Rajeshwari Dutta, academic content writer in psychology at Edumarz.
The development of psychology is the transition from philosophical approach to scientific approach.
Psychology evolved in varying stages; like in the Pre scientific age, rather it can be said that the history of psychology where the great philosophers like Aristotle, Plato, Descartes established their theory of understanding the mind and behavior. Aristotle established the relationship between the soul and body but later on many scientific researchers and doctors substantiated this explanation and then psychology evolved in different schools of psychology during the scientific age.
These “schools of thought” are known as the “schools of psychology”. Now we will explain these school —
STRUCTURALISM – Titchner and Wundt was the founders of the school. They studied the structure of mind through the method of introspection-looking into one’s own mind or self observation. The objective of this school was to find the units or elements which make up the mind. Wundt believed that the mind was made with non physical elements like thoughts, emotions,experiences. They did the experiments to find the elementary sensations which are the structure of mind. As there was no objective or reliable information for scientific study of the brain this structuralist school was discarded.
FUNCTIONALISM – William James, John Dewey invented this school. From the name itself it implies that they studied upon the functioning of mind and behavior rather than finding the elements of mind. They emphasized on the fact that the mind and behavior are adaptive– the function of mind is to make an individual get adjusted to their surroundings.
BEHAVIORISM – John B Watson discovered this school. Watson rejected the structure or division of mind, he insisted upon the study of observable behavior. According to Watson human and animal behavior is made up of conditioned responses he denied the inborn or innate factors. According to him there were no such differences between animal and human behavior.
GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY – Prominent members of this school were Max Wertheimer, Kurt Lewin, Koffka and Kohler. The German word gestalt means ‘form’ or ‘configuration’; they emphasized on the fact that an individual perceives things as a whole and not merely a collection of its parts. According to them, the mind is best understood in terms of the organization of the elements not due to breaking down of elements.
PSYCHOANALYSIS – Generally speaking psychoanalysis is not a school of psychology but it had great impacts during the modern times with the view of modern perspectives. It was founded by the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. He formulated first the world of unconsciousness. It is the unconscious which consists of all the repressed wishes ,desires, feelings, drives, motives; this hidden treasure is responsible for most of the behavior.
In Modern Perspectives:
Humanistic perspective – Abraham Maslow, Rogers, Rollomay contributed towards its growth. This perspective emphasizes the person’s sense of self. Human beings are the soul’s personality according to them.
Cognitive Perspective – Edward Tolman, Jean Piaget are associated with this. The word cognition refers to perception of the world around us, our mental processes like thinking, memory, learning. To adjust with our social environment it has an input and then an output.
Biological Perspective – this emphasized the relationship of behavior to the functions of the body-the nervous , the glandular and the hormonal system.