The Classical Schools of Psychology: Five Great Thinkers and Their Ideas

It has been said that psychology has a long past and a short history. This statement should be taken to mean that although psychology has its roots in philosophy, as a scientific discipline psychology is only a little over 120 years old. As noted earlier, the roots of psychology can be easily traced back about 2,400 years to ancient Greek philosophers. However, the beginning of scientific psychology is usually associated with the date 1S“9, the year that a German scientist named Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychological laboratory at the University of Leip2ig in Germany.

Modern psychology arose in the context of what are known as schools of psychology. The concept of a school of psychology can be easily understood by thinking of a school of fish. In this case the word schools used similarly to the word group. A school, or group, of fish follows a leader fish. So it is with a school of psychology. There is a leader and a group of followers. The school has a viewpoint and a set of important assumptions.

From a historical perspective, the first school of psychology to be established was structuralism. Its founding personality was Wilhelm Wundt (1S32—1920).

As already noted, he founded the world’s first psychological laboratory. Wundt was trainedin physiology -. the study of the functions of the body. He became interested in studying not so much the physiology of the sense organs such as the eyes and ears, but in how simple sensations associated with the sense organs combined to form what we call human consciousness.

Imagine that you are looking at an oil painting of a landscape. You perceive trees, a river, a valley, and a sky. But what are the elemental sensations, the basic building blocks, that make the visual grasp of the picture possible? What. in a word., is the “structure”' of your consciousness? Wundt trained assistants in the art of introspection, a skill characterized by paying attention not to the whole pattern of a stimulus, but to an elemental part of a stimulus. Consequently, a trained introspectionist was not supposed to say, “I see a tree."' Instead., he or she was supposed to say, “I see here a patch of green."' and “I see there a bit of brown,"' and so forth.

These bits and pieces were the psychological “atoms"' that made up the complex “molecule"' of the tree or other visual object.

Wundt’s studies of vision suggested that there are only three basic kinds of visual sensations. First, there is hue, or color. Second, there is brightness. For example, a light gray card is brighter than a dark gray card. Also, a page of print illuminated with an intense light is brighter than a page illuminated with a light of lower intensity. Third, there is saturation. This refers to the “richness” or “fullness” of a color.

No matter what visual stimulus Wundt’s subjects looked at, there were no other kinds of sensations experienced than the three identified above. Consequently, Wundt concluded that all visual experiences are structured out of these same three types of elemental experiences. Similar statements can be made about the other senses such as hearing, taste, and touch.

According to Wundt, the primary purpose of psychology is to study the structure of consciousness. By the structure of consciousness, Wundt meant the relationship of a group of sensations, a relationship that produces the complex experiences we think of as our conscious mental life. This approach to psychology has been called mntsl chemistry. As earlier indicated, the “atoms” of experience are the sensations. The “molecules” of experience are our complex perceptions.

Wundt is considered to be not only the first scientific psychologist, but also the founder of psychology as an academic discipline. Many beginning psychology students think this honor belongs to Sigmund Freud. Although Freud is the most famous psychologist who ever lived, he occupies a different place in psychology's history than does Wundt.)

William James (1842—1910). teaching at Harvard in the lS“0s, was following Wundt’s research with interest. Tames had an interest not оп1т in psvchologv, but also in physiology and eventually in philosophy. James founded a psychological laboratory at Harvard; he also authored The Principles of Psychology the first psychology textbook published in the United States. The book was published in 1S90, and this can also be taken as the date when the school of psychology known as functionalism was bom. The principal personality associated with it is James, and he is said to be the dean of American psychologists.

According to James, psychology should be more interested in how the mind functions, or works, than how it is structured. Consequently, James stressed the importance of studying such processes as thinking, memory, and attention. You wiU recall that James defined psychology as “the science of mental life.” This definition is certainly reflected in the processes just identified.

In brief, functionalism as a school of psychology asserts that that the primary purpose of psychology should be to study the functions of human consciousness, notits structures.

The German psychologist Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), like James, was also dissatisfied with Wundt’s structuralism. Wertheimer believed that Wundt’s emphasis on the importance of simple sensations as the building blocks of perceptions was misguided. According to Wertheimer, a melody, for example, is more than an aggregate of sensations. It is a pattern. And the perception of the melody depends much more on the pattern itself than on the individual notes. A melody played in the key of Fean be transposed to the key of C. and H is still the sane melody. However, all of the notes, the sensations, are different.

The general pattern that induces a complex perception is described with the German word Gestalt. Gestalt is usually translated as a “pattern.'''' a “configuration,” or an “organized whole.”

In 1910 Wertheimer published an article setting forth the basic assumptions of Gestalt psychology, and this is usually taken to be the starting date of the school.

The article reported a series of experiments using two of his friends, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler, as subjects. These two men went on to also become wellknown Gestalt psychologists. In the experiments, Wertheimer demonstrated that the perception of motion can take place if stationary stimuli are presented as a series of events separated by an optimal interval of time. This sounds complicated. However, in practice it’s simple enough. If you flip at just the right speed through a special kind of cartoon book, you can perceive motion as the series of still pictures flicker by. Perceiving motion in a motion picture is the same thing. At the level of sensation, you are being presented with a series of still slides. At the level of perception, you are experiencing motion. The presence of motion can’t be explained by the nature of the sensations. Consequently, it must be the pattern of presentation, or the Gestalt, that is inducing the perceived motion.

It became the goal of Gestalt psychology to study the effects that various Gestalten (the plural of Gestalt) have on thinking and perception. Kohler’s research related Gestalt principles to insight learning.

In brief. Gestalt psychology asserts that patterns, or configurations, of stimuli have a powerful effect on how we think and perceive the world around us.

Returning to the United States., behaviorism is a fourth classical school of psychology. Its founding personality is John Б. Watson (18“S—1958). A wave of enthusiasm for Watson’s ideas swept him to the presidency of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1915, and this can be taken as the starting date for behaviorism. Doing research first at the University of Chicago and then at Johns Hopkins University, Watson came to the conclusion that psychology was placing too much emphasis on consciousness. In fact, he asserted that psychology is not a mental science at all. The “mind” is a mushy, difScult-to-deSne concept. It can’t be studied by science because it can’t be observed. Only you can know what’s going on in your mind. If I say I’m studying your mind., according to Watson, it’s only guesswork.

Consequently, Watson asserted that the purpose of psychology should be to study behaiior itself, not the mind or consciousness. Some critics of Watson say that he denied the very existence of consciousness. Others assert Watson was primarily saying that references to the consciousness, or mental life, of a subject don’t provide solid explanations of behavior. In either event. Watson’s view is today thought to be somewhat extreme and is referred to as radical behaviorism, a psychology that doesn’t employ consciousness as an important concept.

Behaviorism has been very influential in American psychology. It inspired a osvcholopist named T. F. Skinner to studr the orocess of learning. Skinner in time became the most famous behaviorist of the twentieth century.

In order to identify a fifth classical school of psychology, it is necessary to return to the European continent, specifically to Austria; the school is psychoanalysis. The father of psychoanalysis is SigmundFreud (1856—1939). Freud was a medical doctor with a specialty in neurology. His findings and conclusions are based primarily on his work with patients. Early in his career he concluded that a large number of people with neurological symptoms such as paralysis, a numb feeling in a hand or foot, complete or partial blindness, chronic headaches, and similar complaints had no organic pathology. They were not biologically sick. Instead their symptoms were produced by intense emotional conflicts.

Freud’s original work was done with a colleague named Josef Breuer (1842—1925). Breuer and Freud collaborated on the book Studies он Hysteria.

Published in 1895, it is the first book written on psychoanalysis. This can also be taken to be the starting date for the school. After the publication of this first book.

Freud went on alone without Breuer: it was a number of years before he worked again with colleagues.

The word hysteria is a diagnostic label. It used to be assigned to a patient if he or she was experiencing neurological symptoms that were thought to be imaginary in nature. The patient is not malingering. He or she believes that the symptoms are real. Today this is a well-recognized disorder., and is called a somatoform disorder, conversion type. This simply means that an emotional problem such as chronic anxiety has converted itself to a bodily expression. (The Greek word soma means "body.”)

In order to explain chronic emotional suffering. Freud asserted that human beings have an unconscious mental life. This is the principal assumption of psychoanalysis. No other assumption or assertion that it makes is nearly as important. The unconscious mental level is created by a defense mechanism called repression.

Its aim is to protect the ego against psychological threats, information that wiU disturb its integrity. (The ego is the “I” of the personality, the center of the self.) The kind of mental information repressed tends to fall into three primary categories: (1) painful childhood memories, (2) forbidden sexual wishes, and (3) forbidden aggressive wishes.

Psychoanalysis is not only a school of psychology, but also a method of therapy. Freud believed that by helping a patient explore the contents of the unconscious mental level, he or she could obtain a measure of freedom from emotional suffering. It is important to note that of the five classical schools of psychology, psychoanalysis is the only one that made it an aim to improve the individual’s mental health.

Ways of Approaching the Study of Behavior: