Edward Titchener And Structuralism In Psychology

Most people tend to believe that psychology relates to insanity, shrinks and psychics, but these thoughts do not represent psychology justly and are misguiding. Psychology is based on perception that we experience that others cannot see as well as what we can observe; in other words, the mind and behavior. A psychologist is a neutral person that provides guidance or counseling. Psychologist may focus on how people learn, behavior, personality, and the brain; each topic contributed to different fields in psychology.

Structuralism in psychology was an early perspective with study of the structure or basic elements of the mind. It breaks a concept down into smaller components, examines the parts it 's made out of, analyze how those parts fit together, and in so doing understand how all other concepts are assembled. Theorist in structuralism are interested in identifying and analyzing the structures that underlie all

Titchener expanded on Wundt’s original ideas, calling his new viewpoint structuralism because the focus of study was the structure of the mind. He believed that every experience could be broken down into its individual emotions and sensations (Brennan, 2002). Although Titchener agreed with Wundt that consciousness, the state of being aware of external events, could be broken down into its basic elements, Titchener also believed that objective introspection could be used on thoughts as well as on physical sensations. For example, Titchener might have asked his students to introspect about things that are blue rather than actually giving them a blue object and asking for reactions to it. Such an exercise might have led to something like the following: “What is blue? There are blue things, like the sky or a bird’s feathers. Blue is cool and restful, blue is calm . . .” and so