Word Count - Summary History And Systems Of Psychology PDF

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Summary

Notes and summaries from a smattering of different subjects in the class. ...

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Voluntarism: Founded by Wilhelm Wundt, Voluntarism focused on the concept of will as it was reflected in attention and volition. He stressed that will was the central concept in terms of which all of the major problems in psychology must be understood. It was also the first school of psychology formed. Voluntarism was primarily influenced by German Idealism due to Wundt's background. Structuralism: Founded by Titchener, Structuralism's main goal was to describe the structure of the mind. It was primarily influenced by Associationism. Functionalism: Without a well recognized leader, Functionalism was mainly founded in order to oppose structuralism. Functionalism was primarily influenced by German Materialism. Behaviorism: Based on the idea that all behavior is learned based on conditioning, behaviorism was primarily influenced by Mechanism Gestalt psychology: Based on the idea that the German word for "whole' is Gestalt, this school of psychology came about because of a need for introspection. Gestalt psychology was also primarily influenced by Mechanism.

If I could choose one person to eliminate from the history of psychology, thus pushing the science farther back into the dark ages, I would of course choose Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt did an incredible amount of work in order to make psychology stand out as it's own science. Apart from starting the first psychology lab, he was the first to refer to himself as a psychologist. He was the founder of voluntarism, which influenced just about every ism after him, and he was also an extremely prolific publisher of his own work, which he wrote in large volumes. Eradicating Wundt would greatly deter the progression of Psychology as a science.

Psychology is a mixture of science and philosophy. This was why we spent half of this class learning about philosophers. But it also is a science because of the fact that it is our brains that turns our bodies into machines of questioning and philosophy. It's an awkward cross road for exact classification, but that's just the way it's become. Certain schools of psychology are unquestionably scientific, such as Behaviorism. Based on the idea that human's actions can be learned due to conditioning and environment there is an empirical way to study human psychology definitively. One school of psychology that leans more to the philosophical side, and which can't be scientifically backed is that of Voluntarism. Due to the fact that there is no scientific way of accurately measuring will, this school of psychology is a little more difficult to classify as scientific.

Behaviorism vs. Cognitive Psychology: Behaviorism focuses primarily on the idea that man is a product of his history and environment. Cognitivism focuses on the idea that man is a product of the way he thinks. That is not to say, though, that Behaviorist didn't factor thought process into the equation of a humans environment, but they believed it to be a behavior while Cognitivists believed it wasn't. Essentially they believed that thought process influenced behavior and therefore couldn't be a behavior.

Psychoanalysis vs. Humanistic Psychology: Psychoanalysts focused primarily on the idea that man is a product of his early childhood and subconscious drives. Humanists focus is primarily on one's drive towards self-actualization and

promotes creativity and positive free-will. The difference between these two schools of psychology is that Psychoanalysis focuses on what we have blocked out from our lives and how we can bring forth what we have stored in our subconscious in order to confront and conquer it, while Humanists believe we must focus on the here and now, believing in the good of others and ourselves....