History and Systems of Psychology

Psychology did not become accepted as a formal discipline until the late
nineteenth century. Prior to that time, even back to antiquity, questions
were directed to philosophers. Though they were versed in reasoning, logic,
and scholarship, only a few of these thinkers could deal with the complexities
of the human mind. Their answers were profound and lengthy, but
these scholars frequently left their audiences bewildered and without the solutions
they sought. Some of these logicians used the Socratic method of
reasoning; they often frustrated those who questioned them and expected
realistic replies. Inquires were redirected to the questioner, whose burden it
was to arrive at his or her own solutions.
Gustav Fechner, a nineteenth century philosopher and physicist, postulated
that the scientific method should be applied to the study of mental
processes. It was his contention that experimentation and mathematical
procedures should be used to study the human mind. From the middle of
the nineteenth century onward, many disciplines contributed to what was to
become the science of psychology. Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener
were the leaders of the structuralist school, which identified the elements
and principles of consciousness.
Other early giants of the field included William James and John Dewey.
They inaugurated the study of functionalism, which taught that psychological
knowledge should be applied to practical knowledge in fields such as education,
business law, and daily living. A champion of behaviorism, John B.
Watson, advocated that the study of psychology should concentrate on observable
behavior; he urged that objective methods be adopted. The Gestalt
movement was originated by Max Wertheimer. In concert with Kurt Koffka
and Wolfgang Köhler, he embraced the premise that the whole may be different
from its parts studied in isolation.
Psychoanalysis was developed by Sigmund Freud. He studied the unconscious
using techniques of free association, hypnosis, and body language.
The neobehaviorist model, in contrast, defended the behaviorist position
that complicated phenomena such as mental and emotional activities cannot
be observed. Love, stress, empathy, trust, and personality cannot be observed
in and of themselves. Their effects, however, are readily apparent.
Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow pioneered the area known as humanism
in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Areas of interest to humanistic psychologists
are self-actualization, creativity and transcendence, the search for meaning,
and social change. The humanists’ goals are to expand and to enrich human
lives through service to others and an increased understanding of the complexity
of people, as individuals, in groups, organizations, and communities.
In the mid-twentieth century, with the development of cognitive psychology,
mental processes such as attention, memory, and reasoning became the
focus of direct study. This approach to understanding human thought analyzes
cognitive processes into a sequence of ordered stages; each stage reflects
an important step in the processing of information. In the 1980’s and
1990’s, the fields of cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience emerged.
Psychologists began working with computer scientists, linguists, neurobiologists,
and others to develop detailed models of brain and mind relationships. 669