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What is psychology?
- Psychology is the study of the brain, mental processes, observable behavior, human and animal development, and social interactions.
- Psychology was once a part of philosophy.
- Philosophers such as Rene Descartes, John Locke, and Thomas Hobbes speculated on human nature.
- Rene Descartes believed that the physical world follows a set of observable laws or rules.
- He believed creatures are similar to machines, in that they are governed by laws and behave in predictable ways.
- Descartes believe that humans are the exception to this rule because they possess minds.
- He makes a distinction between the body and the mind.
- The mind is not observable and is not subject to the natural laws.
- He thought the mind and body interact through the pineal gland.
- John Locke believed that even the mind is under the control of rules or laws.
- Locke believed that the world could be understood through empiricism – gathering knowledge and understanding the world through observation and experience.
- Locke thought that humans are born as a tabula rasa, meaning a blank slate, and that everything we know has to be learned.
History/Philosophy
- One way to organize all of the ideas in psychology is by categorizing psychological theories and ideas into various schools of thought.
- Each school of thought has a certain way of describing some aspect of behavior, mental process, or social interaction.
- Structuralism
- Functionalism
- Psychoanalysis
- Behavioral
- Cognitive
- Humanistic
- Biological/Biomedical
- Sociocultural
- Biopsychosocial
Structuralism
- Wilhelm Wundt set up the first psychology lab in Leipzig, Germany.
- Wilhelm Wundt championed the school of thought in psychology called Structuralism, “father of structuralism.”
- Structuralism is an attempt to breakdown the ‘elements’ of perception into smaller understandable units – similar to how a chemist breaks down a compound into its elements.
- The sensation of ‘red’ or ‘sharp’ or ‘hard’ is understood as an ‘element’ of consciousness.
- Trained subjects in introspection.
- Introspection is the examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes.
- He asked trained subjects to record their cognitive reactions to simple stimuli.
- Describe this ______, and tell me your sensation of it.
- Structuralism is not an active area of study in psychology anymore.
Functionalism
- Functionalism & William James
- James published The Principles of Psychology, psychology’s first official textbook.
- James championed the school of thought called Functionalism.
- Functional psychology or Functionalism refers to a psychological philosophy that considers mental life and behaviour in terms of active adaptation to the person's environment; it was influenced by Darwin and evolutionary theory.
- For example, an explanation for why a baby cries could be that crying as a behaviour is a successful adaptation; it helps the baby survive.
- It is not an active area of psychology anymore.
Gestalt Psychology
- Max Wertheimer argued against dividing human thought and behavior into discrete subjects; that is, he did not like structuralism.
- Gestalt theorists argue and demonstrate that “the whole is something else than the sum of its parts.”
- How many triangles are there?
- Gestalt psychology is not an active area of research anymore.
- Some of the ideas of Gestalt psychology have been adopted and reworked by cognitive psychology.
Psychoanalysis
- Sigmund Freud describes how the unconscious mind, dreams, and other psychological mechanisms exert influence on behavior.
- Psychoanalysis is a set of theories related to the study of the unconscious mind and a set of therapeutic techniques to help patients recover from psychological disorders.
- A psychoanalyst believes that the unconscious mind (a part of our mind we do not have access to) controls many of our thoughts and behavior.
- A psychoanalyst would look for impulses or memories pushed into our unconscious and try to show how these influence our behavior.
