Essay --

Psychology has different ways of defining human behaviour using different psychological perspectives. This essay will be focussing on two different psychological perspectives which are socio-cultural and psychoanalysis. We will therefore provide an explanation for Tumi’s experiences using different sources. We will define the perspectives, discuss the proponents of the theory, basic premises and causes of behaviour, research methods used, strengths and limitation. Sociocultural perspective examines how the social environment and cultural learning influence our behaviour, thoughts and feelings (Holt, N., et al.2013, p.34). Sociocultural perspective has different approaches as Santrock (2003) stated that sociocultural approach examines how social and cultural environments impacted on behaviour and debates a full understanding of human’s behaviour that requires knowledge about cultural context which the behaviour occurs. According to Matsumoto (2001) sociocultural approach also focusses on the behaviour of people from unique ethnic and cultural groups within a culture. Psychoanalysis is the theory of personality developed by Freud that emphasizes the roles of unconscious mental processes, early childhood experiences, and the drives of sex and aggression in personality, behaviour is largely influenced by our unconscious wishes, thoughts, and desires, especially sex and aggression (Gray, 1994). As Nolen-Hoeksema et al (2009) psychoanalysis developed by Freud, unconscious, childhood experiences are controlled by inner forces. Tumi’s feeling of going crazy is being influenced by what she thinks, feels and her experiences as she had a poor relationship with her mother and sister, passing away of her aunt, her belongings being stolen, ... ...jective and extremely interpretative and he also placed an over-emphasis on sexual drive and provides us with an extremely pessimistic outlook on personality as it discounts the notion of free will. Weakness of sociocultural perspective is that to become a sangoma requires difficult training, as it is regarded as a calling which is as great honour gift and that if the person abuses the power ancestors withdraw power (Cumes, 2013:71). In conclusion both psychoanalytic and sociocultural perspective helped in giving a better understanding of Tumi’s behaviour and how we can help her to recover from the situation. I recommend that psychologists should keep on training students about these perspectives as it will enable them to gain more knowledge and be able to exercise new skills of dealing with problems and innovations in supporting the people in the communities.