Freud and Skinner

Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg, which is now Pøíbor, Czech Republic. On May 6, 1856 at the age of three years old his family, was fleeing from the anti-Semitic riots that were rampant in Freiberg. They moved to Leipzig shortly after, they settled in Vienna, where Freud remained for most of his life, and educated at Vienna University.

Since Freud’s childhood he wanted to be involved in law, he decided to study medicine just before he went Vienna University in 1873. Inspired by the scientific investigations of the German poet Goethe, was inspired and he was determined to study natural science so he could attempt to solve some of the challenging problems confronting contemporary scientists.

Freud began research work on the central nervous system in his third year of study. Under the direction of the German physician Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke they studied the central nervous system. Freud found this so intriguing that he didn’t have time to take his scheduled classes and this caused him to stay at school an extra three years. He was so involved in his experimental work that he remained at the university as a demonstrator in the physiological laboratory. In 1883 Freud was urged to get some practical experience so he gave up his study for three years at the General Hospital of Vienna. In 1985 he left the hospital and that same year was awarded a government grant.

In 1886 Freud established a private practice in Vienna specializing in nervous disease with the grant he received. He had a lot of hostility from the Viennese medical profession because of his unorthodox views on hysteria and hypnotherapy. The resentment he incurred was to delay any acceptance of his subsequent findings on the origin of neurosis.

B.F Skinner studies were based on the theory of operant conditioning. He had huge influence on the psychological world. During some experience he came across a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, this meant that something provoked the organism to act the way it.

Skinner wanted to prove this theory so he started testing on animal. He indeed up using rats for this experiment. During hie tests of rats he concluded this theory from the results of the tests. He came up with a system as to which the rat had to push on lever, which would dispense food. Once the rat realized that when it pushed on this lever food would be released that pushed this lever many times. Then the food supply would be cut off and once this happened the rat quit hitting this lever. This experiment of controlled interval schedule is called the reinforcer. He then set up a timing schedule as to when the rat could get food. He did this setting a set interval time and in that time the rat could push the bar and receive one piece of food even if the rat pushed the beer many more timed it would still only receive one piece of food. This resulted in the rat to pace himself. The rat would slow down during the period of when he did not get food but then speed up when it knew time was coming to get food. This is an excellent example of opeerant condition.

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