More handpicked essays just for you.
Explain the principal psychological perspectives
Different perspectives of psychology
Different perspectives of psychology
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Psychological perspectives assignment
The word psychology comes from the Greek word ‘psyche’ meaning mind, body and spirit. The earliest known ideas in psychology also came from ancient Greece. Thales of Miletus (624-546BC) says the brain plays a vital role. This wasn’t always said, as for a long time the brain was thought to be a big snot gland. Pluto (427-347BC) was said to have debated and believed we are all born knowing everything we know, all our behaviours and knowledge we have when we are born. Unlike Aristotle(384-322BC) who believed we are all born with a ‘tabula rasa’ which is the Greek saying for blank slate, and all our knowledge and behaviours are learnt through are experiences and the environment around us. Aristotle also produced the first psychology text book in 350BC (De anima). This theory was still believed in the 1600’s, john Locke (1632-1704) also believed in the ‘tabula rasa’ theory. In the middle ages (400-1500AD) intellectual life was mostly dominated by Christian theologises who believed the explanation for everything in life and the mind was either an act of god or an act of the devil.
The first psychology laboratory was opened at the University of Leipeg, Germany by William Wundt in 1879. Wundt and his co-worker attempted to carry out investigations through introspection. Introspection is analysing one person’s conscious thoughts and feelings, this is also the way we all self-reflect on a situation. This was done in controlled conditions but had very little ecological validity. They put theories to the test that dated back thousands of years.
…Wundt believed that conscious mental states could be scientifically studied through the systematic manipulation of antecedent variables and analysed by carefu...
... middle of paper ...
...between the id, superego and the environment, we develop this around the age of 2-3 and thirdly is our SUPER EGO where the decision the EGO makes comes out and is in touch with reality, values and morals. We develop this around the age of 5. With our personalities being structured in this way, we are about to restrain certain thoughts. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) had the first psychodynamic theory. Even though all Freud’s work is based on only 6 case studies, his work has been very diverse, including association between dreams, sleep and the real world. Freud believed that we get pleasures from certain parts of our body in five fixed stages in our development. These are oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital stages.
Bibliography
Works Cited
GROSS, RICHARD (2009), Psychology, the science of mind and behaviour. 5th edition. London: Hodder Arnold.
Gross, R., 2013. The Science of Mind And Behaviour. 6 ed. London: Hodder Education .
Chapter 4 discusses the several states of consciousness: the nature of consciousness, sleep and dreams, psychoactive drugs, hypnosis, and meditation. Consciousness is a crucial part of human experience, it represents that private inner mind where we think, feel, plan, wish, pray, omagine, and quietly relive experiences. William James described the mind as a stream of consciousness, a continuous flow of changing sensations, images thoughts, and feelings. Consciousness has two major parts: awareness and arousal. Awareness includes the awareness of the self and thoughts about one's experiences. Arousal is the physiological state of being engaged with the environment. Theory of mind refers to individuals understanding that they and others think,
Passer, M., Smith, R., Holt, N., Bremner, A., Sutherland, E., & Vliek, M. (2009). Psychology; Science of Mind and Behaviour. (European Edition). New York.
Davis, S. F., & Palladino, J. J. (2003). Psychology. (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Hothersall, David. (1995). History of Psychology. 4th ed. McGraw Hill Co: New York, New York.
Wood, S. Wood, E. Boyd, D. (2014). Mastering the World of Psychology. A. Chow(Ed.). Jersey, NJ: Text.
The term psychology has many meanings to different people, even to those who work within the psychological field. The word psychology derives from two Greek roots; 'psyche' refers to 'soul' or 'mind' and logo refers to 'the study of'. A more update definition of the word psychology can be found from Atkinson, et al (1991) “The scientific study of behaviours and mental processes.” However on Google Definitions the definition of psychology is “the mental characteristics and attitudes of a person” [accessed 16 September 2011], which gives somewhat of a contradiction. In this assignment I will be outlining and evaluating four key psychological perspectives. The psychological perspectives I have chosen are the behavioural approach, biological approach, cognitive approach and the psychodynamic approach.
Gross, R (2010). Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour. 6th ed. London: Hodder Education. p188.
Davis, Tom. The Theories of the Mind Lectures. Ed. G. Baston. Birmingham University. 9 Nov. 2000
Myers, G. D., (2010). Psychology (9th ed.) In T. Kuehn & P. Twickler (Eds.), The Biology of Mind. (p.65) New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
The field of psychology has opened different hypothesis from a variety of theories with the aim of studying the behaviour of humans being as a result they concluded with five psychological perspectives. Behaviourist, Biological, Psychodynamic, Cognitive and Humanistic perspectives are the deduction after a depth study of mental activity associate to human behaviour. In this essay I will be comparing two psychological perspectives according to aggressive behaviour.
(2004) Psychology (2nd European edition). Essex: Pearson Education Limited Gross, R (1996).Psychology, The Science of mind and behaviour (3rd Ed). London: Hodder & Stoughton
Johnston, J. E. (2009). The Complete Idiots Guide to Psychology (4th ed.). Indianapolis, Indiana: Alpha Books.
Psychology started, and had a long history, as a topic within the fields of philosophy and physiology. It then became an independent field of its own through the work of the German Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology and structuralism. Wundt stressed the use of scientific methods in psychology, particularly through the use of introspection. In 1875, a room was set-aside for Wundt for demonstrations in what we now call sensation and perception. This is the same year that William James set up a similar lab at Harvard. Wilhelm Wundt and William James are usually thought of as the fathers of psychology, as well as the founders of psychology?s first two great ?schools? Structuralism and Functionalism. Psychologist Edward B Titchner said; ?to study the brain and the unconscious we should break it into its structural elements, after that we can construct it into a whole and understand what it does.? (psicafe.com)
Psychology is the investigation of the mind and how it processes and directs our thoughts, actions and conceptions. However, in 1879 Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Nevertheless, the origins of psychology go all the way back thousands of years starting with the early Greeks. This foundation is closely connected to biology and philosophy; and especially the subfields of physiology which is the study of the roles of living things and epistemology, which is the study of comprehension and how we understand what we have learned. The connection to physiology and epistemology is often viewed as psychology, which is the hybrid offspring of those two fields of investigation.