SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

According to Muzafer Sherif: 

Social psychology is the scientific study of the experience and behavior of individuals in relation to other individuals, groups, and cultures. 

According to Gordon Allport: 

Social psychology is a discipline that uses scientific methods "to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings"

EXPLANATION

 Scientific Study

 Experience and Behaviour

 The Individuals

 Individuals, Groups and Culture

Scientific Study: The term scientific defines the method of approach to which modern social psychology is committed, that is, it employs a three-step process of what is known aws the “Scientific Method”. This process involves

 The collection of carefully made observation

 The ordered integration of these observations to permit the statement of general principles describing the logical patterns into which they fall

 The utilization of these general principles to predict future observation

Experience and Behaviours: According to this definition social psychology includes a wide range of functions overt (publicly observable) and convert (private to the individual’s own experience). Behaviour connotes those functions that involve overt acts or responses that may be observed by others in whose presence they occur. Inexperience is directly accessible only to the one who experiences them.

The Individual: This definition specifies the scope of social psychology to point out that its basic unit of analyses is the individual.

Individuals, Groups and Culture: The element in this definition which delineates social psychology as a specialized component within the general scope of psychology it its reference to social stimulus situations. The essential property that characterized this class of stimulus situations is the fact that they derive from other people, either (i) individuals or (ii) collectively, as groups, or (iii) from the products of the behavior of other people (culture).

PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

Psychoanalytic theory describes work that applies the work of psychoanalysts to work within critical theory. Major psychoanalysts referenced in psychoanalytic theory include Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, and Jacques Lacan. Major current thinkers within psychoanalytic theory include Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Zizek. Psychoanalytic theory also heavily influences the work of Franz Fanon and Louis Althusser. 

Freuds Psychoanalytic theory heavily informs gender studies and queer theory.  The treatment process can, at times, become blocked by the client's resistance (their unwillingness to provide information). Transference is a condition in which the client begins to consider their therapist in the same emotional way they would consider a person in their lives, such as a parent or sibling. Working with interpretation, resistance, and transference is sometimes called "working through," a therapeutic technique in which the therapist helps the client better understand their conflicts and how to resolve them. 

PSYCHOANALYSIS IS: 

A therapeutic technique for the treatment of neurosis. A technique used to train psychoanalysts. A basic requirement of psychoanalytic training is to undergo a successful analysis. 

A scientific technique of critical observation: The successors and contemporaries of Freud - Carl Jung, Alfred Adle , Wilhelm Reich, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Jacques Lacan, and many others - have refined Freud's theories and advanced new theories using the basic method of quiet critical observation and study of individual patients and other events. 

A body of knowledge so acquired. 

A clinical theory 

The Psychoanalytic Tradition: Sigmund Freud was the first psychoanalyst. Many of his insights into the human mind, which seemed so revolutionary at the turn of the century, are now widely accepted by most schools of psychological thought. Although others before and during his time had begun to recognize the role of unconscious mental activity, Freud was the preeminent pioneer in understanding its importance. Through his extensive work with patients and through his theory building, he showed that factors which influence thought and action exist outside of awareness, that unconscious conflict plays a part in determining both normal and abnormal behavior, and that the past shapes the present. Although his ideas met with antagonism and resistance, Freud believed deeply in the value of his discoveries and rarely simplified or exaggerated them for the sake of popular acceptance. He saw that those who sought to change themselves or others must face realistic difficulties. But he also showed us that, while the dark and blind forces in human nature sometimes seem overwhelming, psychological understanding, by enlarging the realm of reason and responsibility, can make a substantial difference to troubled individuals and even to civilization as a whole. 

Building on such ideas and ideals, psychoanalysis has continued to grow and develop as a general theory of human mental functioning, while always maintaining a profound respect for the uniqueness of each individual life. Ferment, change, and new ideas have enriched the field, and psychoanalytic practice has adapted and expanded. But psychoanalysts today still appreciate the persistent power of the irrational in shaping or limiting human lives, and they therefore remain skeptical of the quick cure, the deceptively easy answer, the trendy or sensationalistic. Like Freud, they believe that psychoanalysis is the strongest and most sophisticated tool for obtaining further knowledge of the mind, and that by using this knowledge for greater self-awareness, patients free themselves from incapacitating suffering, and improve and deepen human relationships.

SYMBOLIC INTERACTION THEORY

Symbolic interactionism is a major sociological perspective that places emphasis on micro-scale social interaction, which is particularly important in subfields such as urban sociology and social psychology. Symbolic interactionism is derived from American pragmatism, especially the work of George Herbert Mead and Charles Cooley. Herbert Blumer , a student and interpreter of Mead, coined the term and put forward an influential summary of the perspective: people act toward things based on the meaning those things have for them; and these meanings are derived from social interaction and modified through interpretation. Blumer was also influenced by John Dewey, who insisted that human beings are best understood in relation to their environment.

PREMISES AND APPROACH

Herbert Blumer (1969), who coined the term "symbolic interactionism," set out three basic premises of the perspective:

 "Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things."

 "The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with others and the society."

 "These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he/she encounters."

Blumer, following Mead, claimed that people interact with each other by interpret or 'define' each other's actions instead of merely reacting to each other's actions. Their 'response' is not made directly to the actions of one another but instead is based on the meaning which they attach to such actions. Thus, human interaction is mediated by the use of symbols and signification, by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of one another's actions (Blumer 1962). Blumer contrasted this process, which he called "symbolic interaction," with behaviorist explanations of human behavior, which don't allow for interpretation between stimulus and response.

Symbolic interactionist researchers investigate how people create meaning during social interaction, how they present and construct the self (or "identity"), and how they define situations of co-presence with others. One of the perspective's central ideas is that people act as they do because of how they define situations.