Which perspective emphasizes the influence of the unconscious mind, childhood experiences, and internal conflicts on behavior?

• A. Behaviorism
• B. Cognitive
• C. Psychoanalytic
• D. Humanistic

Answer: (C)

The idea being tested is that behavior is shaped by unconscious forces, early life experiences, and inner conflicts. This is the psychoanalytic perspective, which centers on how things happening below awareness influence thoughts, feelings, and actions. It holds that childhood experiences lay down patterns and internal struggles—such as conflicts between impulses and societal rules—that can persist into adulthood and reveal themselves through dreams, slips of the tongue, or symbolic symptoms.

This view stands apart from others by prioritizing unconscious motivations and internal conflicts over observable behavior alone or conscious reasoning. Behaviorism explains actions through conditioning and external stimuli. The cognitive approach focuses on thinking, memory, and information processing. The humanistic approach emphasizes personal growth, meaning, and conscious choice. Because only the psychoanalytic framework explicitly foregrounds unconscious mind, early experiences, and internal conflict as central to behavior, it best fits the described emphasis.