ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two deterministic accounts of human nature, namely behaviourist and psychodynamic approaches. Behaviourism has its roots in associationism, physiology, and two earlier forms of psychology, namely, functionalism and animal psychology. Pavlov was interested in the physiology of digestion. One of his innovations was to surgically create openings in different parts of the digestive tracts of dogs, such as the salivary ducts and isolated areas of the stomach. One of the pioneers of functionalism, Edward Thorndike, is also regarded as a pioneering associationist; arguably, this makes his impact on behaviourism, specifically Skinner’s work on operant conditioning, on a par with Pavlov’s. John B. Watson was the first psychologist to apply Pavlovian/classical conditioning to human behaviour, both as an explanatory device and in an experimental setting. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic methods evolved alongside the associated explanations of what lay at the root of his patients’ problems, namely unresolved unconscious conflicts, often stemming from childhood trauma.
