Schools of Psychology

Structuralism

Wundt defined psychology as the science of immediate experience’ and this approach was called
structuralism. Its subject matter was the structure of the mind built from elements of
consciousness, such as ideas and sensations. Its raw material was supplied by trained observers
who described their own experiences. The observers were taught to engage in introspection:
(literally “looking within). They observed stimuli and describe their experiences. Structuralists
made inferences about the nature of mental process by seeing how chances in stimuli caused
changes in the verbal reports of their trained observers.

Wundt was particularly interested into the problem that had intrigued George Berkley. How did
basic sensory information give to complex Perception? Thus his trained observers attempted to
ignore complex perception and focus only on the elementary ones. Wundt’s structuralism did not
survive past the early 20th century. Two major problems with his approach were

1. The difficulty accounted by observers in reporting the raw data of sensation. i.e. data
unmodified by experience.
2. The emphasis of psychological investigation shifted from the human mind to the
study of human behavior.

Functionalism

After structuralism the next major trend in psychology was functionalism. structuralist were
interested in what they called components of consciousness ( ideas (sensation) whilst
functionalist focused on the process of conscious activity, (perceiving and learning).proponents
of functionalism stress the biological significance, (the purpose of functions)of natural processes
including behavior. The emphasis was on overt observable behavior not on private mental
events. The most important psychologists to embrace functionalism was William James.
Functionalism was not replaced /supplanted instead its major tenets were assorted by its
successors, behaviorism.

Basic Principles of Functionalism

1. Functional psychology is the study of mental operations, and mental structures. (E.g.
The mind remembers, it does not contain a memory). It is not enough to compile
catalogue of what the mind does: one must try to understand what the mind
accomplishes by doing that.

2. Mental process is not studied as isolated and independent events but as part of the
biological activity of the organism. These processes are aspects of the organism
adaptation to the environment and are a product of its evolutionary history.
 3. Functional psychology studies the relation between the environment and the response
of the organism to the environment. There is no meaningful distinction between the
mind and the body they are part of the same entity.

Freud Psychodynamic theory

Sigmund Freud (1856- 1939) formulated a theory of human behavior that would greatly affect
psychology and psychiatry and radically influence intellectuals of all kinds. He device concepts
of ego, super ego and id and other mental structures by talking with patients outside conscious
awareness.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism is the study of the relation between people’s environment and their behavior. The
first behaviorists included Edward Thorndike (1874-1949), Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) and James
Watson (1878-1978).

Edward Thorndike defined the law of effect:-that stimulus that occurs as a consequence of a
response can increase or decrease the likely hood of making that response again. Events that
produce pleasant responses are more likely to occur and event that produce a noxious response
are less likely to reoccur. Behaviorism is still prevalent today.

Gestalt psychology

In 1911, a German psychologist Max Wertheimer (1889-1943) bought a toy that represented a
series of pictures in rapid succession- Each picture was slightly different from the one that
preceded it. These pictures were used to discover the organization of cognitive processes, not
their elements Gestalt psychology insisted that perceptions resulted from patterns of interactions
among many elements: that the whole is not simply the sum of its part.

E.g. a simple melody consists of a pattern of different notes, played one at a time. If the melody
is played in different keys, so that individual notes are different, people can still recognize it.

Existential Psychology

Existentialist guides people towards a sense of identity allowing them to take responsibility for
actions and achieve freedom.

Humanistic Psychology

Humanistic psychology is an approach to the study of human behavior that emphasizes human
experience, choice, creativity, self realization and positive growth. Father of Humanistic
psychology Abraham Maslow (1908 - 1970) wrote “what a man can be, he must be. He must be
true to his own nature……. A desire to become more and more what one idiosyncratically is, to
become everything one is capable of becoming.” (Carlson & Buskist, 1997, p18) (Hierarchy of
Needs)

Cognitive Psychology

One of the newest schools since 1960’s. The cognitive revolution began because some
psychologists believed that a strict emphasis on observable behavior missed some of the
complexity of human cognition and behavior. Thus they brought forward an approach to explain
the workings of the brain called information processing.

Biological Revolution

A Subfield of psychology concerned with evolutionary origins of behavior and mental processes.
Their adaptive value and the purposes they continue to serve.