Foundational Theorists - Research Paper Example

He is the main foundational theorist without question—even if some of his ideas today seem somewhat controversial and difficult to agree with. The great Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freund was very influential. He came from the psychoanalytical school (which he founded). He worked hard to deconstruct what up until that point had been considered the unitary personality or identity of individuals. Freud’s emphasis on subjectivity, the unconscious, and perspective powerfully effected artists and writers of the period.

Theorists in the psychoanalytic school frequently believed that people had a fractured identity, creating a multiplicity of perspectives and views on the world, none of which was especially better than the other. In a way this is a legacy of Freud’s ideas about subjectivity. A somewhat contrary psychological school is Behaviouralism and its founding theorist was B.F. Skinner. This idea holds that psychologists who talk too much about philosophical issues lose sight of what science can prove.

Skinner wanted to focus on observable data rather than people’s secret thoughts about things. These theorists that people acted in certain ways because they were conditioned to do so and had less free will than believed. A good example of a behaviourist experiment involves Pavlov’s dogs—these were dogs that were trained to salivate at the sound of a ringing bell. A third important school of psychology is Humanism. These theorists, led by Abraham Maslow, didn’t like what they saw in the literary, over philosophical aspect of psychoanalysis or in the rigid scientific way of doing things in behavioualism.

They wanted to take a more common sense approach and look at what things were important to people. They showed that there were many different needs people had, and that if these needs were met, then people would be happy. A fourth school of psychology that could be said to precede all of the theories above