Do You Agree That Different Historical Periods Have Been Marked by Different Psychological Understandings? Discuss with Reference to Some of the Main Schools in Psychology
Question: Do you agree that different historical periods have been marked by different psychological understandings? Discuss with reference to some of the main schools in Psychology
Psychology can be defined as the science that studies the human behaviour, the causes of this behaviour and mental processes. Different psychological understandings have marked different historical periods as psychology has been part of philosophy and has been around for centuries, this is why famous philosophers as far back as the early Greeks have theories that now can be marked as psychological views. However, it wasn´t until the late 1800’s that psychology started emerging as a separate science although the mind was given different names in those times and not viewed as a unitary identity. Around the 1920 to 1970, psychology was starting to be described as the study of behaviour. Throughout the different historical times many schools of psychology emerged representing all the different theories within psychology.
The first schools of thought were structuralism and functionalism. Structuralism was proposed by Wilhelm Wundt, founder of the first psychology lab, and focused on reducing mental processes down into their most basic elements. Functionalism was influenced by William James, refers to the role that mental processes play instead of focusing on the mental processes themselves. These two schools were later followed by other schools of thought such as psychoanalysis, founded by Freud, relates to the unconscious mind as a determinant of behavior; behaviorism, known as an extreme form of functionalism, focused on observable behavior; humanism, which explains the concept of self-actualization and on the individual itself; while cognitivism focused on the study of mental processes such as how people think, remember, learn and perceive.
Since the early development of psychology the mind was believed to be an independent spirit, however, later on it was known to be a
Psychology can be defined as the science that studies the human behaviour, the causes of this behaviour and mental processes. Different psychological understandings have marked different historical periods as psychology has been part of philosophy and has been around for centuries, this is why famous philosophers as far back as the early Greeks have theories that now can be marked as psychological views. However, it wasn´t until the late 1800’s that psychology started emerging as a separate science although the mind was given different names in those times and not viewed as a unitary identity. Around the 1920 to 1970, psychology was starting to be described as the study of behaviour. Throughout the different historical times many schools of psychology emerged representing all the different theories within psychology.
The first schools of thought were structuralism and functionalism. Structuralism was proposed by Wilhelm Wundt, founder of the first psychology lab, and focused on reducing mental processes down into their most basic elements. Functionalism was influenced by William James, refers to the role that mental processes play instead of focusing on the mental processes themselves. These two schools were later followed by other schools of thought such as psychoanalysis, founded by Freud, relates to the unconscious mind as a determinant of behavior; behaviorism, known as an extreme form of functionalism, focused on observable behavior; humanism, which explains the concept of self-actualization and on the individual itself; while cognitivism focused on the study of mental processes such as how people think, remember, learn and perceive.
Since the early development of psychology the mind was believed to be an independent spirit, however, later on it was known to be a
References: • GoodReads. (n.d). Plato Quotes. Retrieved January 6, 2012, from http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/28152 • Watson, J. B. (1930). Behaviorism (revised edition). University of Chicago Press. • Kalat, J.W. (2008). Introduction to psychology (8th ed.). Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth. • Carlson, N.R. et al. (2010) Psychology: the science of behavior (7th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education. • Leslie, J.C. and O Reilly, M.F. (1999) Behavior analysis: foundations and applications to psychology. Hove: Psychology Press.