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Loretta F. Kasper
from Teaching English Through the Disciplines: Psychology
Whittier Publications
© 1998-Loretta F. Kasper, Ph.D.
PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND
The Mind-Body problem
The theory of Dualism
holds that the mind and body are separate entities and operate according to
different principles. According to this theory, the body is governed by
physical laws; the mind is not, since it possesses freewill. The mind could
control the body; but there was little influence in the opposite direction.
Rene Descartes advanced
the idea of mutual interaction: this meant that the body could affect the mind
and vice versa. Later, The British Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Hartley)
believed that the mind could be modeled in a similar fashion to physical
systems, i.e., in terms of elements (ideas) and forces (associations) that act
upon those elements in lawful ways. The empiricists also emphasized the
importance of learning in our understanding of the world. They believed that
all the materials of reason and knowledge come from
EXPERIENCE.
Early Scientific
Psychology
CLICK ON LINK: Wilhelm
Wundt (1832-1920), called the father of scientific psychology,
wrote Principles of Physiological Psychology in 1873. He founded the
Structuralist school of psychology, organized psychology as an experimental
science, and helped to establish it as an independent discipline. Wundt established the first laboratory
of experimental psychology in 1879 at Leipzig, and the first psychology
journal. He did not believe that the higher mental processes such as memory,
thought, and creativity could ever be studied experimentally; the experimental
method could only be applied to the study of sensation and perception.
CLICK ON LINK:
Hermann
Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) initiated his pioneering
experiments on human learning and memory, which culminated in his important
book On Memory in 1885.
THE SCHOOLS OF
PSYCHOLOGY
Structuralism- the
structure of mental life
Wilheim Wundt was the
originator of the Structuralist school of psychology. Titchener brought
structuralism to the US at Cornell University. The structuralist school
believed that The Primary Questions for Psychology were: 1. What are the
elements of experience?; 2. How are they combined?; 3. Why? What is the cause?
The structuralists
believed that the basic elements of experience were sensations (sights, sounds,
etc.); images or ideas, which represented experiences not actually present, and
affections, which were emotional reactions such as hatred, joy, and love. They
worked to break down complex mental experience into their components, or
separate parts. The method used by structuralists to help the person break up,
or decompose these events was called introspection.
The structuralist school
died out after 1920. It was replaced by the functionalist school of psychology.
Functionalism- The Uses
of the Mind
The functionalist school
was concerned with the functions of mental processes and structures. It first
developed as a result of Darwin's theory of evolution in England and in the US,
as people began asking about the adaptive significance of psychological
processes. This means they wanted to know how our behavior helps us to deal
with changes in our environment; how we adapt our behavior so that we may
survive changing situations.
Two famous American
psychologists who supported the views of functionalism were John Dewey and CLICK ON LINK: William
James. John Dewey (1859-1952) initiated functionalism at
the University of Chicago in 1894. Dewey argued that psychological processes
were continuous, ongoing events; he talked about "the stream of
consciousness." Dewey emphasized studying behavior in its natural context
to determine its functions.
Functionalism emphasized
applied activities such as mental tests and education, and helped introduce the
study of lower organisms into psychology.
Freudian Psychoanalysis:
The Role of the Unconscious
Freud believed that
unconscious motivations, wishes, and desires strongly influenced behavior.
Unpleasant or traumatic experiences were repressed, or pushed out of conscious awareness.
Freud believed that these repressed impulses determine what we do, how we act,
and even the jobs we get.
According to Freud,
personality is made up of three interacting systems: the ID, the EGO, and the
SUPEREGO. The id's impulses were ruled by the pleasure principle, and so needed
immediate satisfaction without regard to consequences. The ego represents the
reality principle. The ego helps keep the id in check by helping to fulfill the
id's impulses in acceptable ways. The superego is like the conscience. The
superego judges impulses, tries always to be perfect, and creates guilt in the
individual.
Freud believed that
these three systems were in constant conflict. A healthy personality resulted
from a balance among the three systems. An imbalance created psychological
problems. In order to solve these problems, the individual needed to face these
unconscious conflicts by bringing them to the level of conscious awareness.
Behaviorism: Rejecting
Mental Explanations
In 1913, CLICK ON LINK: John
Watson published a paper, "Psychology as the
Behaviorist Views It", and started the behaviorist school of psychology.
The behaviorists were intent on establishing psychology as a natural science.
They considered that most important behaviors were learned, so the study of
learning became the central focus of interest. Behaviorists believed that
mental constructs such as consciousness, imagery, and attention were not useful
scientific constructs because they were not directly observable behaviors.
CLICK ON LINK: B.F.
Skinner is probably the most famous of the behaviorist
psychologists. Skinner believed that all behaviors were responses to
environmental stimuli; therefore, anything that a person does has some cause
originating in his/her surroundings. In addition, all behavior is learned.
Nothing is innate, or inborn. The behaviorist point of view is central to the
Nature-Nurture debate. Nature means that certain behaviors are inborn,
inherited from our parents. Nurture means that behaviors are learned from
models in our environment. This means that if our environment is violent, we
learn violence; if it is peaceful, we learn peaceful behaviors.
Gestalt Psychology:
Perception of the Whole
The Gestalt
psychologists argued against the elementaristic position of structuralism, and
they claimed that perception of objects was of wholes, not complicated sums of
parts. The basic principle of Gestalt psychology was that people perceive the
world in unitary wholes. Gestalt principles are very important in the area of
perception. Wertheimer (1880-1943) advanced perceptual principles such as
shape, size, and brightness constancy. For example, the principle of shape
constancy means that if we stand in front of a table with a book on it, the
image of the book on the retina is rectangular; when we move sideways, the
retinal image may become trapezoidal, yet we still perceive the book as
rectangular. Therefore, Perception appears to have qualities of wholeness
independent of the changing sensations projected on the visual receptor (the
retina). Köhler applied Gestalt principles to other areas of psychology, e.g.,
learning, memory, and problem solving. An interesting Gestalt experiment
involved the chimp, Sultan. Sultan was placed in a cage with three hollow poles
of different sizes. A bunch of bananas was placed outside of the cage. The only
way to reach the bananas was to make a long pole out of the three smaller ones.
Köhler found that Sultan was able to solve this problem after a period of
thinking about it. This period of thinking about a problem is called
"incubation". After the period of incubation, the solution came
suddenly, like a light going on. This was called insight. Gestalt principles
had a great influence on modern cognitive psychology, especially in the areas
of perception, problem solving, and thought.
SOME MODERN TRENDS IN
PSYCHOLOGY
The era of schools of
psychology declined around 1940. Experimental social and child psychology
received considerable attention during the 1930s and 40s. In the 1950's, CLICK ON LINK: Cognitive
psychology reinstated the scientific study of higher mental
processes as a legitimate and feasible endeavor. Cognitive psychologists
rejected the behaviorist school because they believed that many mental
operations were difficult to explain in terms of conditioned associations
between environmental stimuli and responses. In addition, modern technology
such as computers allowed the quantification, or numerical measurement of
concepts previously measured poorly.
Information processing
models represent human cognitive processes in terms of information flow through
the system. Cognitive psychology was greatly influenced by computer science.
Computers provided a model for the way the human mind encodes, stores,
processes, and retrieves information. Computer technology led to the
development of artificial intelligence, which was aimed at exploring the
relationships between human and machine intelligence.
The most notable recent
trend in psychology is SPECIALIZATION-workers within one field of psychology
are quite likely to know little about the other areas.
This page was last
updated on November 8, 2001