Foundations of Psychology

Foundations of Psychology

The science of psychology has gone through evolutionary changes since its beginning including developing major schools of thought and association with biology. This research paper will deal with the major schools of thought, their assumptions, and an examination of the area known as Biopsychology.

Structuralism and Functionalism

Structuralism and Functionalism were the two schools of thought, which were the pioneering stages of modern Psychology. Edward Titchener (1867-1927) began the school of thought known as structuralism. He believed in scientific psychology and thus using experiments to determine truth. His hope was to classify psychology in a like manner to a science like chemistry by building a structural table much like the periodic table of the elements. Titchener thought that since experimentation was the proper way to study psychology studying concepts such as "attention" were hardly useful.

The school of thought of Functionalism focuses on what part the psychological processes play in helping adaptation to the environment. William James (1842-1910)

was a founding father of functionalism and in contrast to Titchener James believed that introspection played a part along with experimentation in acquiring knowledge of value. He felt the structuralists were wasting their time trying to classify consciousness. James wanted to explain what goes in the mind not just give a description of it. He felt that useful knowledge could come from studying children, animals and the mentally ill. (Kowalski. & Westen 2005)

The Schools of Thought: Perspectives

• Psychodynamic Perspective
• Behaviorist Perspective
• Cognitive Perspective
• Evolutionary Perspective

Psychodynamic Perspective

"the dynamic interplay of mental forces"

(Kowalski. & Westen 2005)

Sigmund Freud was the founder of Psychodynamics. His theory revolved around three key ideas. 1) Desires, thoughts and feelings are connected within the mind and this determines the action. 2) A lot of this mental activity happens below the conscious mind. 3) This mental activity may be in conflict. (Kowalski. & Westen 2005)

Freud believed the conscious mind is just the beginning of what is going on in the mind and that the majority of the causes of actions were below conscious thought and thus difficult to understand. Sigmund Freud relied mostly on case studies and so was difficult for the scientific community to accept. Recently, this is changing due to putting the psychodynamic theory through scientific studies. (Kowalski. & Westen 2005)

The Behaviorist Perspective

"the way objects or events in the environment

(stimuli) come to control behavior through learning"

(Kowalski. & Westen 2005)

Behaviorism is the study of how organisms respond to things that happen in the environment. Behaviorism was pioneered by John Watson (1876-1958) who focused on mental events and the behavior resulting from them. B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) solidified this school of thought by stating the mind and self could not be analyzed scientifically. The beginning of behavioral psychology is attributed to Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936). His famous experiment showed that dogs could be induced to salivate at the ring of a bell through learning its association with eating time. (Kowalski. & Westen 2005)

The Cognitive Perspective

"the way people process, store, and retrieve information"

(Kowalski. & Westen 2005)

The Cognitive Perspective originated with Descartes who proposed that the mind could originate information or knowledge. The behaviorists thoroughly disagreed with this approach. The Cognitive research of today is mainly done with experimentation and is mainly concerned with the aspects of learning, memory and mental processing as well as how this information is perceived and retrieved. After the advent of the computer, the mind is often referred to as a kind of computer, which has predictable results depending on the information it receives. . (Kowalski. & Westen 2005)

The Evolutionary Perspective

The evolutionary perspective originated with the theories of Charles Darwin (1872). It is important to note that Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution but rather proposed a mechanism to explain it. This mechanism is called natural selection. Natural selection proposed that nature selects which traits are passed on in hereditary chains. The study has mostly been done through deduction and comparing but more and more is being proved through experimentation and discoveries in science. The evolutionary perspective has led to new fields such as sociobiology and behavioral genetics. . (Kowalski. & Westen 2005)

The Biological Foundations Of Psychology

The area where psychology meets biology is a study with the name biopsychology and also referred to as behavioral neuroscience. The aim of this area of science is to find physical causes of memory, emotion and stress. Neuroscientists explore the nervous system and its electrical and chemical responses. Early in the nineteenth century, scientists began to notice the physical connection between the brain and behavior through observing people with traumatic head injuries. They observed personality changes in people with severe head injuries. Marc Dax a doctor in 1836 made a suggestion that lesions on the left side of the brain might be responsible for aphasia (language disorders). A man named Paul Broca (1824-1880) found that lesions in the front part of the brain caused language that was not fluent but did not infer with the understanding of language. Adding to Broca's observation Carl Wernicke (1848-1904) found that lesions just behind the ones Broca had observed caused a patient to neither understand nor speak in a way to be understood and yet the patient could follow rules of grammar. . (Kowalski. & Westen 2005)

These chains of observations lead to the joining of biology and psychology. Modern bioscientists have a much clearer understanding of the neuropathways of the brain and now realize the complexity of processes and the brain. (Kowalski. & Westen 2005)

The schools of thought in Psychology began with structuralism and functionalism. From this foundation came the modern schools of thought the Psychodynamic Perspective, the Behaviorist Perspective, the Cognitive Perspective, the Evolutionary Perspective and even further to the physical side of Psychology, which is Biopsychology. The very fact that there are multiple branches to this science indicts the complexity of a clear understanding of how mind and body function independently or dependently. Just as the exploration of our oceans or outer space is in infancy so is the area of Psychology. Any area of science reaches discoveries, however rather than reaching conclusion these discoverers more often than not show just how much lies ahead in this the science of Psychology is no exception.

Kowalski, R. & Westen, D. (2005). Psychology: the study of mental processes and behavior [Electronic Edition] Copyright 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.