Mark is 29 years old and he currently resides at the Wallace of Campsie Hostel for the homeless in Glasgow. He was born in Colmar, France, where he spent the first few months of his life in hospital, due to his mum using heroin while she was pregnant. Mark’s father died of a drug overdose when he was two years old and he has no memory of him.
He moved to Glasgow in 2010 after serving a two year prison sentence for dealing drugs. He attends the Simon Community Scotland HUB, which is a charity that works to support people who are homeless, to use the facilities to claim benefits and job search.
Mark started smoking cannabis at the age of 13, after being introduced to the drug by his mother who has had a long term addiction to heroin. This progressed onto taking cocaine and ecstasy at weekends with friends before he eventually became addicted to heroin at 18. He then started dealing heroin to fund his drug addiction, before being sent to prison at the age of 22, for drug dealing. While in prison Mark underwent a drug rehabilitation programme that helped his to overcome his addiction to heroin. When he was released from prison he decided that he could not go back to living with his mum or socialising his old circle of friends, as the risk of relapsing was too strong.
When he first moved to Glasgow he lived with his elderly uncle, who was his only relative in Scotland. After a while he got a job at his local supermarket, where he worked as a retail assistant for 2 years and continued to live with his uncle. Mark had no regular circle of friends and socialised mainly with his uncle but he enjoyed living in Scotland and in particular his job and he would socialise with his colleagues on special occasions such as Christmas parties and when someone was leaving. Mark’s uncle passed away in 2013, and he was made homeless. Having no friends or family to turn to for help, he presented himself as homeless at the Hamish Allen Homeless Centre, and he was told that there was not enough places to give him a bed. This is when he first made contact with the Simon Community.
He then spent the next 8 months sleeping rough in and around the Glasgow city centre. While sleeping rough Mark started to socialise with other people who were homeless and became addicted to crack cocaine and heroin. After presenting as homeless for over 8 months Mark was eventually given a room at the Wallace of Campsie homeless hostel, where he has been living for the last 6 months.
While at the hostel Mark has been on the methadone programme for over 3 months. He likes to stay fit as he sees this as a positive replacement for his drug addiction. Mark attends the project everyday to use the computer and he is highly motivated to gain employment. He requires very little support from the staff and believes that once he gets a job he will then be able to move out of the hostel, something he is keen to happen as quickly as possible due to the drug culture at the hostel.
Mark has been involved in several incidents where he has shouted abuse at the female staff in the project and this has resulted in Mark being asked to leave the premises on a couple of occasions, and being denied access to the project when there are no male staff present.
Mark also takes prescribed medication for depression and anxiety, something he says stems from his past addiction to drugs.
I will now apply a psychodynamic (Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory) and humanistic (Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) theory, to evaluate how they can assist us to understand Marks behaviour and personality. I will also discuss the contribution and influence of the nature versus nurture debate and how this has contributed to Mark’s life.
Erik Erikson studied in the psychodynamic approach and was heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud. Like Freud he believed that the early years of someone’s life played a significant role in the development of their personality and also that it developed in stages, but unlike Freud he did not believe that the personality was fixed at the end of adolescence and also that earlier stages could be revisited. Where Freud placed an emphasis on the sexual development (psychosexual) of the individual, Erikson placed more emphasis on the social development of the individual (psychosocial), “For Erikson (1963), these crises are of a psychosocial nature because they involve psychological needs of the individual (i.e. psycho) conflicting with the needs of society (i.e. social)”, (http://www.businessballs.com/erik_erikson_psychosocial_theory.htm#).
He created a model that covered the entire life span, with eight different stages and at each stage the individual faced a social crisis, they would experience both positive and negative effects at each stage and if a balance occurs then an ego strength/basic virtue would emerge. “Erikson believed that his psychosocial principle is genetically inevitable in shaping human development. It occurs in all people”, (http://www.businessballs.com/erik_erikson_psychosocial_theory.htm#).
Mark is at the intimacy versus isolation stage of Erikson’s theory. and should be seeking out relationships with people other than his family. What we see in Marks case though is that even though he is friendly and intelligent he has not maintained any relationships out with his family. Mark has been able to integrate in work and make fiends when he has to, such as when he was sleeping rough. This would suggest that it is a conscious decision by Mark not to have a regular group of friends, socialising only when he needs to. Even when living at his uncles house and the hostel, Mark has chosen to socialise very little, suggesting he may have had problems moving through previous stages. His addiction problems may also play a part in this decision as he has a history of socialising with groups who have similar problems.
Mark’s attitudes towards women could have been influenced by having a poor role model in his mum. This suggests that he has had problems moving through the first stage, trust versus mistrust (0-2). His mum’s addiction to drugs took precedence over the provision of care for Mark, creating a mistrust of his mum who through later actions in Marks life such as introducing his to drugs at such a young and impressionable age has manifested itself in to a lack of trust towards women in general, and this is further evidenced by in his treatment and general attitude towards the women at the project (who refuse be left alone with Mark and have also complained about being intimidated by him), and the fact that he has had no lasting sexual relationships. Mark has not been able to gain the virtue/ego strength of hope and the mistrust developed from this stage has had an effect on his view of women, the world in general and progression through latter stages, “This infant will carry the basic sense of mistrust with them to other relationships. It may result in anxiety, heightened insecurities, and an over feeling of mistrust in the world around them”, (McLeod. S, http://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html). Mark also takes prescription drugs for anxiety and depression and even though he attributes this to his past addictions, the anxiety caused by not gaining the virtue of hope, could also stem from not progressing through this stage.
Marks experimentation with drugs started when he was going through the identity versus role confusion stage (13 – 19). At this stage the adolescent re-examines themselves to gain a sense of identity and as Mark was starting to learn the roles needed to become an adult, his views were directly influenced by his mums drug addiction, resulting in Mark becoming desensitised to social surrounding drugs. As he has explored his role in the world, his addiction to drugs have driven his life choices throughout this stage, resulting in role confusion and the failure to obtain the virtue/ego strength of fidelity. His choice of social groups and role in society have been influenced by his addiction, as was his choice to become a drug dealer. Mark being drug free for 3 months and determination to changing his habits regarding social circles and determination to get a job shows that Mark has an insight into his past influences, that may be helping to motivate him to change.
The strengths of this approach are that the structure of the model allows Mark with hindsight to go back and revisit a crisis. It also gives an insight into how his progression through some stages have affected his personality and behaviour over time and contribute to his current behaviour.
The weaknesses of this approach are that it could cause Mark to place to much emphasis on his past behaviours and problems, rather than focusing on correcting his current ones.
Abraham Maslow (1908- 1970) was a humanistic psychologists and believed that all human beings are born with the ability and desire to be all that they can be (self actualisation) but that not having basic needs met prevented us from doing so. He was interested in what motivated us as human beings, and did not believe what the behaviourist (rewards) or psychodynamic (unconscious thoughts) theories believed. As Maslow stated, “behaviourists and psychoanalysts see human beings as engaged in a never ending struggle to remove some internal tension or make up for some deficit” Maslow, (cited in psychology, 6th edition, Gleitman et al. 2004: 628). Maslow believed that psychology had to start looking at motivated humans beyond the basic needs for survival (food, water and oxygen), this led Maslow to create his hierarchy of needs.
Maslow’s hierarchy of need is often represented by a pyramid with the basic/physiological needs at the bottom, progressing up in order to, safety, belongingness and love, esteem, cognitive and aesthetic needs, and at the top self actualisation. Maslow believed that people would only strive for needs higher up such as approval and self esteem, when lower needs such as thirst and hunger have been met. “Maslow (1943) stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fulfil the next one, and so on”, Maslow cited on (http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html).
Since Mark was born and throughout his childhood the provision of the basic/physiological needs (food, water and shelter) described in Maslow’s hierarchy, have been in competition with his mothers need for drugs. This has led to gaps in his life when these basic needs have not been met. This has resulted in Mark becoming accustomed to hardships in his life and this has affected his personality and made him a more resilient character as he went through childhood doing what he had to get food needed to survive. We can see this repeated in his adult life with Mark able to endure sleeping rough for 8 months, but these have come at cost to his physical and mental health.
When the basic needs have been met, the hectic lifestyle caused by his mums addiction has denied Mark any chance of the safety any prolonged period at the very least. Being denied the chance of long term security and freedom from fear, as he has had fend for himself growing up. This has caused mark to become insecure about himself and is shown by him barely socialising out with dysfunctional groups similar to his mum (fellow addicts).
When Mark had the basic needs provided for him over a prolonged period of time, he shown an ability to change his behaviour and progress onto higher stage of the hierarchy, and he has shown this over time by moving to a new country to get away negative influences such as his mum and friends when released from prison, securing and holding down a job long term when living with his uncle and staying free from drugs since moving into the hostel.
The strengths of this theory are that it allows us to compare Mark’s life when his basic needs have been met and when they have not, and the impact that they have had on Mark’s life. The evidence from this should provide him the motivation to continues to provide the basic needs for himself, providing him with the platform for personal growth, allowing further progressions through Maslow’s hierarchy.
The weaknesses of this theory are that, even when basic needs have not been met Mark has been able to reach higher parts of the hierarchy such as finding affiliations and belonging to various social groups when homeless or taking drugs. History has shown many people have lived in poverty and obtained self actualisation e.g. Gandhi and Van Gough, calling into question the structure of the model.
The nature versus nurture debate surrounding addiction is a very hotly contested one within psychology. Do the children of drug addicts inherit a gene from their parents that increases their chances of becoming an addict themselves (nature)? The study of genomes have yet to conclusively prove that this is the case but what has been proven is that the influence of the social (nurture) has a direct impact on how someone develops. Nurture therefore has had more of an influence on how we develop as humans, even when it comes to addiction. The fact that Mark was born addicted to drugs and surrounded by them his entire life would suggest that it was inevitable that he would himself become addicted, allowing for arguments on both the nature and nurture sides, but if it is nurture that has influenced Mark’s addiction then he can be influenced to quit them as well and we have seen that when he has spent time in places that have provided security away from drugs.