acceptable topics

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Acceptable and Unacceptable Topics

The two theories you compare must be two of the six main theories that we discuss in class.Acceptable theories, and associated theorists, then, are as follows: 1) Psychodynamic Theories (Freud, Jung); 2) Trait Theories (the trait approach in general; the theorists Cattell or Eysenck; the "Five Factor" model of personality; Evolutionary Psychology); 3) Behaviorism (Pavlov, Watson, Skinner), 4) Social-Cognitive Theories (the social cognitive approach in general; the theorists Bandura or Mischel; or general cognitive approaches to phenomena such as gender differences); 5) Phenomenological Theories (Rogers);6) Personal Construct Theory (Kelly).The one exception to this is that you may treat Evolutionary Psychology as a distinct theory of personality. (The textbook includes coverage of evolutionary psychology within its discussion of biology, trait theories, and personality, but trait theories and evolutionary approaches differ so fundamentally that they could be seen as two separate theories.If you write about evolutionary psychology, you will need to do some additional reading, beyond the textbook, to ensure that you are sufficiently knowledgeable of the approach.)

Your paper can not be about other theories and/or theorists who receive little or no coverage in our course (e.g., Sheldon, Fromm, Erikson, Adler, Murray, Maslow, and Dollard & Miller).The point of the paper assignment is for you to think and write creatively about the main theories that we will be discussing in class.

Also note that “biological,” “environment,” “nature,” and “nurture” are not theories of personality.Thus, you cannot simply compare “biological” and “environmental” approaches to a phenomenon.The problem here is that most of the theories of personality contain both biological/nature and environmental/nurture components.Also clinical treatments are not theories of personality.You cannot simply compare, for example, Beck’s cognitive therapy for depression to drug therapies for depression, because neither Beck’s cognitive therapy nor drug therapies are theories of personality.You could, however, deal with clinical topics by explaining the implications of a particular theory of personality for clinical treatment.