The term “psychology" is not something that can be defined with ease or be agreed upon by all psychologists, but if one takes the word "psychology" very literally, it will be noted that it is a combination of two Greek terms, psyche and logos. Roughly, the second means ‘the study of’ and the first resembles our notions of ‘mind’ or ‘soul’.
Definition of Psychology
This basic translation would leave one with a definition along the lines of ‘psychology is the study of mind’. However, despite this translation it can be seen that a large amount of definitions of psychology incorporate the idea of science. This can be dated back to William James’ 1950 piece titled The Principals of Psychology; here, he fundamentally defines psychology as “the Science of Mental Life.”
Today, the concept of science is visible in many modern definitions of psychology, for example it is often defined as, ‘the science of behaviour and experience’ or ‘the scientific study of mind’ etc. Science is now considered to be a fundamental part of psychology, but is it a successful part?
Structuralism and Scientific Psychology
The psychological perspective of structuralism was developed by Wilhelm Wundt but advanced more predominantly by Edward Titchener, and it is often seen as the first attempt at a scientific psychological perspective as it developed the use of controlled experiments in laboratories. Structuralism conducted itself similarly to chemistry, but whereas the chemist studies the break down of chemicals and atoms the structuralists is concerned with the break down of the mind and consciousness.
The structuralists aimed to find patterns and groupings of consciousness and to make connections between the elements of consciousness and their underlying physiological conditions. The method used to study and quantify consciousness was an observatory method known as introspection. To conduct introspective studies a trained experimenter would be given stimulus, in the form of words, and would observe the mental processes that unfolded, such as the stimulation of emotions or other words etc. and the aim was to locate patterns in the mind that related to stimuli.
It was believed by structuralists that patterns of consciousness could be found and quantified through introspection and that the same patterns would be discovered by every experimenter, revealing the scientific structure of consciousness. The idea was to find regular patterns in all human psyches and quantify these into global laws of the mind where all behaviour could be explained and analyses via these set scientific laws.
Criticism of Structuralism
Structuralism relied on the method of introspection but this method was subject to one of the fundamental flaws of observation methods; that it is possible for two people to observe the same scene at the same time but interpret what they see differently. With many experimenters all relying solely on observation to back up an entire theory this problem was a crucial one.
Structuralists believed that every experimenter who performed introspection would find the same patterns in metal processes but this was not the case as different people had different responses to stimuli and experimenters interpreted their responses differently. Thus by relying solely on observation no scientific structures of mind could be found and every experimenter was arriving at different observations and different conclusions.
Sources:
Abra, J. (1998) Should psychology be a science?: pros and cons. Connecticut, Greenwood Publishing Group.
Benjamin, L. (2007) A Brief History of Modern Psychology. Oxford, Blackwell Publishing.
Friedenberg, J. & Silverman, G. (2006) Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Study of Mind. London, Sage.
James, W. (1950) The Principals of Psychology. Vol 1. 3rd ed. New York, Courier Dover Publications.
Martin, M. (1994) The Philosophical Importance of the Rosenthal Effect. In: Martin, M. & McIntyre, L. ed. Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science. London, The MIT Press, pp.585-596.
Miller, G.A. (1973) Psychology: The Science of Mental Life. London, Penguin Books.
Newman, F. & Holzman, L. (1996) Unscientific Psychology: A Cultural-Performatory Approach to Understanding Human Life. Lincoln, iUniversity Books.
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