Modern Psychology Approaches

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Discuss the Different Approaches To Psychology For the Development of Modern Psychology.

Modern psychology plays a significant role in a vast number of fields today such as health, education, sports and industry. Psychology can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks where physicians and philosophers investigated and formed theories on the mind and behaviour of humans. However, it was only in the late 17th century that psychology was considered an independent field of study which was made possible by the scientific methods used to study behaviour and mental processes. "Only when researchers came to rely on carefully controlled observation and experimentation to study the human mind did psychology begin to attain an identity separate from its philosophical roots" (Shultz and Shultz 2011:3)

Throughout the history of psychology there were developments of many schools of thought which all contributed in the advancement of psychology to the complex and popular field it is today. These schools of thought which are also known as approaches of psychology had different ideas on the manner in which human behaviour and mental processes function, the aspects to be studied and the methodologies used to study them. As a whole, all the approaches form a complete understanding to human behaviour and allow modern psychologists to look at cases from different perspectives and understand them better.

The very first school of thought called structuralism, was introduced by Wilhelm Wundt who is known as the 'Father of Modern Psychology'. Structuralism focused on the very basic elements of the mind and gave importance to sensation and perception. The greatest contribution of Wundt was introspection which explored the conscious mental processes by loo...

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...en greatly influenced by them. One modern approach is the psychodynamic approach which focuses on the unconscious rather than the conscious mind. It completely disregarded free will with its view that behaviour is motivated by unconscious inner forces over with an individual had little control and contrasted with behavioral, cognitive and biological approaches. It introduced the idea that the unconscious was significant in human behaviour, the significance of early childhood experiences and the utilization of therapy to improve human lives (Stangor n.d.: 32). Psychodynamics has been able to explain the irrationality of human actions which could not be explained by the other approaches since they focused only in the conscious mind. According to Schottenbauer et. al., psychodynamics plays a major role in clinical psychology in the treatment of PTSD and trauma.

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