Module 27: Psychology

Freud's structural model divides the mind into three agencies. The id is entirely unconscious — the primitive, instinctual drives (sex and aggression primarily). It operates on the pleasure principle: immediate gratification with no regard for reality or consequences. The ego is partly conscious, partly unconscious — it mediates between the id's demands, the superego's constraints, and external reality. It operates on the reality principle, postponing gratification and navigating the real world. The superego is the internalised moral authority — parental rules, social norms, the conscience. It punishes via guilt and shame. Neurosis, in Freudian theory, results from the ego failing to manage the tensions between id and superego. The model is influential because it introduced ideas that became culturally pervasive and clinically useful as metaphors: the unconscious, repression, inner conflict, the role of childhood in adult psychology. It's scientifically problematic because it's unfalsifiable — any evidence against it can be "explained" by the theory (e.g., denying you're angry proves repression). Karl Popper used Freudian theory as his primary example of pseudoscience. Despite this, the framework generated enormous clinical practice and cultural understanding, and some core ideas (unconscious processing, the role of early relationships) have been validated by modern neuroscience even if the specific Freudian structure hasn't.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is based on the insight that it is not events themselves that cause emotional distress, but the meaning we assign to them — our thoughts and interpretations. The core model: Situation → Thought → Emotion → Behaviour. The same situation (receiving criticism) will produce different emotions depending on the thought ("I'm worthless" vs "this is useful feedback"). CBT teaches patients to identify automatic negative thoughts, examine the evidence for and against them, and replace distorted thinking patterns with more accurate and helpful interpretations. The "behavioural" component addresses avoidance behaviours — the tendency to avoid feared situations, which provides short-term relief but long-term maintains the fear. CBT is the most extensively researched form of psychotherapy. It has strong evidence for depression, anxiety disorders, OCD, PTSD, eating disorders, and insomnia. It typically runs for 12–20 sessions and is explicitly goal-oriented and structured — unlike psychoanalytic therapies, which can run for years. It is skills-based: the goal is for patients to become their own therapist.

Maslow's 1943 hierarchy proposes that human needs form a pyramid: Physiological (food, water, sleep) at the base, then Safety (security, stability), then Love/belonging (relationships, community), then Esteem (respect, achievement), then Self-actualisation (realising one's potential) at the apex. The idea: lower needs must be met before higher needs become motivating. The framework is intuitive, widely used in education, management, and therapy, and has cultural resonance. The main criticism: it is largely empirically unsupported. Cross-cultural research shows that people regularly pursue higher-order needs (connection, meaning, creativity) even when basic needs are unmet — prisoners have spiritual experiences, starving people create art, people in poverty report strong community bonds and meaning. The strict hierarchical sequencing is too rigid. Moreover, "self-actualisation" is vague and culture-specific. Maslow studied primarily healthy, successful people in constructing the theory, and later admitted his criteria for self-actualisation were based on a small, biased sample. The hierarchy is better understood as a useful heuristic than an empirically validated model.

Cognitive distortions (identified by Aaron Beck and later expanded by David Burns) are systematic errors in thinking — patterns of thought that are consistently inaccurate and negatively biased, maintaining depression and anxiety. The most important ones: All-or-nothing thinking (black-and-white, no middle ground: "I failed this one test — I'm a complete failure"). Catastrophising (assuming the worst outcome: "I'll probably lose my job and never recover"). Mind reading (assuming you know what others think without evidence: "They didn't reply — they must be angry with me"). Personalisation (taking blame for things outside your control: "My friend is in a bad mood — I must have caused it"). Should statements (rigid rules about how you or others must behave: "I should never feel anxious"). Emotional reasoning (treating feelings as facts: "I feel guilty so I must have done something wrong"). Overgeneralisation (one event becomes a universal rule: "This always happens to me"). Mental filter (dwelling on one negative detail while ignoring positives). The key insight: the mere presence of a thought or feeling doesn't mean it accurately reflects reality. Learning to notice these patterns and question them is the core skill of CBT.

Classical conditioning (Pavlov, Watson): learning through association. A neutral stimulus (bell) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (food) that naturally produces a response (salivation). After repeated pairings, the neutral stimulus alone produces the response. The organism is passive — it doesn't "do" anything, it just learns an association. Everyday example: hearing a particular song that was playing during a breakup triggers sadness automatically. The song is the conditioned stimulus; the emotional state is the conditioned response. Also: anxiety when entering a dentist's waiting room (associated with past pain), or hunger triggered by the smell of a particular food associated with positive memories. Operant conditioning (Skinner): learning through consequences. Behaviour is strengthened by reinforcement (reward) or weakened by punishment. The organism is active — it learns that its behaviour has consequences. Positive reinforcement: adding something good (praise, pay) increases behaviour. Negative reinforcement: removing something bad (pain stops when you take paracetamol → you take paracetamol again) increases behaviour. Punishment decreases behaviour. Everyday examples: a slot machine (variable ratio reinforcement schedule — the most powerful for creating habitual behaviour) keeps people playing; checking social media for "likes" (variable ratio reinforcement of the checking behaviour); a child's tantrums increasing if parents give in (behaviour reinforced by getting what they want).

The Yerkes-Dodson law (1908) describes an inverted-U relationship between arousal and performance: too little arousal produces boredom and poor performance; too much produces anxiety and deterioration; an intermediate level of arousal produces peak performance. The law has two important nuances. First, the optimal arousal level shifts depending on task complexity — simple, well-practised, or physical tasks (like sprinting) benefit from higher arousal, while complex cognitive tasks (like chess or surgery) require lower arousal to maintain focus and executive function. This is why mild pre-exam nervousness can sharpen performance while severe anxiety wrecks it. Second, the mechanism involves cortisol and norepinephrine: moderate levels sharpen attention and enhance memory consolidation (why emotionally arousing events are well-remembered), while excessive levels impair the prefrontal cortex, narrowing attention, impairing working memory, and triggering fight-flight-freeze responses that are maladaptive in modern contexts. In practical terms: moderate challenge, deadlines, and stakes improve most people's work. The trick is calibrating the level — which is individual and contextual. Anxiety reappraisal research (Alison Wood Brooks, 2014) shows that reframing "I'm anxious" as "I'm excited" — which keeps arousal high but changes valence — improves performance on tasks requiring energy.

Stanley Milgram's 1961–62 experiments at Yale asked participants to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to a "learner" (actually a confederate) whenever they gave a wrong answer, with an authoritative experimenter instructing them to continue despite protests. In the original study, 65% of participants administered the maximum 450-volt shock — despite believing they were causing serious harm. The finding: ordinary people will cause serious harm to strangers when instructed by a legitimate authority figure in a credible institutional context. The implications for understanding atrocities (Milgram was explicitly motivated by the Holocaust and Eichmann's "just following orders" defence) were enormous. Situational forces — authority, incremental commitment, physical distance from the victim, institutional legitimacy — can override personal morality. Criticisms: (1) Demand characteristics — participants may have suspected the shocks were fake. (2) Ecological validity — the laboratory setting is highly unusual. (3) Ethics — participants showed significant psychological distress; the experiments could not be replicated today under modern ethics codes. (4) Partial debunking: Gina Perry's archival research found that Milgram's notes show participants expressed more doubt than he reported, and some versions of the experiment were discontinued. However, partial replications (using lower shock levels with full ethics consent) continue to show substantial compliance rates, suggesting the core finding is real even if the exact 65% figure may be inflated.