Establishing psychology as an independent academic discipline

Question 1

What was Pietism and the enlightenment and what were they doing in universities?

Answer 1

Pietism was a Protestant movement, promoting a revival of practical and devout Christianity, based on spiritual rebirth and advocating charitable and missionary work. The Enlightenment ideas mainly came from a group of academics who had been expelled from the University of Leipzig, because of their critical attitude and modern ways of thinking. Pietism and Enlightenment were brothers-in-arms in the struggle against Catholic orthodoxy and doctrine, emphasising good education in German (instead of Latin).

Question 2

The defeat by the French particularly upset the Prussians, who decided it was high time to modernise their country. The school system was reorganised and a new university model was installed. What two goals were these universities based on?

Answer 2

Wissenschaft (scholarship and scientific research) and Bildung (the making of good citizens).

Question 3

What, coupled with this emphasis on scientific research, made the German universities dynamic and open to new areas for scientific investigation?

Answer 3

The power of the university was put in the hands of a limited number of professors (chairs) who were given academic freedom and resources to pursue their interests and who had a number of assistants and lecturers under their command.

Question 4

Who called his psychology “physiological psychology” and who did he train under?

Answer 4

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) obtained an assistantship with Hermann von Helmholtz, the man who had started to measure the speed of signal transmission in nerves

Question 5

What date generally became accepted as the birth of psychology? (what happened)

Answer 5

The first laboratory of experimental psychology was officially opened in 1879 and named Institut für Experimentelle Psychologie (Institute for Experimental Psychology).

The reason why 1879 became known as the birth year of psychology was that many American students went to study in Wundt’s laboratory. Upon their return to America, they established their own laboratories.

Question 6

Give another reason why Wundt’s laboratory had a strong impact on the creation of psychology

Answer 6

Wundt used it to actively promote psychological research. He not only created a journal, but he also set up a six-month introductory course, to which he invited students and colleagues from all over the world.

Question 7

What three groups of experimental methods did Wundt use for what three problems

Answer 7

1. psychophysical methods to study the connection between physical stimuli and their conscious states,
2. the measurement of the duration of simple mental processes,
3. the accuracy of reproduction in memory tasks.

Question 8

What did Wundt use reaction times for?

Answer 8

Reaction times were measured to get insight into the mental processes that were required to perform a task.

Question 9

How did Wundt and his associates attempt to minimise the level of noise they were measuring?

Answer 9

both by more accurate measurements and by making use of a small number (sometimes only 1!) of trained participants. What was not yet known at that time was that variability is an inherent characteristic of biological processes and that demand characteristics have a strong influence on psychological findings, even when people try to be conscientious and react naturally without bias and with- out preconceived ideas.

Question 10

What other main method of research was Wundt greatly interested in?

Answer 10

Introspection

Question 11

How did Wundt think that he could get away with the criticisms surrounding introspection?

Answer 11

by introducing more control into the experimental situation. He made a distinction between Innere Wahrnehmung (internal perception) and Experimentelle selbstbeobachtung (experimental self-observation). The former referred to armchair introspection as practised by philosophers; the latter pointed to self-observation in highly controlled circumstances, where a stimulus was presented repeatedly and the participants reported their experiences to the stimulus.

Question 12

What was Wundt’s other method of study in psychology? What was this particularly well suited for according to Wundt?

Answer 12

the historical method, the study of mental differences as revealed by differences between cultures (both in time and in space).
according to Wundt particularly well suited to investigate the ‘higher’ functions of the mind

Question 13

Give three reasons why Wundt’s scientific legacy is not very much more than that of being ‘the father of experimental psychology’?

Answer 13

• Wundt did not produce a useful theory like Newton or Darwin, or make an empirical discovery that had a wide-ranging, lasting impact
• although Wundt was considered to be a good teacher, his writings were far from clear and easy to read.
• Finally, there were several contradictions in Wundt’s writings over the period of over 60 years in which he wrote

Question 14

Where did William James succeed where Wundt had failed?

Answer 14

wrote the book The principles of psychology (1890), which turned turned out to be what Wundt’s writings never were: an accessible and clear account of what was known and conjectured about psychology at the end of the nineteenth century

Question 15

What was the best method according to James?

Answer 15

For James, introspection was the best available method, despite its limitations, James was not fond of the experimental methods

Question 16

What inspired James to form what approach to psychology?

Answer 16

Darwin’s evolutionary theory, For James the precise contents of the mind were less important than what consciousness did, what functions it served for man and animal. This view struck a chord with many psychologists in the United States, who became known as the functionalists, because they were primarily interested in the practical functions of the mind, not what the mind com- prised or what structure it had.

Question 17

Describe Titchener’s main contribution to psychology

Answer 17

structuralism, an approach that, via introspection, tried to discover the structure of the human mind. Titchener tried to discern which sensation elements formed the basics of knowledge and how they were associated with one another.

Question 18

Give three reasons why structuralism did not inspire many psychologists.

Answer 18

Unfortunately structuralism hadn’t much impact on psychology due to three main criticisms. Firstly, as mentioned previously, the method of introspection in which structuralism relies had been criticised heavily particularly by the University of Wurzberg, who stated that introspection did not intuitively give rise to the experience of elementary sensations. Structuralism was also not very influential as it was not seen to address the important issues of psychology as functionalism did. Functionalism focused on what the purpose of psychological processes may have been and this was seen to be more pragmatic. Gestalt psychologists also spoke against structuralism, stating that human perception was more than simply the sum of individual sensations and therefore it could not be understood by simply breaking down experiences to their core elements.

Question 19

Who were the Wurzburg school and what did they claim?

Answer 19

group of psychologists at the University of Würzburg who used introspection
as a research method,
but came to different conclusions from those of Wundt and Titchener; in particular they claimed that many thought processes were not available to introspection (imageless thoughts)

Question 20

How did gestalt psychologists explain brain processes? How did they show this?

Answer 20

According to the Gestalt psychologists the brain had self-organising principles and people experienced the world in terms of gestalts (from the German word Gestalt, which translates as ‘pattern’, ‘whole’ or ‘organisation’). One of the illustrations the Gestalt psychologists used to make their point was the existence of visual illusions

Question 21

What three stages did Comte argue that civilisations went through?

Answer 21

1. the theocratic stage, with animistic/religious explanations of natural phenomena,
2. the metaphysical stage, with theories of nature based on philosophical systems
   like those of Aristotle and Descartes, and
3. the positivistic stage, with theories based on empirical observation and verification.

Question 22

How did Comte relate these three stages to psychology?

Answer 22

Psychology was a remnant of the metaphysical stage and its elucidation attempts on the basis of introspection would in time be replaced by proper, scientific explanations provided by biology and sociology

Question 23

In the UK several scholars promoted scientific research and called themselves positivists, but disagreed with Comte on several aspects. In particular, the views of John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) were discussed, who both argued that psychology could be a science and introspection a respectable scientific method. What were their arguments?

Answer 23

1. The mind can attend to more than one impression at the same time. So, why would the mind be unable to attend to its own conscious mental states?
2. Introspection can be based on memories, which allows humans to be aware of their thoughts post hoc even for tasks involving such great effort that simultaneous monitoring is not possible.
3. If one rejects introspection, how can one then study mental functions? How can one find the physiological basis of a mental function, if the latter supposedly does not exist?
4. Introspection is not incompatible with the ‘objective method’. On the contrary, to be a truly scientific method (different from what philosophers did), introspection must be combined with empirical observation and verification.

Question 24

What did Ribot use these arguments for?

Answer 24

In particular, the last argument was used by Ribot to defend the possibility of a new psychology, this new psychology would study ‘psychological phenomena subjectively, using consciousness, memory, and reasoning; and objectively, by relying on the facts, signs, opinions and actions that express them’

Question 25

Describe 7 ways in which William James and Ribot were similar in their respective countries (France and Germany)

Answer 25

● They were the first to wrest control of psychology from the abstract philosophers by adapting study of mental functioning to the methods of physiology.
● They were the first to take up the scientific study of consciousness within the context of the new evolutionary biology.
● They were the first to teach the scientific psychology.
● They were the first to open a laboratory for student instruction and to encourage
others to start a research laboratory.
● They were the first to grant a PhD in the new discipline.
● They were the first to write a textbook of psychology from the positivist point of view.
● But they never were experimentalists themselves.

Question 26

Another major input to the development of psychology in France came from where?

Answer 26

medical research, both related to brain functioning and the treatment of mental illnesses.

Question 27

What did the German-Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) seek to influence as a cure for all kinds of illnesses?

Answer 27

Mesmer became convinced that movements of the sun, the moon, planets and stars influenced the human body by means of ‘animal magnetism’, just like the moon and the sun affected the tides of the seas. Before long, Mesmer sought to influence the ‘animal magnetism’ as a cure for all kinds of illnesses

Question 28

Explain the process that Mesmer carried out in order to influence this animal magnetism

Answer 28

First, he let patients touch magnetised iron bars; then he magnetised the objects himself, and finally he came to directly magnetise the patients through touch or stare.

Question 29

What was found to be of actual importance in the animal magnetism process?

Answer 29

the trance-like, somnambulist state into which patients could be induced

Question 30

What was this trance-like state called and how was it first used practically and effectively?

Answer 30

this state interested surgeons who were searching for anaesthetics to make their surgeries less painful. One of these surgeons, the Scot James Braid, coined the term hypnosis

(The interest of surgeons in mesmerism quickly waned once anaesthetic drugs became available, but hypnosis kept on being used by other practitioners to treat patients. )

Question 31

What towering figure in nineteenth-century French psychiatry was interested in hypnosis and why?

Answer 31

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) (one of the first neurologists) became interested in hypnosis because he thought it was related to hysteria- a condition of emotional distress often accompanied by physical symptoms for which no organic origin could be found.

Question 32

Why did Charcot relate hypnosis to hysteria?

Answer 32

Charcot assumed hypnosis was a progressive hereditary degeneration. The individuals under hypnosis too could be made to believe that part of their body was paralysed, that they felt no pain, and afterwards they could not remember what they had done under hypnosis. Charcot ventured that responsiveness to hypnosis was a hereditary degeneration with the same neurological origin as hysteria and, hence, would be particularly strong in hysterical patients.

Question 33

Charcot also saw similarities between hysteria, ______ and hypnosis. How did he show this?

Answer 33

(epilepsy)
the attacks in all three ailments showed a standard sequence of stages.*

*For epilepsy there were three stages: an aura (feeling of the attack’s onset), a tonic phase (in which the muscles of the body go rigid and the patient loses consciousness), and a clonic phase (with convulsions). A hysteric attack consisted of four phases. It would start with an epileptoid stage, in which the patient felt the onset of the attack. The second phase was the large movement stage, in which the patient showed big, uncontrolled movements. This was followed by the hallucinatory stage, during which the patient experienced self-generated sensations. The attack would end with a delirious phase of withdrawal characterised by disorganised behaviour and decreased attention. A hysteric fit could be elicited by touch- ing a hysterogenic zone on the body of the patient. For hypnosis Charcot discerned three stages: lethargy (a sleep state), cataplexy (a sudden loss of muscle function), and somnambulism (performing actions in a sleep-like state without recollection afterwards).

Question 34

How were Charcot’s ideas about hypnosis challenged by Ambroise Liébeault (1823–1904) and Hippolyte Bernheim (1840–1919)? What gained these claims more credence?

Answer 34

They both practiced hypnotic techniques and treatments and were convinced that responsiveness to hypnosis was not a disorder, but was present to some degree in nearly everyone. Furthermore, they rarely saw Charcot’s three hypnotic stages, and considered hypnosis as a sleep-like state produced by suggestion.

The Nancy criticisms gained impetus as Charcot’s demonstrations and claims about hypnosis became more extravagant. At some point, Charcot reported that his assistants could reverse the symptoms of hysterics by bringing them under hypnosis, putting them in front of a magnet, and flipping the polarity of the magnet.

Question 35

How did hypnotism cause an increased interest in a methodological element?

Answer 35

Joseph Delboeuf (1831–1896), a Belgian professor of mathematics and philosophy, decided to go to the Salpêtrière to see the evidence at first hand. What he had witnessed was a patient eager to please Charcot’s assistants, who in addition made no effort to disguise their expectations. The lack of experimental control upset the experimentalist in Delboeuf, who decided to replicate the studies. What Delboeuf discovered was that hypnotised hysterics could indeed switch their symptoms from one moment to the next, but only when the experimenter gave away his expectations. When the polarity of the magnet could be changed secretly, no change in symptoms followed. So Delboeuf, in a series of publications between 1885 and 1889, was one of the first to stress the impact of demand characteristics on the outcome of psychological studies.

Question 36

What special interest did Binet (1857–1911) have regarding children and how did this problem arise?

Answer 36

One of Binet’s interests was in development of intelligence in young children, At the end of the nineteenth century intelligence measurement was a hot topic, not only due to Galton’s claims about the heredity of intelligence, but also because primary education became compulsory. One of the consequences of compulsory education was what to do with children who did not seem to qualify for regular education, but who were not obviously mentally retarded. The Société insisted on special education for these ‘abnormal children’, but soon saw itself confronted with the question how to define these

Question 37

How did Binet first measure intelligence before 1903?

Answer 37

Before 1903 Binet had mainly followed Galton’s lead in the study of intelligence and measured perceptual capacities on the basis of the psychophysical methods initiated by Weber and Fechner and on the basis of response times. In line with prevalent medical beliefs, he also measured head sizes, assuming that low intel- ligence could be derived from small skulls. None of these measures, however, made clear differences between children with high and low intelligence.

Question 38

What did Binet take as inspiration for his and Théodore Simon’s (1872–1961) intelligence test? (2)

Answer 38

Simon did an internship in the asylum of Vaucluse in Paris. Under Binet’s guidance he measured various body parts of the 300 abnormal boys from the asylum and tried to relate them to the boys’ intelligence

the director of the asylum, Docteur E. Blin published an article in which he complained about the gross inconsistencies in the diagnoses of the mentally disabled children referred to him. To bring consistency to the admissions, Blin had started to work with a standardised questionnaire consisting of 20 themes. For instance, under the theme ‘Name’, he would ask the following questions: ‘What’s your name?’, ‘How old are you?’, ‘What are your first names?’ etc. A first study of 250 boys confirmed that there was a relationship between the number of questions the child could answer and his degree of retardation.

Question 39

How did Simon and Binet therefore attempt to measure intelligence?

Answer 39

They searched for simple tasks that normally developing children of various ages could solve, and an article in which they presented the first results on small groups of ‘normal’ children aged between 7 and 11 years old, and various groups of ‘abnormal’ children, illustrating the big differences between these groups. Three years later, they presented the first validated intelligence test with norms for normally developing children. Binet and Simon explicitly aimed for tasks that were fairly independent of what was taught in schools, so that a child’s results were little influenced by the quality of the education received.

Question 40

How did Binet and SImon propose that the results of the test should be interpreted?

Answer 40

A sequence of tasks was assembled that allowed the researchers to assess the mental age of a child. By comparing the mental age with the chronological age of a child, it was possible to see whether the child was performing as expected, better or worse.

Question 41

What lead to the increased role for the authorities in the treatment of people with a deviation rather than informal care?

Answer 41

There was a massive move from the countryside (where people had been serfs for centuries) to the cities, where life became more complex. Labour differentiated. People were required to take up more individual responsibility and they had to interact with an increasing number of other individuals. This required better manners, with more emphasis on self-discipline. The tolerance for deviant behaviour dwindled. As a consequence, the authorities were forced to take action against the outcasts, who were not economically useful and became seen as a disturbance to the established order.

Question 42

how did the increased role for the authorities in the treatment of people with a deviation first take form?

Answer 42

Institutions were founded to confine them. In these asylums they were treated as prisoners, with a regime of forced labour and religious exercises to re-educate them as good, productive members of society.

Question 43

Gradually, over the eighteenth century, under the influence of the Enlightenment, the conviction grew that the inhabitants of asylums were not real criminals but ailing patients. What problems arose with this and how were they answered? (2)

Answer 43

how to treat the disorders of these patients. Some attempted common-sense ‘medical’ practices to bring the patients back to their senses, such as cold showers, fast spinning around or cures with leeches. Others turned to educational measures to re-instil morality in the mentally ill.

A further problem was the financing of the institutes. Except for patients of wealthy families, who could afford a cure on the basis of rest and tranquillity, living conditions were appalling.

Question 44

What type of method was the method of educational measures to re-instil morality in the mentally ill called and what did it consist of?

Answer 44

‘moral treatment’ consisted of trying to persuade and influence the patient to behave normally, under the influence of the moral authority of the doctor. In cases of non-adherence, retaliation was swift, with straitjackets, padded cells or other types of confinement.

Question 45

Because the educational approach seemed to lead to (slightly) better results than the medical cures, it was the dominant therapy in the first half of the nineteenth century. Psychiatrists had a low status. Gradually, however, the biological view of mental illness regained impetus, what was an important element in this evolution?

Answer 45

the discovery of the microbe that caused syphilis, which in those times was a major cause of insanity.

Question 46

Towards the end of the nineteenth century a new group of physicians entered the scene. What were they called and what was their main focus?

Answer 46

They called themselves neurologists and were particularly interested in the milder forms of mental disturbances, which they called ‘nervous disorders’ or ‘neurasthenia’ (weakness of the nerves).

Question 47

What methods did the neurologists use?

Answer 47

They limited asylums to the handling of the worst cases of madness and for the others advocated treatment in private settings including methods such as hypnosis and suggestion. (Charcot)

Question 48

What did Freud attribute hysterical symptoms (vague pain, insomnia, hysterical paralysis, numbness, lack of appetite or sexual desire) to? How could they therefore be alleviated?

Answer 48

repressed sexual childhood experiences (later, childhood fantasies). These symptoms could be alleviated by the painful process of bringing the unconscious memories into the patient’s consciousness and by freeing them from their emotional energy.

Question 49

What field did Freud come from?

Answer 49

He trained as a physician and then did research on topics such as aphasia and poliomyelitis under the supervision of Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke, a neuro-anatomist. Freud started a private medical practice in 1886 that specialised in neurology, after his stay in Paris.

Question 50

Give two reasons why psychoanalysis exerted a strong attraction on the developing field of psychology

Answer 50

Psychoanalysis provided the first coherent framework for the treatment of nervous disorders and it was the first complete theory of human psychological functioning, starkly deviating from the piecemeal approach found in the university laboratories.

Question 51

What was meant by a case study in regards to Freud?

Answer 51

within medicine and clinical psychology, the intensive study of an individual patient within the context of his/her own world and relations, to understand and help the individual patient

Question 52

How did Freud’s methods differ to introspection?

Answer 52

contrary to Wundt’s and James’s introspection, the literal meaning of what the patients said was of little value, because, according to Freud, the patients did not have access to their own unconscious drives. Freud considered that it to be the therapist’s task to be attentive to occasional slips during which the unconscious forces revealed themselves, and to reinterpret the contents of the introspection according to the psychoanalytic theory.

Question 53

What distinction did freud draw during dream interpretation?

Answer 53

between the manifest message and the latent message in dream analysis (i.e. what the patients said vs. what they actually meant)

Question 54

Why was the UK not able to capitalise on its lead in psychology and trail behind the evolutions in other countries?

Answer 54

the organisation of its universities and with resistance from established disciplines against the newcomer. Oxford and Cambridge were generally considered as conservative universities, heavily dominated first by the Roman Catholic Church and then by the Church of England.

Question 55

Where did most psychological research in the UK take place? What allowed this to happen?

Answer 55

Honestly who gives a fuck but outside the universities. First and foremost, there were well-off individuals, who could devote time and money to new inventions and who paid scholars to come and work for them. Second, there were the societies with their fees and endowments, which could afford some staff and sponsor some research.There were also small-scale institutes and centres that did not have university status, but that could finance a small number of scientists. Finally, there were scholars who sponsored their work with the proceeds of the books they published and the articles they wrote for the emerging scientific journals.

Question 56

Why did Galton become involved with a group of young mathematicians and who was the most important of these mathematicians?

Answer 56

For Galton’s efforts to study the heredity of features, which often failed to yield the desired clear evidence, Galton needed statistical measures that allowed him to draw valid conclusions. As a result, Galton (who was a self-financed, independent researcher) became involved with a group of young mathematicians, the most important of who was Karl Pearson (1857–1936)

Question 57

UCL’s standing in correlational research was further strengthened when in 1907 Charles Spearman (1863–1945; known from the Spearman correlation) was appointed as Reader. Name three things Spearman accomplished in psychology/ statistics

Answer 57

• Spearman correlation
• Spearman had already published articles on the rudiments of factor analysis
• and a two-factor theory of intelligence, in which he claimed that performance on an intelligence test was influenced by a general intelligence factor and a factor specific to the test. He concluded this from the observation that children who scored low/high on one valid task of intelligence in general also scored low/high on other valid tasks, indicating that the solutions of the various tasks were affected by a single underlying factor, which Spearman called ‘general intelligence’.

Question 58

What two Scottish psychologists above all had an influence on the developments of psychology in the UK?

Answer 58

Alexander Bain and G.F. Stout

Question 59

Outside of textbooks, what other accomplishment did Bain have which contributed to psychology?

Answer 59

Bain further took an initiative that would provide nineteeth-century English- speaking psychologists and philosophers of mind with a research outlet in their own language. Together with George Croom Robertson he launched the journal Mind, the first issue of which appeared in 1876.

Question 60

A particularly interesting article, whose impact would become clear only much later, was published in 1887 by Joseph Jacobs, a student of Galton’s. What was contained in this article?

Answer 60

Jacobs started from the observation that everyone can repeat the name Bo after hearing it once, whereas few could catch the name of the then Greek statesman M. Papamichalopoulos without the need for repetition. This made Jacobs wonder how many spoken items people could repeat. First he used nonsense syllables like cral – forg – mul – tal – nop, but soon came to prefer letters and digits. He noticed that schoolgirls could repeat on average 6.1 nonsense syllables, 7.3 letters and 9.3 digits, and that performance increased with age: girls of 11–12 years could repeat 5.3 nonsense syllables, whereas girls of 19–20 years could repeat 7 such syllables. Furthermore, the scores of the children in the top half of the class were higher than those of the children in the lower half.

Question 61

What did G.F. Stout do?

Answer 61

Write textbooks and was also the editor of Mind for a while dawg. Like many of his contemporaries, he was more a philosopher than an empirical psychologist.

Question 62

What huge accomplishment did William Butler complete, which would change the landscape of psychology forever? Name all six components of this

Answer 62

Theres no William Butler lol I just put this in to scare you <3

good job getting this far tho!

Question 63

Why were psychological societies formed in Britain? Name two of these

Answer 63

Because so much science in the UK took place outside universities, British scholars had a tendency to found a Learned Society as soon as the interest was strong enough

Question 64

What did these societies do?

Answer 64

These Societies had regular meetings and usually some kind of journal or proceedings to disseminate their findings published

Question 65

Name two psychological societies formed in Britain and what they focused on

Answer 65

The Psychological Society of Great Britain (1875) - not centred on investigations of ordinary human functioning but on research about the powers and virtues of extraordinary phenomena such as hypnotism, spiritualism and other paranormal events

The British Psychological Society (1901) - Wary about the strong pull to paranormal phenomena for such a society and the implications this would have for the status of the fledging psychological laboratories at British universities, so more “scientific” phenomena

Question 66

What did The British Psychological Society do to avoid the strong pull to paranormal phenomena for such a society?

Answer 66

strong entrance criteria were imposed. Only those who were recognised teachers in some branch of psychology or who had published work of recognisable value were eligible to become members. To further increase the standing of the Society, letters of invitation were sent to all scholars in the UK who fitted the criteria.

Question 67

Freud’s psychoanalysis started to appear in 1910 and would rapidly expand in The British Psychological Society, what was a catalyst in this?

Answer 67

A catalyst in this respect was the handling of shell-shock cases in World War I. Those involved in the treatment all received a training that was heavily inspired by psychoanalysis.

Question 68

Why and how did the society relax its entrance restrictions?

Answer 68

A conundrum for the Society was how to reconcile its entrance requirements with the need to have sufficient members. The initial conditions made it impossible to attract many members, given the paucity of psychological research laboratories in the UK. Therefore, at the end of World War I Charles Myers tried to have the criteria relaxed, so that scholars working on psychology-related topics in medicine, industry and education could join as well

Question 69

Name the five ‘schools’ that are often depicted as quarrelling in the beginnings of psychology

Answer 69

Structuralism, functionalism, Gestalt, behaviourism, psychoanalysis

It is posed that psychology started with structuralism in Wundt’s laboratory, which was brought to America by Titchener, where it had to fight first against functionalism and later against behaviourism, while it remained unchallenged in Europe until the rise of the Gestalt psychology? Meanwhile, psychoanalysis steadily grew as a kind of a non-scientific ‘outsider’.

Question 70

What is the Hegelian approach and how can it be applied to why current textbooks still love to refer to the five basic schools of psychology?

Answer 70

According to the philosopher Georg Hegel (1770–1831), thinking consists of three stages: first you have a thesis (a proposition), then an antithesis (a reaction against the proposition), followed by a synthesis (a compromise between the thesis and the antithesis). According to Costall (2006), the Hegelian approach is part of the reason why cur- rent textbooks still love to refer to the five basic schools of psychology;

1. Thesis: psychology, as instituted in the universities, began as the study of mind, based, almost exclusively, on the unreliable method of introspection (structural- ism, functionalism, Gestalt psychology).
2. Antithesis: in reaction to the blatant unreliability of the introspective method, behaviourism then redefined psychology as the study of behaviour, based primar- ily on the objective method of experimentation (see Chapter 5).
3. Synthesis: in reaction to the limited research agenda and the theoretical bank- ruptcy of behaviourism, the ‘cognitive revolution’, in turn, restored the mind as the proper subject of psychology (but now with the benefit of the rigorous experi- mental methods developed within behaviourism).