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Schools
of Psychology
Structuralism
( Wilhelm
Wundt, Edward
Titchene )
Structuralism
is a school of psychology whose goal was to identify the basic
elements or “structures” of psychological experience. It focused
on the nature of consciousness itself.
Wilhelm
Wundt is the father of structuralism. Wundt began the first
psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in 1879. So he is also
considered as the father of scientific/experimental psychology. He is
also called the father of psychology.
Wundt
believed that the mind or conscious experience could be measured. The
structure of mental life could be disclosed. Hence it is called
structuralism or structural psychology.
According
to Wundt, psychology is the science of experience, the method of
psychology must involve observation of experience. No one can observe
an experience except the person having it, so the method must involve
self-observation or introspection.
Therefore
structuralists used the method of introspection to attempt to create
a map of the elements of consciousness. Structuralists analysed the
structure of mind through introspection. Introspection is a procedure
in which individuals or subjects in psychological experiments are
asked to describe their own mental processes or experiences in
detail. Introspection involves asking research participants to
describe exactly what they experience as they work on mental tasks.
According
to them the main objective of psychology is to describe mental
structure. “Elementism” was popular in 19th century.
It considered elements the basic parts of any complex phenomena.
It
believed that it was possible to analyse the basic elements of the
mind and to classify our conscious experiences scientifically. The
idea is that conscious experience can be broken down into basic
conscious element. The structuralists studied mental processes by
analysing its elements, their properties and the way they combine
with one another. The most important elements were sensations.
Attention was also paid to ideas and feelings.
Structuralism
made important contributions to psychology. Structuralism liberated
psychology from Philosophy and metaphysics. A scientific attitude was
introduced into psychological investigation.
Limitation-
introspection is unsuitable for the study of science. The result of
the study using introspection cannot be objective, reliable, and
valid. So it is considered less scientific.
Functionalism
( William
James)
Developed
by William James ( father of American Psychology). James disagreed
with Wundt’s psychology. Wundt asked ‘what is mind?’. James
asked ‘what is mind for?’
John
Dewey: human beings seek to function effectively by adapting to their
environment. His article formed the corner stone of functionalism.
Functionalists
were influenced by Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) theory of natural
selection, which proposed that the physical characteristics of
animals and humans evolved because they were useful, or functional.
It
emphasises the functions of mental life rather than the contents.
Functionalists were more interested in what mental life does than in
what it is.
It
focuses on what the mind does and how behavior functions in making
people deal with their environment. How behaviour enabled people to
satisfy their needs.
The
goal of the school of functionalism was to understand why animals
and humans have developed the particular psychological aspects that
they currently possess
They
investigated mental experience and behavior from the stand point of
their functional value in adapting the organism to its environment.
The functionalist tried to discover “how” and “why” the brain
works. The functionalists were the first psychologists to use non
human animals in psychological experiments.
Although
functionalism no longer exists as a school of psychology, its basic
principles have been
absorbed
into psychology and continue to influence it in many ways.
Functionalism gave rise to a new trend in education. The importance
of “learning by doing”, need based curriculum, dynamic method of
teaching, scientific attitude in educaition, creation of appropriate
environment in school etc., are stressed by functionalism.
Psychodynamic
Psychology/ Psychoanalysis (Sigmund
Freud, Carl
Jung , Alfred Adler , Karen Horney, and Erik Erikson)
Psychodynamic
psychology is an approach to understanding human behavior that
focuses on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories.
Freud
founded psychoanalysis, a system to understand and cure psychological
disorders. Freud is known as the father of psychoanalysis and the
father of modern psychology.
Psychoanalysis
did not arise as a protest to any other system. Freud believed that
behavior can be influenced by past events which seemingly have been
forgotten.
Freud
viewed human behavior as a dynamic manifestation of unconscious
desires and conflicts. Viewed human beings as motivated by
unconscious desire for gratification of pleasure seeking (often
sexual) desires.
Freud
believed that many of the problems that his patients experienced,
including anxiety, depression, and sexual dysfunction, were the
result of the effects of painful childhood experiences that the
person could no longer remember.
He
believed that it is possible to help the patient if the unconscious
drives can be remembered, particularly through a deep and thorough
exploration of the person’s early sexual experiences and current
sexual desires. These explorations are revealed through talk therapy
and dream analysis, in a process called psychoanalysis.
It
involves analysing the root causes of behavior and feelings by
exploring the unconscious mind and conscious mind’s relation to it.
It focuses on an individual’s deep-rooted thoughts that often stem
from childhood.
Freud
believed that id, ego and superego are three major parts of
personality which represent desire, reason and conscience. Freud
opinioned that the root cause of all mental disorders is repressed
desire in the unconscious mind. This repression occurs due to non
acceptance of id impulses to ego or superego.
Behaviorism
(John B. Watson, B. F.
Skinner)
It
evolved as a reaction to structuralism. Both structuralism and
functionalism were essentially studies of the mind. Behaviorism is a
school of psychology that is based on the premise that it is not
possible to objectively study the mind, and therefore that
psychologists should limit their attention to the study of behavior
itself. It theorizes that all behavior can be explained by
environmental causes, rather than by internal forces.
According
to Watson the goal of psychology is the prediction and control of
behavior. According to him behavior is the product of learning.
Watson defines psychology as a study of behaviour or responses (to
stimuli) which can be measured and studied objectively. It says mind
is not observable and introspection is subjective because it cannot
be verified by another observer. Scientific psychology must focus on
what is observable and verifiable. It rejects the idea of mind and
consciousness as subject matters of psychology.
Main
points of behaviourism is that overt behaviour is the only suitable
topic for psycholoogy. Focus should be on objectively observable
phenomena. The study of consciousness is inappropriate because of its
subjectivity. It suggests to study human beings as an object in
nature. A behaviouristic psychologist thus was restricted to
observing a stimulus and a response. Stimulus is any event that
arouses behaviour and response is the organism’s reaction to a
stimulus. This psychology is referred to as stimulus-response
psychology and also S-R Psychology.
Behaviorists
believe that the human mind is a “black box” into which stimuli
are sent and from which responses are received. They argue that there
is no point in trying to determine what happens in the box because we
can successfully predict behavior without knowing what happens inside
the mind. Furthermore, behaviorists believe that it is possible to
develop laws of learning that can explain all behaviors.
JB
Watson was influenced by the work of Ivan Pavlov, who had discovered
that dogs would salivate at the sound of a tone that had previously
been associated with the presentation of food. Watson and the other
behaviorists began to use these ideas to explain how events that
people and other organisms experienced in their environment (stimuli)
could produce specific behaviors (responses).
BF
Skinner stressed the ways in which behavior is developed and
sustained by external events, such as smile, food, freedom, and other
environmental circumstances. These events are called reinforcement
because they reinforce or support the behaviour that precedes them,
increasing the likelihood that it will reappear. Skinner used the
ideas of stimulus and response, along with the application of rewards
or reinforcements, to train pigeons and other animals. And he used
the general principles of behaviorism to develop theories about how
best to teach children and how to create societies that were peaceful
and productive.
The
behaviorists made substantial contributions to psychology by
identifying the principles
of
learning. The behaviourists have contributed much to the psychology
of learning and motivation. The importance of individual instruction
, repetition in learning, influence of the environment, etc., some of
the major contributions of the behaviorists.
The
Cognitive Approach (Hermann
Ebbinghaus, Frederic Bartlett, John
Dewey, Bruner, Vyogotsky )
Cognitive
psychology is a field of psychology that studies mental processes,
including how people think, perceive, remember and learn.
(perception, thinking, memory, and judgement.)
The
word cognition is derived from cognito which means to ‘think’.
Cognition is all the process by which the sensory input is
transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used.
In
its argument that our thinking has a powerful influence on behavior,
the cognitive approach
provided
a distinct alternative to behaviorism.
According
to cognitive psychologists, ignoring the mind itself will never be
sufficient because people interpret the stimuli that they experience.
when we take into consideration how stimuli are evaluated and
interpreted, we understand behavior more deeply.
According
to cognitive psychology, the interaction between the organism and its
environment produces mental constructs. This results in learning.
Since learning is explained as the formation of mental constructs,
they are also known as constructivists.
The
cognitive psychologists maintained that in the interaction of the
organism and its environment there is change in both its overt
behavior and in its knowledge of the environment. According to them
learning is a process of interaction as a result of which the learner
attains fresh insights and modifies old ones. The function of the
teachers is to assist the students to enrich their insight.
Compared
to humanistic psychology, cognitive psychology is more scientific and
less philosophical. Cognitive psychology remains enormously
influential today, and it has guided research in such varied fields
as language, problem solving, memory, intelligence, education, human
development, social psychology, and psychotherapy.
Gestalt
psychology (Wolfgang
Kohler, Max Wertheimer and
Kurt
Koffka )
Wolfgang
Kohler, Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka co-founded the school of
gestalt psychology.
It
evolved as a reaction to the structuralism by wundt.
This
approach is based upon the idea that we experience things as unified
wholes.
Focus
on the organisation of perceptual experiences.
What
we experienced is more than the inputs received from our environment.
Our perceptual experience is more than the sum of the components of
the perception.
Rather
than breaking down thoughts and behavior to their smallest element,
the gestalt position maintains that the whole of experience is
important, and the whole is different than the sum of its parts.
Gestalitists
tend to present both animals and human beings as creatures who by
their nature, perceive the world in significant patterns and learn by
“insight” rather than mechanical stimulus-response processing.
The learning is according to them a cognitive process.
Humanistic
Perspective ( Carl
Rogers, Abraham Maslow)
It
developed in reaction to both behaviourism and psychoanalysis. It
argues behaviourism takes a mechanic view of human nature as it says
behaviour is determined by environmental conditions and undermines
human freedom and dignity.
Free
will and choice is the important concern in humanistic psychology.
The
emphasis is upon conscious experience not the unconscious as in
psychoanalysis.
To
understand a person’s responds one must understand how that
individual perceive the situation.
According
to them education would lead to the self-realization of students.
Education has the task of helping each student to become the best of
he is able to become.
The
basic concern in humanistic psychology is that the other two models
ignore humanity’s complexity and uniqueness. Human beings do not
blindly follow the reinforcement principle in their daily behavior,
and they are not exclusively controlled by deep inner forces dating
to bygone years. They are instead an extraordinary species with
capacities and awareness not found in other animals, especially the
capacity for growth and choice.
According
to humanists psychology must be studies as a unique development on
the evolutionary scene, emphasising the human capacity for
self-direction. Choice is at the very centre of human existence,
responsive for humanity’s greatest achievements and its most
penetrating moments of anxiety.
It
emphasises the free will of human beings and their natural striving
to grow and unfold their inner potential. The emphasis upon choice
and free will constitutes a challenge against the influences
postulated in behaviourism and psychoanalysis.
