chapter 1: history and approaches

wave one: introspection

• the study of psychology is as old as our species
• scientifically, studying psychology seriously dates back to 1879
• that year, Wilhelm Wundt set up the first psychological laboratory
• Wundt would ask his test subjects to record their reactions to events that cause certain behaviors, otherwise known as stimuli
• Wundt created the idea of structuralism, which was the idea that the mind operates by combining subjective emotions and objective sensations
• 1890 - William James published the first psychology textbook
• James created the theory of functionalism and examined how structures, which Wundt identified, had function in our lives
• Mary Whiton Calkins - studied with William James and became president of the APA
• Margaret Floy Washburn - the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in psychology
• G. Stanley Hall - focused on the study of child development and was the first president of the APA
• introspective theories helped establish the science of psychology

wave two: gestalt psychology

• gestalt psychologists would argue against human thought and behavior being different structures
• gestalt psychology examines someone’s whole experience
• they would argue saying that the whole experience is more than the sum of the parts in the experience
  • analogy: painting is seen as just points of color, but the experience is more than that
• therapists would use this by examining both the client’s difficulty and the context in which this difficulty occurs

wave three: psychoanalysis

• Sigmund Freud created the psychoanalytic theory
• he discovered the unconscious mind, which we don’t have control over, but it can control how we think and behave
• he thought this formed through repression, which is where events and feelings cause so much anxiety/tension that the conscious mind can’t deal with then
• Freud would use dream analysis, word association, and other techniques to examine this, but was often criticized for being unscientific

wave four: behaviorism

• John Watson declared that for psychology to be a science, we should only use observable phenomena which eliminates the concept of the unconscious mind, as it is unobservable
• behaviorists believe that psychologists should only look at behavior and causes of behavior, or stimuli (environmental events) and responses (physical reactions)
• B.F. Skinner - another behaviorist who added the idea of reinforcement which is environmental stimuli that either encourage or discourage responses

wave five: multiple perspectives

• there is no one way to think of human thought and behavior in today’s age
• psychologists call themselves eclectic, which is using multiple perspectives

humanist perspective

• humanists would stress the idea of individual choice and free will. some humanists could include Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
• deterministic behaviorists think that behaviors were caused by past events, whereas humanists believe that we choose our behaviors
• this can’t be easily tested with the scientific method but it does assist therapists in aiding clients

psychoanalytic perspective

• psychologists using this perspective believe that the unconscious mind controls much of our thought and actions
• psychoanalysts would try to find impulses or memories that were pushed into the unconscious mind because of repression
• this perspective thinks that to fully understand human thought and behavior, we should examine the unconscious mind through various psychoanalytic techniques

biopsychology (or neuroscience) perspective

• biopsychologists believe that human thought and behavior are caused by biological processes
• the reaction could be caused by genes, hormones, and/or neurotransmitters in the brain

evolutionary (or Darwinian) perspective

• evolutionary psychologists use natural selection to examine human thoughts and actions
• some psychological traits could be beneficial for survival and therefore passed down to the next generation
• this is based on Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection

behavioral perspective

• behaviorists look at observable behaviors and what reactions could occur from these behaviors
• a behaviorist would look at environmental factors at how a behavior occurred

cognitive perspective

• cognitive psychologists examine human thought and behavior through how we interpret, process, and remember environmental events
• a cognitive psychologist would explain how a person behaves the way they do through how they interpret social situations

social-cultural (or sociocultural) perspective

• social-cultural psychologists look at thought and behavior through how people are affected by their culture
• a person being influenced by their cultural norms would help a social-cultural psychologist explain behaviors

biopsychosocial perspective

• this perspective implements biological, psychological, and social factors.
• a biopsychosocial psychological could agree with a cognitive psychologist, but would bring up the biological and psychological aspects

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