Psychoanalytic theory vs behaviourism: motivation

Freud’s psychoanalytic theory with its model of the mind and its central concepts provides a better interpretation of one’s behavior and accounts for behavior on a wider scope of issues than does the radical behaviorist theory of B. F. Skinner. Skinner successfully explains human behavior in terms of operant conditioning and reinforcing agents. He changes the focus from Freud’s internalized (mental) processes to the importance of the external environment. Skinner emphasizes the …

…force, this exercise would be successfully accomplished. When a person acts in a certain manner that produces positive consequences, and still behaves in the same way as previously, after the environment had been modified so that the consequence of behavior now became negative, it would be obvious that more is involved than just apparent conditioning. Psychoanalysis does account for issues such as these and is, therefore, more adequate in explaining behavior than radical behaviorism is.