segments. Jean Piaget introduced the most influential stage theory, in fact, the most influential theory in developmental psychology, in books and papers written in the 1920s and the decades after. Piaget suggested that children went through four stages of development through their childhood, during which qualitatively different rules applied to their behavior and growth. Although there were some similarities between the stages and some rules of behavior that applied throughout the life course, Piaget argued that the best way to understand development