The Main Perspectives of Psychology - Essay Example

PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Corse College The scientific study of human and animal behaviour with the main objective of finding out why they behave in certain ways is known as psychology. To come to any conclusion just like any other scientific subjects, psychological conclusions and theories are based mainly on research and practical applications. Most people however find it hard to differentiate psychology from psychiatry. It is however important to note that these are two independent disciplines and should never be taken as one. Psychiatry is the medicine branch that is dedicated to the treatment of mental disorders. Psychology has been very important in explaining different human and animal behaviour as well as solving major medical problems that relate to behaviour. There are a lot other subjects that border psychology e.g. artificial intelligence, anthropology, physiology and many more. These subjects are very crucial to understanding psychology and in most instances go hand in hand with psychology. Psychology dates back to the ancient Greek, however records also exist of psychological study among the Egyptians. Before the 1800’s psychology was considered to be part of philosophy but after this period of time, the field became a subject of its own. After this separation, various research and experiments have been carried out in order to come up with conclusions relevant to psychological theories. Many people would confuse that psychology is an old subject. However as a science, psychology is just 100 years old. The main major question that most people ask is why it took so long for this particular science to be realized. The answer is that most people never believed that the mind could be studied rather they believed that the mind could be used to predict the future through previous actions that were performed in the past. There was no technology to aid in the study of the mind as well as there was no clear way to separate speculations from the real science. Psychology as a science came out from philosophy as well as physiology. During the early stages of psychology, physiologists studied the eye receptors as well as the signals of the eye. After its emergence, there were different people coming up with different theories and ideas about the way that the human mind worked. At this particular time, less time was dedicated to the study of animal behaviour as few people believed that human and animal behaviour had some similar characteristics. However after some research, many psychologists came to the realization that there were many similarities between animal and human behaviour. In the later years after the invention of contemporary psychology, there came various approaches that could be used to view psychology. These approaches or views are also known as the perspectives and include; certain assumptions that are generally made. The major perspectives to psychology can be grouped into three major parts. These are the behaviourism, psychodynamics, and humanism. These major perspectives have been used to greatly explain theories behind psychology as well as major stepping stone to understanding psychology. Behaviourism This term was first used by John B Watson. He came up with theories that suggested that human behaviour could be trained, measured and changed with proper knowledge and tools. In 1913, he published a book on behaviourism that later led to the establishment of the term behaviourism. Various thinkers and psychologists have contributed greatly to behaviourism. They include; Watson, Pavlov, Thorndike, and Hull. Behaviourism as a perspective or view of psychology believes that all the human as well as animal behaviour are acquired through conditioning. This conditioning comes up due to the individual’s interaction with the environment. Most of the people who have studied and believe in behaviourism suggest that people respond to the environment based on how they interact with the environment and this determines their behaviour. Behaviourism suggests that only behaviours that can be observed should be studied. This is because other internal states such as emotions and cognitions are too complex and are in away too subjective. Conditioning in behaviourism can be classified into two major categories. 1. Classical conditioning. This is a behaviour training technique in which various neutral stimuli are made to evoke a particular stimulus and the behaviour of the stimulus to these stimulus are recorded and various conclusion are made. These conclusions then are used to draw the nature of the behaviour of human behaviour and how different stimuli influence it. 2. Operant conditioning. This is the type of study where rewards and punishments are made for bad and good behaviours respectively. This is then used to draw various conclusions based on the resultant behaviour of the individual. During this operation, there are set standards that suggest what is considered good and bad behaviour. In most cases, this type of conditioning is done so as to discourage bad behaviour and to encourage one to acquire good behaviour. In an experiment to learn how classical conditioning happened, Pavlov noticed that his dog salivated just moments before presenting her with food and just after noticing food. He then decided to change this by ringing a bell just before delivering the food to the dog. After sometime, the dog started salivating just after hearing the bell. He concluded that this was a case of classical conditioning as the dog had learnt through the environment to associate the bell with food. This shows that changes in the environment lead to changes in behaviour. In the Thorndike’s research, Thorndike placed a cat in a box and watched as the cat searched for different paths that could lead him out of the box. After several attempts, the cat finally came out after solving the puzzle. The conclusion of this experiment was that animals learnt through trial and error and that animals solve different problems through trying severally and choosing those that got the best results. The major disadvantage of behaviourism is that it assumes that at birth we are all blank and that everything that we know comes from our interaction with the environment. The second disadvantages are that most theories are based on animals and not humans. The major advantage over other perspectives is the fact that most of the result of behaviourism is experiment based. Psychodynamic The theories of psychodynamic can be traced back to the works of Sigmund Freud. These particular psychologists emphasized the importance of the unconscious mental forces in the study of the human behaviour. In his day to day experiments in a psychiatric hospital, Sigmund was able to come across various challenges that he observed and made various recordings. With this in mind, he came up with the technique of free association. This type of therapy is given especially to stress people. They are told to relax down in a sleeping position after which they are told to say everything that come to their mind. They have to say these things no matter how trivial or strange the things in mind may be. With this type of method, he found out that most patients were able to revive very painful memories out of their minds. These memories would go back to long periods of times including instances when they were young. With this observation repeating itself, he came up with a conclusion that the mind was like an iceberg. The mind could hide various things for a long time but with free association, these things would all be let out from the subconscious mind. He made a conclusion that the human mind had come up with ways to adapt to various changes and one of the ways was to retrieve information that would affect a person and store it in the subconscious mind (Gross, 2003). The part of the information that was available to the conscious mind is like the part of the iceberg that can be seen and which floats on the surface. There is also the preconscious that contains some information that a person can voluntarily bring to reality without having to undergo certain steps. The unconscious part of the mind contains thoughts and feelings that have been blocked from a person and they cannot willingly remove these thoughts from the mind. In his research, Freud came up with psychoanalysis. This was a technique that could be used to treat mental disorders by looking at the unconscious mind and coming up with a solution on how to fix it. The first research used to explain psychoanalysis in this paper is the research done by Freud on little Hans and his fear of white horses. After his meeting with Freud, the expert asked the young boy the kind of horses that he feared most. The boy replied that he feared white horses with black mouth. This was the exact resemblance of his father. After noticing the two having some minor disagreement, Freud concluded that little Hans was afraid of his father. His main conclusion was that little Hans was afraid that his father would cut off his penis for admiring his mother. This meant that this part of information was hidden in the part of his mind where he could not access. In the Wolfman case, Wolfman told Freud the dream he had at one point. In the dream, he was in his bed and suddenly the bed stood and faced the window which opened and he saw some wolves sited on the row of walnut trees. The wolves were white in colour and looked like they were about to eat him and so he screamed and his nurse came to the rescue. Freud concluded that the dream was an interpretation of an event when Wolfman had seen his parents having sex. This hurtful information was therefore stored in his unconscious mind so as not to hurt him in future. The major disadvantage of psychodynamics is the fact that it is pessimistic. It always assumes the worst and not the best unlike humanism which believes that all people are good unless something makes them to go outside this norm. The major advantage over other perspectives is that the method has been able to produce the best treatment results thus is one of the most successful perspectives. Humanism After the development of psychoanalysis and behaviourism, various thinkers started to realize that the two views on psychology focussed more on emotions that were tragic and did not consider personal choices in their research. To these psychologists, personal choices were very relevant to the determination of the behaviour of a person. Different choices that we make determine our behaviour. Behaviour is therefore a result of personal choices. Behaviourism and psychoanalysis approaches were therefore pessimistic and humanists felt that another approach was necessary. With this, they came up with a psychology approach which focussed more on the potential of an individual and how self actualization affected the behaviour of a person. Humanists believe that everyone is good irrespective of where they come from or what they do. However, they conclude that mental and social problems that may at times be considered to be bad may arise from deviations from this natural belief. In the late 1950, there was a meeting to come up with a professional organization that would be devoted to supporting a more humanistic approach to psychology. It was agreed that various topics key of them being self actualization were to be set as the major theme for this approach to psychology. In 1961 as a result of this meeting, the American association for humanistic psychology was formed. Humanists believed that with this new field, various disorders could be explained as well as help in the correction of the human behaviour (Gross, 2003). Maslow in his research explains that humans have a hierarchy of needs that they have to follow sequentially and meet the highest as they go down to the least with the last priority. The first need that one has to meet is the need of self actualisation. After this need is met, knowledge and understanding is the next need that has to be given to a man before he can move to the other needs. This perspective remains one of the most used and tested perspective in psychology thereby having an advantage over the other perspectives. The disadvantages over other perspectives are its inability to be tested scientifically. Bibliography GROSS, R. D., & GROSS, R. D. (2003). Great psychology an introduction. London, Hodder & Stoughton. Read More