Existentialist Theories

What are the existentialist theories? People are spirited and radically free, but largely responsible for the existence of their choices that they make. There is a struggle to find meaning. Choices of who we are becoming for we may never reach that goal of self, but it is an on-going process that we have to endure. There is anxiety for the responsibility for and about the consequences brought about from the choices made. Anxiety informs us about these ideas. What makes us whole. The self is truth and deeply rooted in our being, and the meaning is not found in others or us for it is brought to us by a far greater being.

Making authentic choices there will be guilt but not bad for it will be a reminder of not being true to our self. All psychiatric symptoms at some level are inauthentic to the self. Issues like death, freedom, isolation, meaninglessness and how to respond or how to confront or avoid these issues can and probably lead to psychological issues and problems. Life has no inherent meaning and death is inescapable. Our emotional health accepts this and we take responsibility for our own life and lives. People would use defenses to avoid freedom and personal choice. We choose to stagnate to be inauthentic and be immature to the issues. Depression and anxiety is a way of self-protection form this existential anxiety and guilt.

The behavioral perspective says we are a product of our environment. You learn through experiences within your environment. Observable behaviors are displayed. There are different models of behavior. These are 'classical conditioning, 'operant conditioning', 'systematic de-sensitivization'. Classical conditioning is involuntary responses that become reflexive and associated with a new stimuli. We have a something we responded to to begin with like in treatment for two phobias to overcome. There is a 'temporal contiguity' where two events occur closely together in time. Conditional/Unconditional stimulus to a unconditional response to a condition stimulus to a conditioned response. There will have to be a reason for the phobia and can be neutral, as seen in Pavlov's experiment. Can it be one in the same and how do we treat these? We can try 'systematic desensitivization' trying to condition a new response to a condition stimulus and should be a new response be incompatible to the new condition response or the anxiety be the new response. There is an idea using NRC (cannot remember or find what this stands for) but is about muscle relaxation and it could lead to extinction and teach new responses and eliminate pairing.

Ways to do this is to create a hierarchy of anxiety and produce a reaction to an old stimulus like in 'flooding' which is controversial for it forces persons to face whatever phobia they have. For example, if you are deathly afraid of snakes or spiders you would try to stay in a room full of them till the fear of them goes away. There is 'operant conditioning' which says that reinforcements and punishments are how we modify freely engaged behaviors. Thorndike says that the Law of Effect says that behaviors that are rewarded are strengthened and behaviors that are punished weakened. Another theorist by the name of B.F. Skinner says that positive reinforcement will repeat pleasure and negative reinforcement will avoid or escape the unpleasurable event. Punishment should decrease the bad behavior and if not decreased it will continue to be repeated. We must present something unpleasant and you do what is presented and will identify certain behaviors to be.

Next lesson will be on Behaviorism.

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