Schools of Psychology

SCHOOLS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Has both a traditional and a scientific history.

Animism attributed natural events to mystic spirits within objects and organisms.

Greek philosophers had rejected supernatural forces and developed philosophy as a non – religious type of orderly reasoning or speculation.

As a science, psychology started only in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Psychology

Derived from two Greek words, psyche (soul) and logos (discourse). Psychology was thus literally a study of the soul.

About four centuries ago, mental philosophers began to translate psyche as “mind” and psychology was then defined as “a study of the mind.”

It was eventually replaced by the definition of psychology as “the science of behavior”.

What is Psychology?

Psychologists have different ideas about what psychology should or should not include, about what it should emphasize, and about what research methods are best.

When a large number of psychologists strongly support a certain view it is called a “school.”

Wilhelm Wundt Edward TitchenerStarted the first psychological laboratory.

Introspective Psychology or Elementarism

Psychology as the study of conscious experience. They started with the principle that all complex substances could be analyzed through their component elements (hence, the name elementarism). Titchener believed that sensation and thoughts are structures of mind.

The subject reports sensations, feelings and images through his own sensory experiences – called the method of introspection, or mental self analysis (hence, the name Introspective Psychology).

By 1940, introspection had disappeared from the scientific psychology.

STRUCTURALISM

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John Dewey James R. Angell

William James

It is not the “structure” that should be of prime importance to the psychologist but the “function” of the matter – the functionalists focused on the operations or functions of conscious activity (e.g. thinking, learning), while structuralists studied the so-called elements (e.g. “ideas”, “sensations”) of consciousness.

Through introspection, the use of instruments to record and measure; and objective manifestations of mind, the total behavior of an individual is studied including the interest in the functions served by the things an individual does. The functionalists redefined psychology as “the study of man’s adjustments to his environment.”

FUNCTIONALISM

John Watson E. L. Thorndike

It is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods.

It defines Psychology as the science of behavior and not of consciousness. It denies the existence of instinct or of inborn tendencies, but insists on learned behavior.

It is psychology based upon stimulus-response connections. The behaviorists believe that there can be no response without stimulus.

BEHAVIORISM

Ivan P. Pavlov, a Russian physiologist and his experiments on conditioned responses established the phenomena of conditioning, a method of behaviorism.

Max Wertheimer Kurt Koffka

Wolfgang Kohler

A German word translated as configuration, or form, pattern, or organization.

The whole is more than the sum of all its parts.

Stated that many aspects of perception can not be interpreted singly as unitary aspects isolated from the component whole.

The Gestalt psychologists have contributed much to the understanding of learning, memory and problem solving.

They advocated phenomenology (a method of free introspection where we interpret stimuli in what is seen in relation to other aspects of the whole).

GESTALT

The Rubin Goblet illustrates a basic concept from Gestalt psychology: the figure-ground distinction. When a gestalt is formed (perceived) it becomes a figure (a thing apart, an entity or object). A figure is always backed up by a surrounding ground. With Rubin's goblet, the goblet and faces take turns being figure and ground. When you see the goblet, the faces disappear into a black background. When you see the faces, the goblet disappears into a white background. A pattern cannot be seen as figure and ground at the same time. Yet the pattern in the external world—the stimulus—does not change. Only the perception of it changes.

Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler and Carl Jung

They insist on human desires and primitive impulses as the central factors of behavior.

These desires are unacceptable wishes of childhood, principally libidinal (sexual) repressed in our subconscious because they are socially unacceptable.

These repressed desires press to find expression in dreams, slips of speech and in unconscious mannerisms.

Free Association, a method of psychoanalysis wherein the disturbed subject may find catharsis (a cleansing out thru verbal expression) these libidinal wishes can be searched out from one’s subconscious.

PSYCHOANALYSIS

William McGougall

He believed that objects, movements, and behavior have a definite purpose.

This psychology is sometimes called Hormic psychology because according to McDougall, the secretion of one’s hormones is responsible for the motive force that propels one to strive towards the attainment of one’s goals.

PURPOSIVISM(HORMIC PSYCHOLOGY)

Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow

Stresses the person’s capacity for personal growth, freedom to choose his own destiny and positive qualities, also, we have the ability to direct and control our future.

This approach tells us that we are the ones in control of our lives and not our experiences or our environment as with other approaches.

HUMANISM

Herbert Simon

Tries to examine how we process, store and utilize information and how those information influences our behavior.

Information Processing is the most widely adopted cognitive approach. Psychologists of this approach study how individuals process information, how it is perceived, stored and retrieved for future use.

COGNITIVE APPROACH

Aristotle, Edward Thorndike, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes

Concerned with the factors of learning such as remembering and thinking.

It starts with the philosophical concept that learning is the formation of bonds or connections in the nervous system.

Man is the greatest learner because he makes the greatest numbers of connections.

ASSOCIATION

Gives emphasis on the brain and the nervous system as vital to understanding behavior, emotions and thought.

For behavioral neuroscientists, memory is written in chemicals.

The memory informs the nerve cell to send out chemical command.

The chemicals then serve as the ink to encode memory

BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE

Gives emphasis to the importance of adaptation, reproduction, and survival of the fittest in explaining behavior.

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

More Gestalt…

…end…Thank you!