Behaviorism Theory Of Child Abuse

The cycle of abuse is a deadly disease that is hard to cure. Children who grow up in a violent house who are physically or sexually abused are more likely to then become abusive to their own children when they are adults. Abuse is a problem that reaches all ends of the earth. Stopping the cycle is hard, but it must be done. The cycle of abuse is studied by many, and researcher Coates explains the trauma of childhood abuse. The trauma that comes with being physically or sexually abused as a child has an immense impact on the children’s behavior, social skills, their thinking, and even physical function (Coates, 2010). Studies conducted by Coates suggest that child abuse effect the brain in ways that no one would even imagine. Child abuse …show more content…
The two that are most relevant is the behaviorism theory and psychoanalysis theory. In Rathus’s book (2015), he describes behaviorism as the theory of psychology that studies the observable behavior and the relationship between stimuli and responses (Rathus, 2015). The psychoanalysis theory suggests that much of people’s lives are governed by unconscious ideas and impulses that originate in childhood conflicts (Rathus, 2015). How the behaviorism theory fits the topic of child abuse and the cycle it causes is that organisms learn to behave in certain ways because they have been reinforced for doing so (Rathus, 2015). The child who is being abused is being reinforced by their actions in a negative may, (abuse), and therefore, becoming unstable and abusive in later years. In Rathus’s textbook, he uses the analogy of a rat in a maze. He explains how the rat was taught to turn right by positive reinforcement. In a child abuse situation, a child may learn not to talk from negative reinforcement by getting hit. The psychoanalysis theory fits really well to my topic because the psychoanalysis theory is all about the person’s reaction to their childhood, and the cycle of abuse is just that (Rathus, 2015). When people are sexually or physically abused as children, they find it normal or are unaware they are abusing or causing harm to their children or anyone, in fact, in their later years of life (Smith et al., …show more content…
Structuralism is combining objective and subjective elements of experience (Rathus, 2015). This means that we take conscious experiences and break them down into sensations, feelings, emotions, and many others. This can relate to childhood abuse by taking their conscious experiences, and breaking them down into, for example; sadness, loneliness, or even anger. The functionalism theory looks at how experiences help people function more adaptively in their environment (Rathus, 2015). This relates to structuralism in the way that both are using experiences to better survive in the world. Structuralism uses experiences to comprehend the abuse, and functionalism uses experiences to maybe learn how to get hit less or be abused less by adapting from the child’s past experiences of talking.
Child abuse and its cycle is relevant to everybody. The reason is because everyone matters and we all need to play a part in ending the cycle of abuse. In order to do that, we all need to be educated on the

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