ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic perspectives regard various behaviours as symptoms of psychopathology, as indicators of a deep, underlying, often unconscious, conflict. If the behaviours are changed without resolving this conflict, symptoms will change their form (due to a diversion of energy), but the individual will not be restored to healthy functioning. Behaviourists, on the other hand, regard behavioural symptoms either as a sample of the disturbance or as the actual disturbance itself. They do not, it is said, look for underlying conflicts. This polarisation of perspectives is unhelpful and misleading. In fact, behaviourists also regard much neurotic behavior as originating from inner conflict. These conflicts, however, are not unconscious, but relate to approach-avoidance conflicts, problems of conditioned anxiety, and perceived response-outcome contingencies.
