I thought that it would be a pretty interesting idea to every week or so make a thread covering a portion of a Psychology basics course. I will be using a few textbooks and online resources to make up each one, where I will explain each of the key concepts. I find this to be interesting to read whether you are school or not, or if you are looking to take the AP Psychology exam this next May, I hope you find this an excellent review.

The History and Approaches to Psychology

The history of psychology is divided into what is known as schools of thought. During certain time periods throughout the last two centuries, there have been different methods of thinking that have been dominant. I will primary discuss the five different schools of thought that took dominance during this time period.

The first school of thought is accepted to be Wundt’s introspection. Although thinking about Psychology has been in existence since the time of Plato and Democritus, the actual scientific study of Psychology is not believed to have begun until 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt set up a laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, that was dedicated towards the studying of Psychology. Within these laboratories he would have his subjects utilize introspection. Introspection is to record one’s cognitive reactions to simple stimuli. Through this he was able to determine separate cognitive structures (parts of our mind). Because his study was one that was dealing with these structures, he called the theory that resulted from his studies “structuralism”. Today we look at his structuralism to be the idea that the mind works by combining the outside stimuli and our past experiences. Another prominent figure within introspection was William James. In 1890, James published The Principles of Psychology, the first textbook ever written on Psychology. James’s work is called functionalism. This is because he took those cognitive structures that Wundt had found and indentified functions for each of them. Introspection is not considered to be important in current Psychological thinking, but was important in the actual foundation of the science of Psychology.

The second school of thought is said to be Gestalt Psychology. This school of Psychology occurred during the time period of introspection, but after introspection had become known Gestalt psychology had begun. The one prominent figure of Gestalt psychology that the AP wants you to know is Max Wertheimmer. What he argued was that thoughts and behaviors being individuals that react independently to stimuli was wrong and that the true way we perceive the world is greater than just the two used together. I like Barron’s example, which is that if you were to look at a picture of a flower down to the individual spots of paint, you would see the rows of different colors, but if you step back you realize the flower, something greater than just the individual spots combined, the context in which the spots appears. What this means for Gestalt psychologists is that they believe that when having client therapy that they should not only look at the psychological problem, but the context within the clients life in which the Psychological disorder appears. Gestalt psychology also is not very influential in the science of Psychology today, but it did contribute to actual therapeutic practices and to the study of human perception.

The third school of thought of psychology is psychoanalysis. This is probably one of the most well known branches of psychology due to the head of it being Sigmund Freud. He finished his psychoanalytic theory, which had changed the perceptions of psychology that were in place at the time. Most of his studies revolved around an unconscious mind of which the human species has no conscious control over that he believed was a key factor in how we thought and behaved. Many of these theories include repression, which is the burying of strong experiences and memories within ourselves till the point at which they were in the subconscious mind and affected our lives. The techniques of Freud are often the ones that are depicted in the media today, like dream analysis, word association, and other ideas of this nature. It is actually fallacious to hold the belief that Freud’s psychology is the main overview of how psychology works. In fact, Freud was criticized as not contributing to the SCIENCE of Psychology as many of his views were unable to be tested scientifically and were mostly speculations. If you have read Potok’s “The Chosen” then you have seen an explanation of the difference between Freud’s Psychology and the type that scientific psychologists often use (the use of clear mathematical experiments). One of the cool tidbits is that many of Freud’s works contain words that we now use in day to day speech because of him. The most famous example is that of “defense mechanism”. Freud’s psychology is partly existent today, but with much controversy on the validity of it.

The fourth school of thought is called Behavioralism. The concepts of behavioralism spawn from Ivan Pavlov’s experiments. What he tested was called conditioning. With some dogs that were fed everyday by nurses wearing their white uniforms, Pavlov discovered that the dogs would salivate each time they saw the white uniform, whether they were sure they were going to get food or not. Therefore the dogs consciously connected the white uniforms with food and their bodies increased salivation accordingly. John Watson used these experiments to establish behaviorism. Behavorialism is the ideology that in order for psychology to actually be considered a science, it must be limited to observable phenomena, not those dealing with unobservable phenomena, like Freud’s unconscious mind. Behavioralism deals with stimuli and their effects on behavior. In more scientific terms, the environmental events and the physical reactions that occur in effect. Thus, they would not deal with describing elements of the consciousness, but rather actual scientifically studied theories. Another prominent behaviorist was B. F. Skinner who expanded behavioralism through her contribution of reinforcement. Reinforcement is that environmental stimuli either encourage or discourage particular responses. This was revolutionary and the influence of behavioralism due to Skinner extended a few decades. This made behavioralism the dominant school of thought between the 1920s though the 1960s.

The fifth school of thought is the one that is currently in effect right now. This will be the one that I explain next time. This one actually consists of seven major ideologies that are in effect today.

Hope you had fun learning about psychology! From next time onwards I will provide materials that discuss and reinforce what was learned in the past one. Those are mostly for the AP Students.