Question

John and his colleagues all get along well. John is meticulous, a little too serious and cleans up after every one – a trait he says he learned due to his mom who was a slob. Sam is the funny guy – he wears bow ties that do not match his suit and has kinky red hair that stays out of control and occasionally bakes cookies for everyone in the office. Finally, Amy is the female of the group, makes sure the males stay on task, do not talk about football all day and is slightly overweight, most likely because she dates Sam and eats his cookies too often. They work at a special needs school with students who have varied backgrounds; one student is diagnosed with emotional disturbance and has tried to stab someone. He is 15 and comes from a wealthy family. His placement there is a secret so his family’s reputation is not ruined. While his IQ is in the low average range, he is an amazing artist and is often asked to draw landscapes for the nearby library and museums. There are also a set of siblings who both have mental retardation due to their mom smoking crack while pregnant with each of them (they are two years apart). Neither child learned spoken language but one learned sign language and another uses a book of pictures/icons to communicate.

How might two different theorist explain John or Sam (pick any two)? What would they say about personality? Development?

Answer 1

In order to explain John’s personality and development, I would choose the behavioursitic and psychoanalytical lens. Behaviourism posits that behaviour reflects our personality and development, which is is reinforced and influenced by the environment. John maybe therefore trained, or conditioned, to respond in specific ways to specific stimuli and this forms his overall predisposition. Because John was raised in a family environment where his mother was lazy and sloppy, he may have been rewarded every time he took the responsibility of maintaining order in the house by the rest of his family members. Over the years, this behaviour may have become inculcated as a part of his personality.

On the other hand, the psychoanalytical perspective would place John as an anal-retentive type of personality. Freud posited that children who experience conflicts during the anal stage tend to develop a personality marked by orderliness, meticulousness and seriousness. Usually, this is hypothesised to be due to excessive chastisement during for toilet-training accidents. It maybe that John’s mother, perhaps unwilling to clean after her child’s mess punished him severely during toilet training.