Psychology has a long past, but a
short history. Concern with
“psychological issues” extends back into antiquity. Some of the areas which contributed to the
development of Psychology as a separate discipline are philosophy, the natural
sciences and medicine. The history of
modern psychology began only about 130 years ago. Thus, in the history of scientific endeavor,
Psychology is a relatively new discipline.
For
a long period, philosophers worked a lot to understand thinking and
behaviour. Many of the basic areas of
psychology, such as learning, motivation, personality, perception and
physiological influences on behaviour were first discussed by philosophers. Many departments of Psychology originated in
departments of philosophy, which later got an independent status.
As
an independent science, Psychology’s history began in 1879 at Leipzig, Germany,
when the “father of Experimental Psychology“, Wilhelm Wundt established the
first Psychological Laboratory there.
His inquiries circled around the formation of sensations, images and
feelings. Aiming this, Wundt carefully
measured stimuli of various kinds (lights, sounds and weights). He used introspection (looking inward) to
probe his reactions to them. He called
his approach as experimental self observation, which combined trained
introspection with objective measurement.
He used this method to study vision, hearing, taste, touch, reaction
time, memory, feelings, time perception etc.
Edward B. Titchener took the ideas of Wundt to America, where it came to
be called as structuralism, as it concentrates on the structure of mental
life.
It soon became
clear that introspection was a poor way to answer many questions. The biggest problem was that structuralists
were studying the contents of their own minds.
Outputs of the enquiry will be subjective to the person who experiences
it. However, introspection still has a role
in Psychology. The study of hypnosis,
meditation, drug effects, problem solving and many other topics would be
incomplete if people did not describe their private experiences.
William James,
an American Psychologist, broadened psychology to include animal behaviour,
religious experience, abnormal behaviour and a number of other interesting
topics. His book “Principles of
Psychology” made it a serious discipline.
According to James, consciousness was an ever-changing stream or flow of
images and sensations. It is not a set
of lifeless building blocks as structuralists claimed. Mind in an individual functions to adapt to
the environment where s/he lives. His
school of thought was called functionalism.
Functionalists were strongly influenced by Darwinian principle of natural
selection. They tried to find out how
thought, perception, habits and emotions aid human adaptation.
Functionalists
also aided the growth of Educational Psychology and Industrial Psychology. According to functionalists, learning makes
us more adaptable, and they urged psychologists to help improve education. After functionalists, Psychology is applied
to improve industrial aspects, such as personnel selection, human relations and
machine design.
When
John.B.Watson started to talk about the importance of scientific approaches in
Psychology, structuralism and functionalism were challenged. He found animal behaviour can be studied
without asking questions, but simply by observing the relationship between
stimuli (events in the environment) and an animal’s responses (any muscular
action, glandular activity, or other identifiable behaviour). Conditioned response concept developed by the
Russian Physiologist Ivan Pavlov empirically supported his ideas. Following Watson, B.F.Skinner commented that
human behaviour was a response and it could be understood by taking into
account what the environment did to the organism before and after the
response. The school of thought was named as
behaviourism.
Gestalt school
of thought emphasized the idea that “the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts”. Gestalt Psychology tried to
study experiences as a whole. The view
point was first advanced by the German Psychologist Max Wertheimer. The school was developed in Germany, with
particular interest in perceptual problems and how they could be
interpreted. Gestalists believed that
behaviour was a creative process of synthesis that was more than or different
from the sum of its constituent parts. For
instance, movie, a series of still pictures, is watched by us as a continuous
moving image.
Sigmund Freud,
the proponent of Psychoanalytic school of thought, believed that mental life is
like an iceberg. Human behaviour is
influenced by vast areas of unconscious thoughts, impulses, and desires which
cannot be known directly (as majority of the area of an iceberg is under the
ocean, and a tip can only be seen).
Freud theorized that many unconscious thoughts are of a threatening,
sexual or aggressive nature. Hence they
are repressed (actively held out of awareness).
However, they may be revealed by dreams, emotions or slips of the
tongue. According to Freud, all
thoughts, emotions and actions are determined and nothing is accidental. Childhood has importance in a person’s later
personality development. Freud
introduced a psychotherapeutic method called Psychoanalysis, which is used to
explore the unconscious roots of emotional problems.
Humanistic
school of thought is considered as the third force in Psychology, as it
influenced the discipline’s development after behaviourism and
psychoanalysis. Carl Rogers and Abraham
Maslow are the two proponents of the school.
Humanists, as Freud, believed that past experiences affect personality,
but stood against the view that unconscious forces had a role in it. They stressed free will, the human ability to
freely make choices. Humanists stressed
that the psychological needs (of love, self esteem, belonging, self-expression,
creativity and spirituality) are as important as our physiological needs for
food and water. A unique concept of
humanistic approach is Maslow’s description of self actualization. Self actualization is the need to develop
one’s potential fully, to lead a rich and meaningful life, and to become the
best person one can become. Each human
being has this potential.
Positive
psychology, the most recent school, is the scientific study of optimal human
functioning, the goals of which are to better understand and apply those
factors that help individuals and communities to thrive and flourish. It gives importance to the strengths, virtues
and well being of the individuals. As a school of thought it came to existence
when Martin Seligman, in his 1998 presidential address to members of the
American Psychological Association, put a call out to applied psychologists to
return to their roots and focus on not only curing mental illness, but also on
making the lives of people more productive and fulfilling, and identifying and
nurturing talent. According to positive
psychology, humans are self-righting organisms who are constantly working to
adapt to their environments. Strengths develop as a result of internal and
external forces and as part of the human driving force to meet basic
psychological needs. All people have
the capacity for strength development and for growth and change. Strength
development is a lifelong process that is influenced by the interaction of
individual’s heredity and the cultural, social, economic, and political
environments in which they find themselves. All people have a reservoir of
strengths, some of which have been tapped and others have been left unexplored
and unrecognized. These strengths can be learned or taught.
References
Coon, D. (1992). Introduction to Psychology:
Exploration and Application. New York: West Publishing Company.
Magyar-Moe, J. L. (2009). Therapist's Guide to the Positive
Psychological Interventions. New York: Elsevier.
