In reading the many different theories concerning how humans develop I noticed that they mostly complimented each other rather than contradicting. Each theory emphasizes a different factor of development. Only when one theory's perspectives are held as ultimate truths, does it become unbalanced, and even wrong. By listening to all of them, we can gain a more complete understanding of human development. Though i agree with very little of Freud's theories, with an overemphasis on unconscious sexual urges, I do think that childhood experiences can significantly impact a person in adulthood. Erikson's Psychosocial theory seems more reasonable to me.
Behaviorism helps us to consider how as humans we can learn in various ways: conditioning and social learning. Considering both psychoanalytic theory and behavior theory we may realize that a child's experiences may be interconnected with the conditioning and social learning that shapes them. Not only might the reinforcement and models be different for one child, the child may also have had experiences that caused them to be stuck at a certain stage that impedes their ability to learn and develop.
Cognitive theory maintains that to understand human behavior, one must understand how a person thinks. I agree with this, and i think Psychoanalytic and Behavior theories may help us to understand pieces of why different people think so differently. Cognitive theory alone seems to be more general as in how people think, rather than how an individual thinks.
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