Two First Schools of Psychology Essay

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Structuralsim vs. Functionalism

The structuralist/functionalist debate in the field of psychology focuses on the framework that psychological approaches should take. In the pioneer days of psychology, scholars argued whether one should take a structuralist or a functionalist approach to interpreting how the mind works. The essence of structuralism was promoted by Wilhelm Wundt in Germany and his pupil, Edward Titchener, is the man who gave the approach its name when he brought its school to America. In competition with Titchener's "structuralism," however, was "functionalism," which grew out of the American response to the German ideas. Functionalism was rooted in the ideas of Darwin and William James, the American philosopher.

The debates between the two schools were heated in spite of calls for a reconciliation between the two, as some saw them as both dealing primarily with the same problem: the conscious self (Chalkins, 1906). The advocates of the two schools, however, dismissed one another: Wundt decried functionalism as "beautiful literature" (Fancher, 1996), and James decried structuralism as "plenty of school, but no thought" (James, 1904). Neither felt the other adequately dealt in a scientific way with the mysteries of the mind.

The two psychology schools were similar and different, in actuality. Structuralism was concerned with the structure of the mind, and what its supporters identified as the basic building blocks of the thought process.

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Functionalism was also concerned with the mind's thought process, but it approached the subject by emphasizing the purpose of the human mind and used a systematic method for disclosing this information. Structuralists wanted to identify the framework, the architecture, the support beams, etc. Functionalists were concerned with the plumbing, how and why it worked.

Structuralism was a very subjective approach because it relied heavily on what Wundt called introspection -- that is the effort of the patient to unfold the mystery of the mind. Introspection reveled a lot about an individual, but it was not a reliable method for uncovering systematic data that could be used categorically to define and understand the conception of the mind overall. Also, the emphasis on the internal workings of the mind, which were based solely on introspection, could not be externally verified: one simply had to take the patient's word for it. Nonetheless, although structuralism did not have a lasting legacy in its own right, it did play a role in the development of experimental psychology. Thus, while much of psychology today relates to the behaviorism that grew out of the functionalist school, some areas of psychology still carry on the main principle….....

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