Historical Forces that shaped American psychology - Research Paper Example

? Historical Forces that Shaped American Psychology Historical Forces that Shaped American Psychology The clinical applications of psychology in modern times have been shaped by numerous forces that allow it to accommodate differences between and among people (Matsumoto, 2001). Movements such as the psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavioral, humanistic-existential, and multicultural movements are influential in the sense that the thought patterns of not just patients but also of the majority of people in general can be explained. For this paper, two theorists from two schools of psychological thought are given emphasis due to their works that led to advances from traditional psychoanalytic approaches to the psychology that the U.S. is familiar with today. B.F. Skinner is one of the earliest proponents of behavioral approaches in psychology, and he was able to map the learning process through operant conditioning experiments, resulting to the advancement of psychology into a quantitative-research field (Plante, 2010). D. W. Sue on the other hand was able to raise the need for psychology to be able to address the concerns of people from various cultural backgrounds. By writing the groundbreaking paper about multicultural psychology, new possibilities of psychology being applicable to all people from all walks of life was possible (Murphy & Dillon, 2010). Behavioral and Cognitive Movement Burrhus Frederick Skinner is known as one of the most influential and recognized psychologists in the field of behavioral and cognitive psychology. He is also one of the most misrepresented and most misunderstood due to his controversial ideas with regards to the process of learning and behavior and the interaction of genes and heredity, as seen in animals (Catania & Harnad, 1988). He believes that changing human behavior would not need any strong connection between physics, biology or technology, and that the mindset of a person would ultimately be changed by his or her experiences, folk wisdom and rules of thumb (Skinner, 1971). Such ideas came from the dissatisfaction of some psychologists who were relying solely on medical and psychodynamic approaches of therapy, and were trying to find new ways of understanding human behavior as well as diagnosing and treating mental illnesses (Plante, 2010). Also, Skinner believes that behavior is by far much easier to measure than the other components of a person’s personality such as the id or other internal conflicts, and the former can be easily quantified through frequency of occurrences (Nevid, 2012). Skinner’s efforts of detailing the sequential process of behavior-formation made it possible to explain how an individual or an organism’s responses to certain events came about. The numerical data in experiments that study behavioral response were able to introduce quantitative analysis in psychology which was a novel psychological approach in the 1950’s. Thus the application of statistics and defined concepts makes behavioral approaches a bit more scientific than the psychodynamic approach that initially was prevailing in the psychological community (Plante, 2010). Due to the nature of living organisms of reacting to external stimuli, learning several life-saving behaviors such as reflexes would keep the organism away from danger and extend its lifespan (Skinner, 1971). Exercising such forms of freedom is an inherent trait, and maybe even primitive. However, in operant conditioning, behaviors are learned as a consequence of doing or not doing something, and through repetition an organism would be able to learn actions that would resort in positive outcomes. Behavioral psychology approaches could help in explaining why the personalities of individuals in a given population are the results of the influences of keeping up with mainstream culture, as well as in order to avoid being ostracized by others. Such actions show a human-level of self-preservation, wherein the approval of most people would be the stimuli for an individual to respond accordingly. Self-preservation is a strong motivation in doing certain behaviors, as exemplified by people following the law to avoid being incarcerated or being sentenced to death. The same could also be seen in the case of younger people, who are much prone to follow current trends in just about everything in order to prevent being alienated by their peers. In another case, moving away from stimuli or aversion is done in order to attain freedom and regain self-preservation. Some individuals would simply move away from whatever gives them negative treatment, as exemplified by those who escape from slavery, those who leave home or their church, or even flee from their own country (Skinner, 1971). In such cases, any participant would be able to experience freedom for a limited amount of time. The examples were able to show that conditioning greatly affects humans to start behaving the way they do, and such an idea is very useful in order to restructure their behaviors into something that is more positive. Counseling sessions are able to confirm how an individual can be conditioned by creating certain stimuli that would entail the participants to behave in ways as prescribed by their respective psychiatrists. Since each individual is unique, psychiatrists or counselors could modify their therapeutic approaches such as integrating positive experiences, behavioral modification techniques etc. to elicit favorable responses from patients, especially those that have high chances of being repeated (O'Donohue & Fisher, 2009). However, at times some patients have a tendency to avert counseling due to behaviors that are ingrained in their minds. This would make it hard for their therapist to provide a possible treatment method for patients. In order to successfully treat patients, the most effective therapies must all be assessed, and the best match for the patient’s needs be implemented (Nevid, 2012). Patients such as those under drug-rehabilitation as well as those with other underlying disorders are prone to such treatment aversions, causing them to undergo relapse or even terminating treatment altogether. In order to prevent such events to happen, the therapist must be attuned to their patient, as well as to make the appropriate steps that would be easily absorbed and processed by said patient (O'Donohue & Fisher, 2009). Multicultural Movement Numerous cultures have been entering the U.S. for a very long time, which exposes the general population to different ideas from their own. However, when it comes to dealing with psychiatric patients with different cultural backgrounds, much is still needed to be done, especially when the majority of the population is used to a single culture that is easily understood by many. The need for a multicultural approach is relevant in order to address the needs of other members of the population that come from other cultures other that what is known to be common to many, which is typically exemplified in prevailing mass media output. Such a mix is needed because psychology and culture would be hard to differentiate and separated from each other (Miller, 1997). However, the presence of unconscious biases within a person can greatly affect his or her attitudes or beliefs toward those they are most unlike with, and the inherence of such could prove to be detrimental in multicultural counseling (Suzuki, Casas, Alexander, & Ponterotto, 2009). Due to racism being deeply integrated in the American culture, much work would be needed in order to greatly increase the tolerance and acceptance of most of the white population to outside influences, and using the multicultural approach this can be achieved. Added to the problem of a lack of other perspectives is that most of the available resources in psychology are mostly of European origin and are therefore much more applicable to European groups and not to other racial groups (Matsumoto, 2001). A need for other approaches that address the needs of people from other cultures becomes apparent, and through the work of one of the strongest influences in the advancement of multicultural psychology such problems now have solutions. Derald Wing Sue is one of the pioneers in the field of multicultural psychology and counseling. He believes that there is a strong shift towards the increase of “persons of color” in the labor force, and he estimates that between the years 2030 and 2050 people of color would constitute the majority of the whole population, thus the strong need to address multicultural psychological issues of people from various races (Sue, 2005). He was one of the initiators of the multicultural psychological movement, which addresses not only the differences based on the usual demographic profiles of patients, but also their cultural, racial and ethnic background as well. A position paper by Sue and colleagues in 1982 became the blueprint of multicultural approaches in psychology, and some parts were officially authorized by the American Psychological Association (APA) to become the Multicultural Guidelines on Education and Training, Research, Practice and Organizational Development for Psychologists (APA, 2002 cited in Clauss-Ehlers, 2010). The identified specific competencies for multicultural counseling practice was put into action because of the identification of several factors that made American psychology seemingly ethnocentric, monocultural, biased against women and other culturally different groups (Fouad, et al., 1998).Sue, along with his colleagues’ efforts as well as their novel multicultural approaches was able to address the new obligation of psychologists to have an extrapersonal level of cultural competence, involving the awareness of counselors to their own biases, values and assumptions, being able to understand the worldwide view of clients from different cultures, and being able to develop the appropriate interventions and techniques (Clauss-Ehlers, 2010). Ethnicity and race are always used interchangeably despite actual differences, and due to numerous attributes of various races and cultures, many people from minority groups become confused in identifying who they really are (Fouad, et al., 1998). Such confusion could result in either trying to deny one’s own identity or going various lengths to show their chosen identities. However, if such people are pressed into following the midstream cultures, a sense of oppression in the minority group might build up, and may cause even more problems in the long run, such as acts of violence against the perceived oppressors. A noticeable increase in minority groups in the past few decades could attest to the needs of having a multicultural approach in clinical settings, however much difficulty maybe encountered due to the lack of focus to cross-cultural psychology in mainstream America (Matsumoto, 2001). This leads to a rise in the importance of being open-minded, thus acquiring knowledge and flexible skills in dealing with patients of other cultural backgrounds should be a strength that counselors and psychiatrists should try to build up on, especially if they have a desire to be as effective as they are in different scenarios involving people from various cultural backgrounds (Plante, 2010). In addition to flexibilities and openness, is highly relevant that a counselor or a pshychiatrist should have a consideration of the cultural legacies of the minority groups such as genocide, slavery, conquest and discrimination in order to understand the psychological processes that these people are undergoing (Leong, et al., 2002). Some Reflections In my opinion, the current culture in modern society at present breeds people believing in survival-of-the-fittest, which in turn makes the people put self-preservation above all aspects of life. For example, because school teachers resort to rewards and punishment, students strive to get good grades, regardless of whether it is considered proper or not. In the workplace, the rewards being given to employees are enough reasons to push them to resort to tactics in order to avoid punishments such as demotion or termination of work. In both examples, an extreme kind of self-preservation shows how it strips a person of his or her values. Other people that get affected by such actions get affected both physically and emotionally, which could wreak havoc to their psyche. While the present culture could give numerous examples of behavioral concepts, some work is still needed to be done with regards to the multicultural approach of psychology. Most of the readings I have seen are traditional psychological approaches that tend to minimize the importance of factors such as ethnicity or race, and these could create negative results with a significant impact to people. The European-American theories, concepts and methodologies as the bases of American psychology did not properly address the needs of other cultural minorities, as seen in the absences of different cultures being portrayed in psychology books (Matsumoto, 2001). Thus the lack of resources for multicultural counselors spells a certain need to re-evaluate the existing practices in psychology as a whole. In line with this idea, there is a need for a strong implementation of multicultural counseling since it is expected that by the year 2050, psychiatrists would be dealing with numerous and diverse cultures due to the expansion of the number of minority groups in the country (Hansen, Rockwell, & Greene, 2000). The importance of being able to relate to different cultures is more relevant than even before, and with such an increase expected to occur within the next half-century, much more focus on diversity in cultures must be put into action. The culture a certain person is born into could greatly influence his or her thoughts, as well as the sense of what is right or wrong. If a person is not careful and sensitive about the freedom of expressing another’s culture, this person’s strong bias against such differences could result to conflicts between the two parties. This is not what psychologists should have as a mindset, but rather an open-minded one that is able to accept people from all walks of life. I believe that by being able to accept such forms of diversity, psychologists can extend their capacity to help beyond people of their own culture. It cannot be helped that the influx of numerous cultures from across the globe would eventually become the norm, and in due time the country would become a large jigsaw puzzle consisting of different cultures that learn how to live in harmony with the other pieces of the puzzle. I find this idea of the eventual homogeneity of various cultures highly plausible in the next half-century. The passive influx of other cultures is constantly happening across the globe, and even without the immigration of people physically into another area it is very likely to occur in these modern times. Mass media such as television and internet are widely available, and due to the relative ease in accessing such forms of connections, there would still be avenues for people to be able to get acquainted with ideas that vary greatly from their own. Being able to accept the ideas from other cultures and undertaking a tolerance for those who think different would be a boon, and this in return could result in lesser conflicts between different cultures. Due to the rapid and constant exchanges in cultures and beliefs, psychology itself must also be adaptable to such changes, and being open to intercultural exchanges as factors that can affect the psychological well-beings of different kinds of people should become one of the tenets of the evolving field of psychology. Psychology as a whole has come a long way from explaining the events surrounding the human psyche. Most of the psychological forces that shaped American psychology were the traditional approaches formulated by different schools of thought more than 50 years ago. The behavioral approach in psychology as explained by B.F. Skinner is relatively easy to explain due to the quantitative experiments done initially by and those that followed his train of thought. However, the multicultural approach as a force of psychology is comparatively new and under-implemented, mainly due to the relatively small pool of knowledge that is being collected on its behalf. One of its theorists, D.W. Sue had to take long strides in order to make it happen since most ideas in psychology do not address the issues of people from different cultural backgrounds. This can be attributed to the fact that most of the psychological concepts that can be read in most books and journals cater mostly to the majority of Americans, that is, those with European descent. Also, there is still much to be done in terms of making psychologists being more open-minded and non-judgmental when dealing with patients from other cultural backgrounds, especially those which seem to have biases towards patients with a multicultural backgrond. Due to the eventual upsurge of numerous people from a wide range of cultural backgrounds and ethnicity, I firmly believe that there is an impending need to fully equip most, if not all psychologists and counselors with various strategies that could aid them in helping other people in need of help with their psychological well-being. This new approach in counseling is also important to those who are not able to find a counselor with which they share similarities with, such as race, culture, or beliefs. Therefore, psychology as a whole must be open to the diverse nature of human beings, for it to be called the study of the human mind. With this in light, being open to changes as well as to other ideas could give a new meaning to the field of psychology, and this in turn could make it a much more inclusive discipline that could change the lives of the people it lends its service to. References Catania, A., & Harnad, S. (1988). The Selection of Behavior: The Operant Behaviorism of B. F. Skinner: Comments and Consequences. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Clauss-Ehlers, C. (2010). Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, Volume 2. New York, NY: Springer Science+Business Media. Fouad, N., Manese, J., Carter, R., Casas, J., Ivey, A., Sue, D., . . . Ponterotto, J. (1998). Multicultural Counseling Competencies: Individual and Organizational Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hansen, N., Rockwell, F., & Greene, A. (2000). Multicultural competence: criteria and case examples. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 31 (6): 652-660. Matsumoto, D. (2001). The Handbook of Culture and Psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Miller, J. (1997). Theoretical issues in cultural psychology. In J. Berry, Y. Poortinga, & J. Pandey, Handbook of Cross-cultural Psychology: Theory and method (pp. 85-128). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Murphy, B., & Dillon, C. (2010). Interviewing in Action in a Multicultural World. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. Nevid, J. (2012). Psychology: Concepts and Applications (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. O'Donohue, W., & Fisher, J. (2009). General Principles and Empirically Supported Techniques of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Plante, T. (2010). Contemporary Clinical Psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Skinner, B. (1971). Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Sue, D. (2005). Multicultural Social Work Practice. Hoboken, NJ.: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Suzuki, L., Casas, J., Alexander, C., & Ponterotto, J. (2009). Handbook of Multicultural Counseling. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Read More