School of Thought

One of the strengths of this approach is that it looks at thought processes which are ignored by other psychologists. Such processes are memory, attention and perception and have been studied to have an effect on behavior.

The first theory, psychodynamic, was developed by Sigmund Freud. He believed that our behaviors are determined by our unconscious thoughts and instincts. He also believed that our behaviors are

According to McLeod (2017), behaviourism is an approach in psychology that focuses on scientific testing and investigating how environmental interactions cause all human behaviour to be learnt. Behaviourists do not focus on covert behaviour, such as feelings or thoughts, as they cannot be scientifically

2. Gestalt theory said, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" meaning that the mind processes information simutouniousley. The gestalt theory made psychologists learn more about the way we learn and think. The work the Gestalt psychologists did lead to the rise of cognitive psychology in America, which

Gestalt psychology attempts to explain how people perceive objects, particularly the way that elements of an image are grouped together to create larger objects.

Wilhelm Wundt, the father of experimental psychology, was one of the theorists who challenged the ideas of phrenology. Wundt promoted a method known as trained introspection, in which people were to observe the people and the environment around them and draw a conclusion due to their analysis. Wundt’s ideas gave rise to other early approaches such as functionalism, which put emphasis on the function and purpose of behavior. William James was one of the leaders of the idea of functionalism, a field that broadened to include the study of children, adults, animals, and consciousness. Moreover, functionalists looked into how and why things occurred, studying ideas similar to why people click pens. Structuralism, the study of the brain’s structure, is another early school that started as a framework for other fields, including linguistics and anthropology. Theorists responsible for structuralism include, Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude Levi-Strauss, the father of structural anthropology. “Structuralists aim to understand the underlying meaning involved in human thought as expressed in cultural acts” (Briggs & Meyer, 2009); therefore, structuralists study attributes similar to why smells can trigger

“Why don’t we make what can be observed the real field of psychology” (Watson, 1929). Watson (1878-1958) was born into a poor family in South Carolina. His mother was a religious woman, and his father drank a lot and had multiple affairs (Watson, 1999). Watson himself married twice, having two children in each marriage. He didn’t seem to have good relationships with his children – it is said that one of the main reasons for this may be because he used his children throughout his research. He studied in the University of Chicago where he later became known as the founder of Behaviourism. He wrote an essay in 1914 titled “Psychology as the Behaviourist views it” where he stated that behaviourism is an objective experimental branch of natural science (Watson, 1914). Behaviourism is a theory of learning that argues that all behaviours are acquired through conditioning (Carver & Scheier, 2012). Behaviourists believe

According to the Merriam-Webster, the definition of gestalt psychology is: the study of perception and behavior from the standpoint of an individual 's response to configurational wholes with stress on the uniformity of psychological and physiological events and rejection of analysis into discrete events of stimulus, percept, and response

History and Systems of Psychology is a course requirement offered to Psychology majors and minors. This course is used to provide majors and minors with the foundation and the evolution of the field of psychology. Within this class, many scholars of discussed. Two scholars that stood out to me in this course would be John Watson and Max Wertheimer. These two particular scholars are responsible for two of the most influential and famous schools of thought, behaviorism and Gestalt psychology. These two schools of thought are responsible for changing the field of psychology and introducing the field to new theories and ways of thinking. Although the two schools of thought are similar in being influential but they are different in many ways. The two schools of thought are even said to be contradictory of one another and one is even said to be the cause of the fading out of the other.

Behaviorism is “the view that psychology should be an objective science that studies behavior without reference to mental processes” (Myers, 2011, p. 6). John Watson believed that science is based upon observation. Therefore, Watson developed behaviorism based upon the idea that while you cannot observe a feeling or thought of a person, you can observe their reactions

Psychodynamic theories of Sigmund Freud focus on how a child’s instinctual mind interacts with his or her social environment and the important people in it to produce many characteristics and behaviors. There are the structure of the mind and the structure of personality.

Gestalt therapy is a form of psychotherapy that relates to the process of human perception and works on a basic concept of the Gestalt approach «The whole is different from the sum of its parts.» This approach in Gestalt psychotherapy describes the process of perception in addition to the psychic equipment in general. The Gestalt approach originated from research that was initiated by psychologists specializing in human perception which demonstrated that humans do not recognize objects as separate elements and instead organize the objects into significant totalities via the process of perception. The concept of Gestalt psychotherapy was then formally developed by Fritz Perlsduring the 1950s, a well known psychiatrist and

John B Watson the “father of behaviorism once quoted “ Give me a dozen healthy infants, well formed and my own specified world to bring them up in and I will guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant chief and yes, even beggar man, and thief, regardless of his talents pendants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors. Watson had a plan as to what he wanted to accomplish. He new what his goals were. He had a plan as to how he wanted to conduct the Little Albert Experiment and Classical Conditioning. Watson believed that psychology shoed be seen as a purely objective experimental branch of natural science, he wanted to see the prediction and control of behavior not just the understanding of the mind (Mcleod, 2008).

Two of the major schools of thought that were most prevalent in psychology’s earliest years were structuralism and functionalism.

The Gestalt psychology movement was fascinating within the time frame in which it started to develop. While other psychological movements strived to boil down psychology in almost simplistic, scientific terms, Gestalt psychology embraced complexities within the consciousness. Gestalt psychologists argued “that when we look out a window we really see trees and sky, not individual sensory elements such as brightness and hue” (Schultz & Schultz, 2011). There is more to what we experience and see that just the simple elements that make these things and experiences up.