Compare And Contrast Key Perspectives In Psychology

Compare and Contrast Key Perspectives in Psychology
This essay discusses the most important and still used perspectives in Psychology and how they influenced scientists all over the world and many generations later. However, to be able to present those theories, a short history lesson is needed.
The term "psychology" comes from Greek word "psyche", which means soul or mind and word "logos", which means knowledge or study. As a result, word "psychology" means a study of mind (Colman, 2009, p. 619).
The origin of Psychology as an independent discipline is dated at 1879, when German physician and philosopher, Wilhelm Wundt begin his laboratory in Leipzig (Gross, 2010, p.2). In his studies, Wundt used introspection to analyze the mind, which means
He adjusted a device to dog's mouth to collect his saliva and measure the change when he was fed. Then, Pavlov would add a clicking metronome every time someone would present the food to a dog and repeat the process. After a while, a dog will salivate as soon as he will hear metronome clicking (Collin et al., 2012, p. 60-61). This experiment shows that an unconditioned stimulus, such as food, can cause an unconditioned response, such as salivation. However, if an unconditioned stimulus appears with a neutral stimulus, such as clicking metronome, a conditioned response starts to form. If this process is repeated enough times, then conditioned stimulus, such as clicking metronome, will lead to a conditioned response, such as salivation (Collin et al., 2012, p. 60-61). Pavlov's experiment with the classical conditioning is reversible, meaning that if clicking metronome will be heard, but no food is available, eventually a dog will change his behaviour and stop salivate when sound is perform. This experiment demonstrated that behaviour can be learned through stimuli and
Freud's psychoanalytic theory was explained that human behaviour is dictated by unconscious thoughts, memories and affections (Gross, 2010, p.17). Freud correlated human mind as an iceberg, when a conscious mind is just a tip above the water (that is where people are aware what is going on around them and make decisions), and an unconscious mind is the rest of the ice underneath the water (that part is not accessible for people). There is also an important piece in between called subconscious or preconscious, where all the memory is stored. Another, significant factor in Freud's perspective is tripartite model of personality (psyche): the id, ego and super-ego. According to Freud, the id is impulsive and instinctive, the ego is realistic and makes decisions, and super-ego controls the id's impulses and acts as a moralizer. All of them are in constant fight over superior of the body. Finally, Freud's psychosexual stages of development are: the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latent stage, and the genital stage (Kalat, 2005, p.494-495) and depending on which stage the adult is fixated later in life, that is how she/ he will behave. For example, if the person is "stuck" on the oral stage, than problems with eating, drinking, smoking and nail-biting will