History of psychology

Psychodynamic psychology is a clinical viewpoint emphasizing the understanding of mental disorders in terms of unconscious needs, desires, memories, and conflicts

Humanistic psychology is a clinical viewpoint emphasizing human ability, growth, potential, and free will.

Wundt and his co-workers recorded their own conscious thoughts and broke them down into images, sensations and feelings. This was known as functionalism.

The empiricists study behaviour via careful observations and scientifically based research

The biological approach is a psychological perspective emphasizing mental processes, such as learning, memory, perception, and thinking, as forms of information processing

Following the Cognitive Revolution of the 1960s, the study of mental processes is no longer seen as a highly scientific area within psychology.

Which psychological perspective dominated psychology for 5 decades? Particularly in America.

Watson proposed that a truly scientific psychology should only study things that could be observed and measured, which led to the behaviourist approach.

The biological approach makes use of experimental data. Recent advances in technology mean that imaging techniques investigate physiological processes such as 'live' activity in the brain.

Watson and Skinner brought methods from the natural sciences into psychology such as controlled lab experiments.

Psychology is a medical specialty dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders

John B. Watson was critical of introspection as it produced subjective (biased) data and could not establish general laws.

The first psychological laboratory was opened by Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig, Germany in 1879.

Humanism is a clinical viewpoint emphasizing the understanding of mental disorders in terms of unconscious needs, desires, memories, and conflicts

cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field emphasizing brain activity as information processing, involves cognitive psychology, neurology, biology, computer science, linguistics, and specialists from other fields who are interested in the connection between mental processes and the brain

Wundt's introspection work created a new, scientific psychology now distinct from philosophy.

Behaviourism is a historical school (as well as a modern perspective) that has sought to make psychology an objective science focused only on behaviour-to the exclusion of mental processes

The cognitive approach studies mental processes, such as learning, memory, perception, and thinking, as forms of information processing.

The biological approach searches for the causes of behaviour in the functioning of genes, the brain and nervous system, and the endocrine system

Functionalism = A historical school of psychology devoted to uncovering the basic structures that make up mind and thought.