In this essay I intend to discuss two psychological theories of development; The psychodynamic approach and the behavioral approach. To do this, I will outline each theory and explain how it accounts for an individual's psychological development, health, and behavior. In addition to this, I will explain how understanding these theories relates to care and would help a care professional to support an individual in a care setting. The psychodynamic approach lends itself to being a controversial but very influential theory in the history of psychology. . The theory has become one of the most significant psychological approaches, and its creator, Sigmund Freud, has had a great influence on modern psychology. The psychodynamic approach focuses mainly on motivation, developing past experiences and the individual's personality. Freud used the iceberg metaphor to delineate the three states of consciousness and argued that only twenty percent of the mind represents consciousness. He also theorized that there was a preconscious mind that represents general memory. Finally, the unconscious mind which is essentially the reservoir of repressed or hidden experiences and desires. This approach became the stimulus for a number of similar theories that share the same assumptions about psychological development but differ in detail. (Gross, R, 2007) Erik Erikson, a neo-Freudian, accepted Freud's theory but while the psychodynamic approach focuses on five main stages of development up to adulthood, Erikson theorized that development lasts a lifetime and continues throughout life until death. (Psychology for A Level 2000) Erikson conceived that psychosocial development was divided into eight separate phases... in the center of the paper... determined by the stimuli present in the environment in which we find ourselves. Behaviorists believe that all behavior is learned and, in turn, can be unlearned by identifying the stimulus that causes the behavior and modifying the individual's learned response to it. Albert Ellis, like Freud, was the founding father of cognitive-behavioral psychology and theorized that people's beliefs strongly influenced their emotional functioning. (PsychCentral.com) Ellis believed that beliefs were either positive or negative, but having a negative belief was not necessarily a bad thing. When an individual believes something that is false, however, the belief tends to become what Ellis called an “irrational belief.” These beliefs are unhealthy for happiness or fulfillment, and Ellis believed he could eliminate these thoughts with his Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT).)