As described in the course syllabus, two short papers are required for Psychology 420, consisting of comparisons among the theoretical approaches by their application to the life of one of the following: (1) you, yourself, (2) someone you know personally, or (3) a hypothetical character. The hypothetical character may be either "Tanya" or "Gabriel" (Background Information handouts are provided for these characters) or someone you make up yourself. If you elect to write about someone other than Tanya or Gabriel, you should assign a fictional name to your person or character. You should use the same person, however, in both papers in order to get a feel for the differences among the four approaches in the nature of their focuses.

The papers should be approximately ten typed, double-spaced pages and follow APA format to the extent appropriate. Each will be worth 50 points each. They should be STAPLED when they are handed in. Do NOT place them in a folder of ANY kind and do NOT use paper clips!

If you choose to write about someone other than Tanya or Gabriel, you should include enough background information as is specifically relevant to a given theoretical approach and issue. Do not go into as much detail as was included in Tanya's or Gabriel's background sheets.

You must visit the Writing Center at least once for each paper, but you are encouraged to visit several times. Unless I have verification from the Writing Center that you have met with a consultant, I will not accept the paper that is due.
 

Perspective for the Paper
 

Write the paper from the perspective of an educator who is attempting to inform a generally naive (uninformed) audience. Do not the paper as if you were writing it for your instructor. Think of your fellow students or your friends and family as you are writing the paper, trying to help them understand the concepts of each theory.
 

From this perspective, you will employ information about the person being analyzed as a way to illustrate theoretical concepts for readers you are trying to educate. For this reason, first explicitly define the concept you will illustrate with information about the person, and then show the readers what you mean by the concept by very tightly linking the personal information to the definition. Follow this formula all the way through the paper. Have very tight linkage between personal information and theoretical terms and concepts.
 

Typical kinds of comments that I make on students' papers are "define and explain!" "more detail!," "explain the rationale," and "Why?! Explain!" This means that the student did not provide a good definition of a concept before presenting personal information. Educate the reader about the theories!!!!
 

Writing As An Ongoing Process
 

Please begin the process of writing the paper early enough that you can devote appropriate attention to it. It is not sufficient to begin writing the paper days before it is due! You should view writing as a multi-step process, in which you carefully and thoughtfully write a first draft and then read it and edit it a number of times. In fact, you need to have other people read the paper and comment on it, explaining what areas are not clear. At minimum, one reader should be the Writing Center consultant. However, they will not be able to devote as much time to reading each student's paper as will be needed. Have classmates or friends or family members read your papers and provide specific comments, not just general comments about "It's okay" or "I don't understand it." Find out specifically what they do not understand, specific sentences or phrases or concepts. If they say that they think it is okay or good, find out what specifically they thought was good about it; talk with them to make sure they really understood it and if they can offer suggestions for improvement. All papers always need more improvement, so view writing a paper as a process of developing the paper.
 

A sample paper will be available on the website for the course. This should be employed to give you a general idea of what is expected for the paper, not as a standard against which to compare your paper. Although it is one of the best papers by a student I have read in past semesters, it is still not the highest quality paper a student could write from an idealist perspective. In fact, problems do exist with the paper; again, all papers always need more improvement.
 

Specifics of the Assignment
 

The first paper. The first paper will involve a comparison of the psychoanalytic approach and the behavioral approach. Employ a specific theorist within each approach, rather than comparing the two approaches broadly (e.g., Freud or a neo-Freudian rather than describing the entire psychoanalytic approach generally; Skinner or Bandura rather than describing the entire behavioral approach). Detail the assumptions of each theorist and employ the important concepts and terms advanced by each in the process of describing the person you have selected to focus on. In creating this theoretical description of the person, point out specifically how the assumptions, concepts, and terms are the same and/or how they are different. Do not simply discuss your own personal impressions or feelings about the individual; the discussion should employ only theoretically relevant terms, not your own informal hypotheses. Also, do not simply describe the individual employing theoretical terms; rather, use the theoretical terms in the process of comparing them to the other theory.
 

The second paper. Select one of the following options for the second paper:
 

(1) Compare one of the dispositional theorists with one of the phenomenological theorists.
 

(2) Compare one of the dispositional theorists either with one of the psychoanalytic theorists or with one of the behavioral theorists.
 

(3) Compare one of the phenomenological theorists either with one of the psychoanalytic theorists or with one of the behavioral theorists.

Address each of the sections below explicitly in your papers. The issues and questions presented below are only possible issues to address; you may need to address others.

In keeping with APA format, the paper should start with a title page as the first page, and an abstract as the second page.

The third page is the beginning of the text for the paper. Start out with a very brief introductory paragraph that identifies the fundamental assumptions of each theorist that distinguish it from the other. What aspects of the person's history or characteristics would each of the theorists emphasize or focus on in explaining the person's personality? Would the theorists say anything at all about the influence of childhood experiences on the person? In what way would the theorists explain the influence of other people on the way the person "turned out," if at all? What role would the theorists say that present-day choices have in the development of the person or "the way that the person is" today? What role would the theorists say that conflict played or continues to play in the person's life?

Use the headings below to identify each of your sections.
 

Methods

Usually, APA-style scientific papers present a theoretical introduction, explaining the rationale for a study or a review and providing a conceptual background. Because this is a different type of paper, a personality analysis, a different structure will be employed. It makes sense to begin with an explanation of how information about the person being "analyzed" was obtained. Therefore, after the introductory paragraph, begin with the Methods section, and use the word, Methods, has the heading for the section.
 

Compare the different assessment techniques that practitioners of the different theories would employ to try to understand the personality of the particular individual. Indicate why the theoretical approach employs such techniques. In order to accomplish this aspect of the project, provide specific pieces of information relevant to the assessment process for each approach, such as verbatim statements of a clinician doing the evaluation and of the person being assessed, or give specific responses on questionnaires or interviews. Assume the perspective of a clinician or an interviewer and describe exactly what happened with the person being assessed as information was collected about him or her.
 

In this section, you are essentially informing the reader of the paper exactly how and from where you would have obtained the information about the person you are evaluating, if you would have had to get the information in "the real world." This means that, although you actually received your information for this project from the handouts about Gabriel or Tanya or from knowing the person personally, you should pretend that you are a clinician and/or scientist and are interacting with the person "out in the real world." Therefore, the basic issue you will address in this section is how a theorist from each of the perspectives would have gathered pertinent information about that person. What techniques does each theorist typically employ and what kinds of information are of most interest about individuals? If not enough data are available upon which to draw a conclusion, you may create information that is theoretically relevant and that would be consistent with what you already know about the person.
 

Analysis of the Person

The point of this assignment is to be very specific in the application of a particular theory to the life of a specific individual, not to generally summarize the concepts of the theory; again the point is to specifically explain and use the theories. For the purposes of deciding what information to provide about the concepts central to the theorists, assume that your reader is a fellow student in this class. This means that the reader is generally knowledgeable about the issues involved, but you nevertheless need to provide enough information about the theory in evaluating your person to help your fellow student work through the rationale of your arguments.

The ideal format of the paper is to address the major concept(s) of one theoretical approach to describe the person and then to allow the other theoretical approach to respond to that interpretation immediately in the next sentence, creating a "point/counterpoint" dialogue or debate. In introducing the specific major concept, define it very briefly first, and then analyze how it explains aspects of the individual's life or behavior. Next, introduce what you have decided is a related major concept of one of the theories to explain why the person is the way that he or she is and then allow the other theorist to respond to the explanation. This format is preferable to one in which the person is evaluated by one theory in one section and then is evaluated by the other theory in a following section. The latter format makes it much more difficult to manage a comparison of the two theories.
 

For each concept that is introduced, very briefly define or explain the concept first, explain why the concept is important to a given theoretical approach and why it employs such a concept or makes such an assumption, and then indicate how the concept is relevant to the person and the way in which it provides insight into the person. Use specific instances from the person's life as an illustration of the concept.
 

You will be evaluated in terms of the quality and clarity of addressing each theory; seven (7) points will be possible for each theory in accomplishing this aspect of the project. The evaluation form that will used to assign points for your paper is attached on the final page of this handout. Additionally, your project will be evaluated in terms of the effectiveness of comparing and contrasting the two theories throughout all sections of the paper; again, seven (7) points are possible for this aspect of the project (see the evaluation form on the last page of the handout).
 

Diagnosis and Therapy/Behavior Change

In this section, interpret more fully and use the information described in the first sections in an applied way. Indicate how each theorist would employ their specific knowledge about the individual. This is a very important section. Do not treat this section lightly. It will be evaluated with respect to each theory, with five (5) points possible for each theory.
 

What specific conclusions would the different practitioners draw from the available information? Would the two theorists make any statement about, or assessment of, problems that the person was experiencing? Which aspects of problems or conflicts would the person be aware of, according to each theorist? Which aspects of the person's life or personality would the theorists attempt to modify, if any?
 

What specific therapeutic techniques would each of the theorists employ in attempting to change the behaviors or conflicts which the theorist has identified as necessitating change? Use the specific behaviors or issues you identified for each theory in answering the questions in the above sections. Include specific statements that you as the therapist and that the client would make during the course of assessment and therapy (if any would occur). Detail specifically what particular events would happen during therapy and what the specific outcomes of these events would be. What specific events would need to occur in order for therapeutic progress or behavior change to occur. Be specific!!!! Do not indicate whether you believe therapy will be successful or not. The primary purpose here is to indicate how progress would occur if it were to occur.
 

With regard to the trait/dispositional approach in this section, most theorists have not been concerned with or advocated a particular type of therapy or behavior change. Your task, then, for this theoretical approach is to discuss why this is true, from the particular perspective of the trait approach.
 

Conclusion

Restate the conclusions you derived about the person based on the important concepts of each theorist, as a way of explaining the person's personality. Indicate how the interpretations based on the two theories are similar or differentthat is, identify the theoretical dimensions about which the two theorists agree and disagree.
 

Quality of Grammatical Structure and Clarity

The paper should be written extremely well-this is a 400 level course! These should represent the culmination of your education so far. Employ good sentence structure, grammar, and conceptual development!

Typical comments that I write on students paper include "incomplete sentence," "too informal," "do not use contractions."