Waves and Schools are not real. They are metaphors. Waves and Schools are fads. They are waves of interest and schools of thought. There are four waves and seven schools. They overlap because they are just different ways of viewing the same thing.
The easiest way for me is to think of clinical waves and research schools. See what you think.
Waves
As psychology progressed, it went through four waves of thought. This particularly true of clinical practice. The first wave was psychoanalysis. The nice thing about waves is they can reappear. You can have multiple instances of the same or similar approaches come back into vogue.
Psychoanalysis
Although there was trait theory (you are what the stars say you are) and trephination (drilling holes in your head to relieve the pressure or to let evil spirits out, your choice), there was no approach which emphasized internal processes of the mind. Hippocrates and Galen had four body fluids that had to be balanced, and Chinese medicine had four elements to balance, but these were more about external forces and how they impacted you. With the advent of physics there was increased interest in unseen forces.
Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939)
Trained as medical researcher and neurologist, Freud “fathered” the first clinical branch of psychology. His psychoanalytic approach is the forerunner of all other yforms of counseling and psycho-therapy. Freud emphasized the pleasure principle
Adler, Alfred (1870-1937)
Born in Vienna, the 2nd of six children. Unhappy childhood; sickly, frail, pampered by parents, jealous of older brother (mother’s favorite). Broke with Freud: sex not motivating force, not stress unconscious.Key words: birth order, compensation, individualtiy, social interest, masculine protest, superiority, inferiority, style of life
Jung, Carl Gustav (1875-1961)
Jung accepted Freud’s insistence on a dynamic psychology of psychic energy and internal motivation. Like Freud, he was deterministic but unlike Freud, Jung incorporated aims, goals, and decisions into his model. Although he distinguished between the conscious and the unconscious, Jung’s unconscious included instincts, cultural knowledge and a basic life urge. Like Freud, Jung believed in the importance of the unconscious mind, but he subdivided it into the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. According to Jung, emotionally charged collections of private attitudes are called complexes. In contrast, archetypesare universal thought forms (e.g., hero, mother, wise old man, etc.) are called archetypes. The most important of these archetypes are formed into systems (i.e., self). For Jung, the self involved striving for unity and wholeness, and was symbolized by a mandala, pearl, diamond, circle, or any object with central point. Jung proposed 8 personality types, a combination of two personality orientations (extroversion and introversion) and four psychological functions (thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting). Since the self is multifaceted, it shows different sides at different times. Sometimes the self presents its public personality (persona). At other times it reveals its ability to understand the opposite sex (anima and anius), or its darker (shadow) self.
Behaviorism
The second wave of psychology was behaviorism. It was a reaction to psychoanalysis. All the talk about internal structures and processes ignored what people do: behaviors. Analyzing your ego is useless, the behaviorists reasoned, if there is no change in behavior. Since we don’t know what’s going on on the head, let’s assume nothing is. Let’s assess it is at best a black box of unknowable processes.
Joseph Wolpe (1915-1997)
South African psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe is best known for the technique systematic desensitization. Highly effective for treating phobias, the technique involves three steps. First, create a hierarchy of fear. Rank from greatest fear to least fearful. Seeing a snake is not the same as holding one. Make a detailed list of fearful circumstances.
Second, relax. Systematically relax every muscle in the body. The easiest way is to start with the toes, contract the muscles and relax them Don’t assume they are relaxed, test by contracting and relaxing.
Third, image you are in ta circumference with the least amount of fear. if you have no reaction, mentally move up a level. When you get a reaction of the least amount of fear, raise one finger, keeping everything else relaxed. The therapist will direct you down to a lower level where no fear exists. Repeat. Eventually you’ll reach and conquer the higher levels of fear.
Guthrie, Edwin R (1886-1959)
Like Watson, Guthrie focused on observable behavior. Unlike Watson, Guthrie held that learning was a one-shot process of association,. In contrast to classical conditioning, Guthrie’s associationism followed Aristotle’s concept of contiguity. Basically, Guthrie held that people tend to do what they did in a similar situation in the past. That is, the situation provides cues about how to behave.
For Guthrie, the more stimuli which can be associated with a response the stronger the habit becomes. A director should not add more rehearsals to improve performance but more dress rehearsals. There are four ways to break connections: sidetracking, fatigue, threshold, and incompatible response. In sidetracking, the person avoids the cues which produce the unwanted response (give up smoking while on vacation). The fatigue method presents a stimulus so often that response is impossible (ride a horse until it can’t buck). The threshold method presents the stimulus in increasing increments (don’t throw into the pool; get use to the water gradually). In the third method, an incompatible response is substituted (can’t chew gum and smoke at the same time).
Skinner, Burrhus Frederic (1904-1990
Behavior modification was an application of Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning. It is an extension of Grandma’s Law: eat your vegetables and you can have dessert. There is a contingency here. Do one, get the other. No yelling or punishment, just a rational choice. Stickers, tokens, and money can be used as rewards. This is the same system your boss uses; do your work, get a paycheck.
Humanism
The third wave was humanism, which was a reaction to behaviorism. Behaviorism gave no room for free will, personal motivation or the value of being human. Humanism said we are more than stimuli and responses. We are humans. The focus is on the self. Self-image, self-acceptance and self-love were all popular therapeutic goals .Existential psychology and Gestalt therapy were extensions of humanism.
Carl Rogers 1902-1987)
More than anyone else, Carl Rogers invented counseling. The vast numbers of counseling psychologists, marriage-family therapist and other mental health professionals are the product of his humanistic approach to therapy. Like Freud, Rogers believed that actual experiences become symbolized. These symbolized experiences reflect all the characteristics of the actual experiences without all of the detail. It’s not so much what you experienced in the past as it is how you interpreted or feel about it.
Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)
Existentialism was about living in the now, and discovering your meaning to life. Frankl was a Holocaust survivor who emphasized striving for meaning. His therapy was called Logotherapy.
Fritz Perls (1893-1970)
Gestalt therapy emphasized being aware of oneself and one’s environment, physically, emotionally and socially. Experiencing the immediacy of experience sometimes resulted in ethically questionable interactions between therapist and client.
Eclectic
The four wave is one of indecision. It tries to use any or all techniques which are helpful. Evaluating eclectic theories is very difficult. There is no agreement on outcome measures. Cognitive therapy, in all its forms, is an electric theory of humanism, behaviorism, positive psychology and cognition.
Aaron Beck (1921-2021)
Widely used to treat depression, behavioral therapy asks patients to evaluate their beliefs and assumptions. When our beliefs are cognitively distorted, we end up unhappy and unfulfilled.
The problem is our “automatic thoughts,” which seem to fall into three categories: past, present and future. For Beck , this triad of negative thoughts leads to depression.
Alfred Ellis (1913-2007)
For Ellis, we care too much about what others think about us. His rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) aimed at getting people to give up “should” in favor of “prefer.” It is the rules we impose on ourselves which make us neurotic. To counter the internal reactions of anxiety and guilt, we need to reality test our assumptions and think logically about our lives. Ellis’ personal approach was confrontational but other practitioners are less so.
Schools
It’s clear to most people that a wave ins’t real but it is less clear with schools. The School at Nancy sounds like a real building in a real town with real teachers and students.
Nancy is a small town in eastern France but nothing else is literally true. There are no school buildings. The school at Nancy referred to a school of thought concerning hypnosis. In contrast to the Charcot school of thought that hypnosis was a biological process, the school of Nancy said hypnosis was associational. It was a matter of suggestion.
There were quite a few schools of thought on most topics. But there are seven major Schools of Psychology.
Structuralism
Wundt was not a structuralist. He was a volitionalist. He cared about will and active choice. He used introspection as part of his research but it was not his sole tool. The confusion comes because for many years America’s view of Wundt was through his student Titchener.
Titchner, Edward (1867-1927)
Born in Chichester, England (with a well known family name and no money), Edward B. Titchener attended college (Malvern College and then Oxford) on scholarships. He studied in Wundt’s lab, then moved to Cornell where he stayed for the rest of his life.
Titchener translated Wundt’s work into English, and in the process stripped it of all but its elementalism. Titchener reinterpreted Wundt as being interested only in the structure of the mind, and in how elements are combined together. Under Titchener, structuralism became a major school of thought in psychology.
Titchener proposed that there are 3 elements of consciousness: sensations, images and affections. He rejected Wundt’s tridimensional theory of emotion in favor of a single dimension of pleasure-unpleasure.
For Titchener, the basic elements of experience included quality (its distinguishing characteristics), intensity (amount), and duration (length of sensation). In addition, he held that a sensation could be judged on its clearness. Titchener proposed that there are 3 general stages of attention: involuntary (e.g., sudden noise), secondary (direct, voluntary attention to an object), and derived (i.e., a habit is formed by the repetition of a stimulus).
Functionalism
In contrast to structuralism but at the same period of time, functionalism emphasized processes and functions, instead on structures nd elements. A good example of functionalism was the theory of pragmatism proposed by William James.
James, William (1842-1910)
As a philosopher, psychologist and writer, James helped shift the focus from the search for mental structures and elements to the experimental study of mental functions. His concepts of self, stream of consciousness, pragmatism, and emotion are still cited today. Best known for his philosophy of pragmatism , James helped redirect psychology into greater concern with higher mental functioning. A predecessor of functionalism , James was less concerned with the mental structures of the mind than with the functions it performs. His book (Principles of Psychology, 1890) had a tremendous impact of the philosophy and direction of psychology. James shorter version of Principles, popularly known as “Jimmy,” was a great commercial success. Chronologically between Wundt and Titchener, James was more of a mind-body dualist (Wundt was a parallelist, and Titchener a physical monist). Influenced by Darwin, James maintained that behavior is adaptable, and that in order to survive psychologically people must be conscious of and adjust to their psychological and emotional environment. For James, consciousness is not a static picture but more like a flow of a river or stream. It is personal, ever changing, and has no breaks or cracks in it. James also held that consciousness is selective (we don’t attend to everything) and that it is object oriented (does not deal with itself). Although not a systematic theory, James envisioned a personal self.
Gestalt
All students of Stumpf, the Gestaltists emphasized the importance of whole perceptions. They didn’t divide perception into smaller and smaller segments, looking for the smallest element. They discovered an illusion or perceptual phenomenon and treated it as a whole.
Wertheimer, Max (1880-1943)
Born in Prague, Wertheimer studied law and philosophy at the University of Prague, and psychology under Stumpf and Kulpe. Best known for his explanation of the “phi phenomenon” (e.g., the apparent motion made by flashing lights in sequence), Wertheimer was a founder of Gestalt psychology. In 1910, on a train ride from Vienna to Germany, Wertheimer noted that it’s possible to perceive motion when none exists. Wertheimer followed up his informal exploration with formal experiments using a tachistoscope. He found that when two flashes of an image are 200 milliseconds apart they are perceived as separate images, and at 30 milliseconds the images appeared simultaneous. Gestalt principles of perceptual organization include proximity, similarity, continuity, and pragnanz (literally, good form). Using visual illusions, Gestalt psychologists were able to show that the perceptual models of the day were inadequate. Extending that view, they proposed that people perceive and think in nonlinear ways, actively influence perception, and use insight as well as trial and error learning.
Koffka, Kurt (1887-1941)
A student of Stumpf, Koffka assisted Wertheimer with his experiments, and advocated Gestalt psychology. Born and educated in Berlin, Koffka escaped the Nazi regime, moved to America, and taught at Smith College (Kohler taught at Swarthmore).
Kohler, Wolfgang (1887-1967)
Born in Estonia and educated in Berlin, Kohler is best known for his insight experiments with apes. During WWI, Kohler was director of an anthropoid station on Tenerife (in the Cannery Islands). He was either there to study chimpanzees or as a spy to study Allied shipping; both interpretations are possible. Although his children report he had a secret radio they were not to talk about, Kohler preferred to discuss his observations of Sultan (an ape). According to Kohler’s observations, many animals are able to solve problems by insight. Chimpanzees could solve a string problem (how to get a banana tied to the end of a string), and Sultan was able to join two sticks together to get his food. In Kohler’s later work, he trained chickens to peck at the darker of two discs. After acquiring the skill, they were able to select the darker disk even when the amount of grayness changed. When the original dark disc was paired with an even darker disc, the chickens were still able to choose the darker one.
Psychoanalysis
Research by psychoanalysts tends to be clinical, poorly designed and small in scale. But there are exceptions.
Freud, Anna (1895-1982).
In a study she coauthored with Dorothy Burlingham, Anna showed that children look to their parents for cues on how to reaction to situations. During WWII bombing raids, British families were observed in air raid shelters. The children didn’t have instinctive reactions but looked to their mothers to see how she was reacting.
Anna Freud created a classification system to organize evaluations of children’s symptoms. Development was seen as a series of id-ego interactions, where children gain increased control of themselves. Her “diagnostic profile” was a formal assessment procedure that tracked developmental progress on six dimensions of change:
Dollard, John (1900-1980) & Miller, Neal (1909-2002).
It was the 1960s, and everyone was interested in self discovery, cross-disciplinary education, and making-love-not-war. In this environment, old theories were explained in new terms, often by adding a social dimension. One such effort at Yale, found John Dollard (anthropologist) and Neal Miller (psychologist) joining forces to explain psychoanalytic principles in more modern terms. The result was Dollard-Miller’s psychoanalytic learning theory.
They combined Sigmund Freud and Clark Hull. Hull maintained that behavior is reinforced by drive reduction. Drives are strong stimuli that produce discomfort (hunger, thirst, etc.). A drive impels us to action when we encounter a cue. You’re already hungry (drive) when you hear your tummy growl (cue). The cue triggers a behavior designed to reduce the drive (get up and go to the kitchen). If you are successful in reducing the drive (you find a bag of cookies), the reduction in hunger reinforces that sequence, making it more likely to happen next time you’re hungry and hear your tummy growl.
Behaviorism
Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich (1849-1936)A
Nobel prize winning physiologist, Pavlov is best remembered for his description of classical conditioning. A believer in the primacy of physiology, Pavlov thought psychology to be a fad. As far as he was concerned, psychological problems were physiologically based but currently unexplained. Pavlov’s classical description notes that the presence of an unconditioned stimulus (food) produces an unconditioned response (saliva of a given amount; varying somewhat between trials and between dogs). After sufficient pairings of the food with another, previously unused stimulus (e.g., light), the conditioned stimulus (light) could bring about a response (conditioned response). The conditioned response was weaker than the unconditioned response (i.e., less saliva) and forgettable (if repeated too often without food being presented). Pavlov called the conditioned response “psychic secretion,” and explained it as being the result of higher cortical involvement. For Pavlov, reinforcement was in terms of reiteration. One reinforced behavior as in reinforcing steel (added more of it). Pavlov believed that mental functioning was completely neurological. He proposed a “dynamic stereotype,” a neurological mapping of the environment.
Watson, John Broadus (1878-1958)
Born in Greenville, S Carolina, Watson was a student of both Angell and Loeb but was greatly influenced by the writings of Pavlov. Applying the principles of classical conditioning to all learning, Watson became the focal point of behaviorism. From white rats in mazes to “Little Albert,” Watson emphasized S-R conditioning. Ignoring high mental processes altogether, Watson explained all behavior in terms of stimulus-response. Although he initially allowed for three innate emotions (fear, rage and love), Watson generally denied the influence of heredity on behavior. He initially maintained that some instincts are present, changed to their appearing only in infants, and finally rejected instincts completely. Watson’s emphasis on S-R connections has not lasted as long as his insistence on observable behavior. Describing the mind as a mystery box, Watson directed psychology’s attention away from speculative theories to experimental observations. In an attempt to apply behaviorism to practical problems, Watson proposed “experimental ethics,” a classical conditioning rehabilitation program for inmates. Assuming that personality was nothing more than a collection of habits, Watson’s program aimed to change habitual antisocial behaviors. In 1920, Watson achieved fame of a different sort. Sued by his wife for divorce (he had been having an affair with his lab assistant, Rosalie Raynor), Watson was forced to resign from Johns Hopkins. He turned to commercial advertising and pioneered the area of marketing research
Skinner, Burrhus Frederic (1904-1990)
Best known for his model of learning, Skinner emphasized the importance of what happens after a response. Not S-R, but S-R-C (stimulus-response-consequence), Skinner expanded Thorndike’s law of effect to an entire system of reinforcement. Conceding that there are too many stimuli to categorize, Skinner focused on the response and its consequence. Positive reinforcers increase behavior strength; positive punishment decreases behavior temporarily (as long as the punisher is present). Only extinction (the continued absence of a reward) decreases behavior permanently (e.g., if they stop paying you, you don’t go to work). Negative reinforcement (the removal of something bad) increases the likelihood of behavior and negative punishment (the removal of something good) temporarily decreases it. Basing his findings on animal research (mostly rats and pigeons), Skinner identified five schedules of reinforcement: continuous reinforcement, fixed interval (FI), fixed ratio (FR), variable interval (VI) and variable ratio(VR). Continuous reinforcement is used to shape (refine) a behavior. Every time the subject performs the desired behavior, it is rewarded. Continuous reinforcement leads to quick learning and (after the reinforcement is stopped) quick descent. In an attempt to apply his research to practical problems, Skinner adapted his operant conditioning chamber (he hated the popular title of “Skinner box“) to child rearing. His “Baby Tender” crib was an air conditioned glass box which he used for his own daughter for two and a half years. Although commercially available, it was not a popular success. Skinner’s also originated programmed instruction. Using a teaching machine (or books with small quizzes which lead to different material), small bits of information are presented in an ordered sequence. Each frame or bit of information must be learned before one is allowed to proceed to the next section. Proceeding to the next section is thought to be rewarding.
Humanism
Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Maslow helped shift psychology from behaviorism to humanism. He is the “father” of the Third Force of Psychology. The first force was Freud’s psychoanalytic approach. The second force or wave was Pavlov’s behaviorism. And the third major force in American psychology was humanism.
Maslow is best known for his hierarchy of needs. Building on the ideas of Henry Murray, Maslow theorized that needs are not all the same. Some needs must be met before others. Like Harlow’s monkeys, people their biological and safety needs met first. After the essentials are met, people can then pursue their psychological and spiritual needs.
Cognitive
The first cognitive theory was information processing. It used the computer as a metaphor for thinking, specifying inputs, processes and outcomes. But both Piaget and Tolman were pre-cognitive theories.
Piaget, Jean (1896-1980)
Piaget noticed that children don’t solve problems like adults do. Children are not miniature adults but have their own distinctive style of thinking which develops in stages. Piaget proposed four stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete and abstract. The sensorimotor stage occupies the first two years of a child’s life. In this stage, children acquire motor control, and learn to interact with objects and accommodate to the world. In the preoperational stage (ages 2 to 7, children acquire language. Their thinking is egocentric and contradict themselves but are not bothered by it. They can name objects, think intuitively, and argue their point of view. They cannot argue from someone else’s point of view, and believe that tall and thin containers hold more than short, fat ones). In the concrete operational stage (ages 7 to 12), children can manipulate numbers, develop rules for classifying objects, and acquire conservation (e.g., know that shape is not the same as quantity). In the formal operational stage of development (ages 12 to adult), children acquire abstract thinking, can discuss hypothetical situations, and perform systematic searches for solutions.
Tolman, Edward Chance (1886-1959)
- Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Tolman received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from MIT. Impressed by James writings, Tolman changed to psychology (earning his Ph.D. at Harvard). Best known for introducing the term “intervening variables,” he also was a pioneer investigate of cognitive maps. Although he had no systematic theory, Tolman called himself a purposeful behaviorist. He held that behavior is purposeful, goal directed, and molar (not reducible to instincts or reflexes).
Final Exam
Want to jump ahead?
- Philosophical Roots of Psychology
- Waves & Schools of Psychology
- Old Philosophers, New Ideas
- Hobbes, Galileo & Descartes
- Experimental Physiology
- American Psychology
- Japanese Psychology
- Germany Psychology
- Philosophy Timeline
- Russian Psychology
- Five Paths To Truth
- British Empiricism
- French Psychology
- Special Reports
- Wundt
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