STRUCTURALIST SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY
Before the arrival of the Structuralists, psychology was already being considered as the study of
consciousness. This meant that the entire scope of psychology encompasses the study of man’s
consciousness. The distinguishing feature of the Structuralists was that they added further to the definition
of psychology being the study of consciousness; psychology to them was concerned with the study of the
structure of consciousness. Therefore, Structuralists are philosophers/psychologist who defined psychology
as the study of consciousness. Further, Structuralists also tried to solve the enigma of a definition of
consciousness. It was imperative to give a definition of consciousness in order to substantiate the view
point of psychology being the study of structure of consciousness. Therefore, Structuralists put forward the
view that consciousness has a definite structure and it can be defined in terms of its structure. The concept
of definite structure was given by this school named Structuralists.
The structuralist school has many followers, but two of the very important names who belong to
the Structuralist school of thought are Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Bradford Titchner.
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Wundt was born in 1832 and died in 1920. Thinking of man evolved with the passage of
time as his surroundings change. Earth shaking events like the industrial revolution had caused man to shift
towards empiricism. As a result of the work of Russians, Sechenov and Pavlov on discovering laws of
learning by conditioning, through experimentation; the contributions of Darwin discovering the relationship
between psychology and physical sciences; and Fechner discovering physical ways to measure psychological
experiences, psychology was defined as the study of consciousness. Psychology had finally ceased to be a
merely speculative science and was gradually becoming an experimental science based on facts and logical
conclusions which were drawn through carefully conducted experiments and profound observations.
But most of the credit goes to Wilhelm Wundt who recognized that psychologists must adopt a
scientific outlook and adopt experimentation as the methodology, if psychology is to expand and flourish.
As mentioned earlier, by this time, events like the French revolution and the Industrial revolution had
changed the outlook of man. Man had become more logical in his approach and tried to find reasons for
everything. Therefore, based on these grounds, Wundt based his proposition that since speculation could
not be the mode of scientific investigation any more; therefore, psychology also has to adopt the new mode
of investigation if it has to be become a science.
Wilhelm Wundt is known for establishing the first psychology laboratory at Leipzig, Germany, in
the year 1875. This was one of the greatest leaps in the transition of speculative outlook to the scientific
outlook, facilitated by Wundt.
Wundt defined psychology as the study of consciousness. He further argued, that if consciousness
exist, which actually does, then it must have a structure. To elaborate his viewpoint further, he went on to
explain the structure of consciousness. According to him, consciousness could be studied by three things:
• Experimentation:
Experimentation was the most important mode of scientific investigation which according to
Wundt was the need of hour for psychology to develop. Psychologists therefore, needed to conduct
experiments which revealed the true nature of consciousness. In this regard, Pavlov was known for
his experiments that he conducted on dogs to discover the process of learning.
• Introspection:
Although Wundt believed that psychologists should adopt a scientific outlook, he did not reject
introspection as a method of gaining knowledge, because he regarded introspection as a mean of
looking into and understanding the structure of consciousness.
• Looking at the past history of man that has shaped his consciousness:
Another method of studying the structure of consciousness is by looking at the past history of man.
Darwin was the first one to give rise to the nature versus nurture controversy. According to him, it
was the environment that shaped the thinking of man, or the way he is brought up. Therefore,
according to Wundt, looking into the past of individuals gave insight into the consciousness of the
individuals.
Wundt himself also conducted some experiments and based upon them he proposed that consciousness is a
process which has three compartments:
• Ideas
• Feelings
• Emotions
He went on to say that the compartment of feelings can be divided as follows:
• Pleasant/unpleasant
• Relaxed/tense
• Calm/excited
Wundt also outlined the abnormal states of consciousness. He then went on to elaborate hallucinations,
hypnotic states and dreams. According to him, all of these abnormal activities of the consciousness are
caused due to the break down of attention.
Because of his elaboration of various parts of consciousness, he is classified as a structuralist today. He is
regarded as one of the greatest psychologists of the year and holds a high position in the history of
psychology.
Edward Bradford Titchner
Edward Bradford Titchner was born in 1867 and died in 1927. He was an English man and pupil of Wundt.
He studied in Germany, and worked all his life in America.
Contributions of Titchner to psychology can be gauged from three things that he tried to do, are:
• Contents of consciousness
This means that Titchner explained what consciousness is actually composed of. He then went
on to elaborate the contents of consciousness.
• Combination of these contents
The second contribution of Titchner is that he described the combination of contents of
consciousness which means that, which contents get together to result in an activity.
• Connections between the contents
The third contribution of Titchner is that he explained the connection between the contents of
consciousness which means that consciousness is a product of contents being related with each
other and working together.
Unlike Wundt, who gave three methods to study consciousness, the subject matter of psychology,
Titchner argued that since the only way psychology could be studied was introspection which he defined as
systematic and controlled self observation.
This is where he carried forward the view of his teacher, although he did not emphatically propose
experimentation as the way of understanding consciousness. Titchner went on to say that introspection is a
special method of gaining knowledge and understanding consciousness and not everyone could introspect.
This made him train subjects to introspect.
Wilhelm Wundt, who was a teacher of Titchner, tried to establish a scientific outlook of
psychology. But there was a flaw in Titchner’s ideas, which was that he took psychology back to the realm
of speculation and moved away from the modern empirical approach.
Wundt is also regarded as a Structuralist because he also emphasized on psychology being the study
of consciousness and explained the structure of consciousness and described the content of consciousness.

FUNCTIONALISM
Various schools of thoughts have emerged in psychology in the last two to three hundred years.
These schools differed from one another on the basis of what they reckoned as the subject matter of
psychology and how they explained it. One of the early major schools in the development of psychology is
the functionalist school.
Like the Structuralist school, Functionalists also defined psychology as the study of consciousness
but instead of explaining the structure of consciousness and describing its content, Functionalists focused
on, as the name implies, the functioning of consciousness. There are two branches of functionalists:
o American functionalists; those who were on the American continent.
o European functionalists; those who were on the European continent.
American Functionalists
American functionalists are philosophers/psychologists who practiced on the American continent and
considered psychology as the study of consciousness, focusing on functions of consciousness.
William James
William James was born in 1842 and he died in 1910. He was an American philosopher, brother of
the novelist Henry James. In 1872 he joined the Harvard faculty as lecturer of anatomy and physiology, after
1880 worked in the department of psychology and philosophy, continued teaching until 1907. In 1890 he
published his brilliant and epoch-making book Principles of Psychology, in which the seeds of his
philosophy are already discernible. James's fascinating style and his broad culture and cosmopolitan outlook
made him the most influential American thinker of his era.
James is considered the founder of the sort of thinking called functionalism. The basic question
that was raised by James when he purported his theory was that “what is the purpose of consciousness?”
Therefore unlike the Structuralists who emphasized on explaining the structure and the parts of
consciousness, James came up with a completely new point of view. He focused on why we need
consciousness. This need is the function that the consciousness performs, therefore his theories focused on
explanation of the functions of consciousness and he is known as the founder of functionalist school.
William James put forward the view that consciousness is not epiphenomena, means that
consciousness cannot be considered as something whose functions or working cannot be explained.
Consciousness has to have certain set patterns of functions and it shall always work according to those
patterns. Therefore, if we consider consciousness to be an “epiphenomena” it would be wrong.
Consciousness needs to be studied and understood in order to explain its functions.
Explaining the function of consciousness, James put forward the view that consciousness creates
adjustment between the organism and the environment. This means that the organism needs to adjust and
adapt its environment in order to survive. This adaptation process is carried out with the help of
consciousness. Consciousness helps the organism to understand the environment and cope with the
changes in it.
James was also of the view that not just consciousness but all human psychological functions have
a definite purpose. For example, fear in an animal creates movement in the body; laughter reduces tension
etc. Therefore, the importance of all these psychological functions as well as consciousness is due to their
functions. If these functions are disturbed, the organism cannot survive. Therefore, instead of focusing on
the structure of the consciousness, scientists should focus on the functions.
His view was based upon his philosophy of pragmatism which means that the validity of an idea is
tested by its consequences. In other words, when we need to assay how valid an idea is we need to look at
the consequences of the application of idea. If the consequences are as expected, the idea is correct, if not,
the idea is wrong. Adopting a pragmatic approach, James was able to give the idea of the functions of
consciousness being more important.
William James is also known for his theory of emotions, now called James-Lange theory of
emotions. According to this theory, emotions are the consequences of perceptions of bodily changes. For
example, a person feels angry because he strikes something. The perception that is generated by this event
results in generation of certain responses which are emotions. In this case the emotion would be anger.
He also emphasized that repetition is most important for learning and it creates habits. Therefore,
we can develop habits by repeating certain acts. In other words, if we want to develop a habit of something,
we need to perform the thing again and again or repeatedly. Ultimately it would become a habit. These were
some of the contributions of William James.
John Dewey
The other prominent American functionalist was a philosopher, psychologist and above all an
educationist, John Dewey, born in 1859 and died in 1952. He taught at the universities of Minnesota,
Michigan and Chicago and at Columbia from 1904 until his retirement in 1930.
Since John Dewey was an educationist, his theories focused on the field of education. Dewey put
forward the view that education, particularly of children, should be based upon the needs of the children.
This means that children of different ages have different needs. The education system should concentrate
on understanding those needs and should adjust itself to meet the needs. In other words, while forming an
education system, the needs have to be focused upon. For further understanding, children have different
educational needs during his or her developmental stages. These needs need to be focused upon. This was
one of the greatest contributions of John Dewey. His point of view had a great impact on educational
practices in the States and globally.


EUROPEAN FUNCTIONALISTS

David Katz
The first of the European functionalists was David Katz. He taught psychology at Stockholm,
Sweden, for a number of years. In order to develop theory of functions of consciousness, Katz
experimented upon how we see colors. He showed through his experiments that the perception of colors
remains constant in different lights. This means that if someone is asked about a color in one kind of light,
his or her answer would be the same in another kind of light. But in reality, colors change because of
different lights. David Katz showed that human subjects see them as before. This he called the
“phenomenon of color constancy.” Katz purported that color constancy is a function of the consciousness
which makes the person perceive a color in the same way as before. Therefore, Katz also focused on
explaining the functions of consciousness and hence included in the functionalist school of thought.

Edgar Rubin
The other European functionalist was Edgar Rubin who taught at Copenhagen, Holland. Rubin
showed by his experiments on perception, that human beings see shapes in terms of figure and ground.
This is not just limited to the sense of vision but also on other senses. For example, in case of the sense of
vision, sky is the ground and clouds are the figures. When we look at the clouds, we acknowledge their
existence because they exist in a background of the blue sky. Further, when we look at a tree, the sky again
serves as the background while the tree is the figure in the background. In case of other senses, the sense of
hearing also depicts this phenomenon. When we listen to a song, the music being played is the ground and
voice of the singer is the figure. Therefore, Edgar Rubin also focused on how the consciousness functions
rather than the structure of the consciousness.

Jean Piaget
The third European functionalist was Jean Piaget who worked at Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland.
Piaget is famous for his theory of how children’s minds develop.
He postulated the concept of Schemata. According to him, Schemata is a construct or an idea in
the mind of children that how the world is, and how the world functions. In other words, it is what the
children perceive about the world around them. They think about how everything occurs, how things go
about and how they function. Of all this they make up explanations which according to Piaget is a
Schemata.
Schemata develop over the time by two processes:
• Assimilation
• Accommodation
Here, assimilation is the absorption of new and different information about the world and
accommodation according to Piaget is the expanding, stretching and changing of schemata to absorb new
information about the world. This means that when a child is exposed to various happening of the world he
absorbs information from the happenings. This information, collection or absorption process is called
assimilation. On the other hand, the information is a subject to constant change. As the child grows, he is
exposed to more and more information which requires constant refurbishing of the previously gathered
information. This process is called accommodation.
Another contribution of Jean Piaget is that he elaborated how children develop. According to him
development takes place in four stages:
• The sensory-motor stage
This is the first stage of development when children learn using their sensations. For example a
child touches a hot object and is hurt, this would create awareness in his or her mind that
touching hot objects is harmful. Therefore, the child learns by using the sensations. Further all
sensations like hot, cold, rough, smooth shall result in learning.
• The pre-operational stage
This is the second stage when the child for the first time, discovers rules and principles of how
things work. In other words, the child has the primary or initial information about the working
of the things that he sees around him. It is above from learning just through senses.
• The concrete operational stage
This is the third stage when his reason and logic develops and he learns by reasoning. This
stage combines the information gathered from the previous two stages and the child is able to
develop his own explanation of the things.
• The formal operational stage
This is the most developed and the last stage of development where the child is able to learn by
abstraction. In other words, the child is able to draw conclusions about working of things, and
phenomena using his own ability to associate ideas, perceive, think, and explain the
happenings.
Jean Piaget therefore studied psychological functions in terms of learning and in terms of development.
This means that he focused on how learning and development takes place. In other words, he also focused
on the functions rather than structure of psychological phenomena. He is therefore included in the
functionalist school as a European functionalist

__________________
Born with personality is an accident but dying as a personality is an achievement.

BEHAVIORISM
One of the greatest developments in the history of mankind is the industrial revolution of the 18th
century. It marked the advent of a completely new era of thinking and approach towards gaining
knowledge. A rational approach was adopted and the ancient speculative methods given by the Greeks were
rejected. The industrial revolution had a deep impact on the development of human thoughts; therefore the
discipline of psychology was also bound to be impacted.
The path of this influence on psychology is easily traceable. As industry developed and manual
labor was shifted to machine labor, there were a number of changes in society and human behavior. New
towns were established, close to the factories; housing shifted from huge farm houses to small houses; labor
working hours and habits changed; dependence on modes of living changed as well. One of the impacts of
the industrial revolution was that, as the production shifted from manual labor to factories, the production
increased rapidly. Therefore, new markets were sought and it became imperative to predict and control
human behavior, in order to sell more. Another aspect of this development was that the attention of
researchers now shifted towards these workers aiming at getting maximum productivity from the industrial
labor. This productivity was based on human behavior and the result was that, the need to study human
behavior arose. As mentioned earlier, man had become more rational in his approach and had disposed of
speculation as a means of gaining knowledge. This made him focus on concrete facts and adopt scientific
approach in his study. Psychologists started analyzing, predicting and controlling human behavior since it
was visible while consciousness was not. It gave birth to the school of thought now called the Behaviorist
School.

Edward Lee Thorndike
Edward Lee Thorndike was an American behaviorist philosopher/psychologist, who was born in
1874 and died in 1949. After completing his studies Thorndike moved to Harvard University, where
William James had set up his psychological laboratory. Thorndike had read James and was impressed with
his work on functions of consciousness. He set up his lab at Harvard, working with chicks but later
transferred to James’ house where he did his experiments on cats which are his most famous experiments.
He devised the “puzzle box” which he used for these experiments.
Based upon his experiments he formulated what he called “laws of learning,” or how learning takes
place. In other words, Thorndike made efforts to learn how the process of learning actually takes place.
Before we look at those laws, first let us have a look at the concept of learning that Thorndike proposed.
He said that learning takes place by stimulus-response connections rather than by association; according to
him learning takes place by two ways which he called laws of learning. The laws are as follows:

i. Law of effect
The law of effect states that all responses that followed by satisfaction are stamped into an
individual and he learns those responses. This means that any act that is performed by an
individual, when it is reinforced by a reward that brings satisfaction to the performer, the act
becomes learnt.
For example, if an animal such as a cat is rewarded with food if it performs a certain act, the act
shall be learnt by the cat. This is what Thorndike concluded through his experiments.

ii. Law of exercise
The law of exercise states that responses that are repeated are also stamped in and become learnt.
This law does non focus on the reinforcement through satisfaction but states that when theindividual keeps on performing a certain act, the act is learnt. In other words, the exercise that is
constantly performed by an individual is learnt by him or her.
The law of effect given by Thorndike is similar to Pavlov’s law of conditioning by reinforcement
and the second law, i.e. law of exercise is similar to James’s theory of habit formation due to repetition.
As mentioned earlier, Thorndike devised the puzzle box for his experiments. The puzzle box was a
box with a door operated through a lever in it. A string with a ring was attached with the lever, which
released the door of the box, when pulled. The box was big enough to accommodate a cat. Thorndike used
cats for his experiments. As the cat was trapped in the box, it tried hard to escape. The only escape possible
was through the door which opened by pulling the string attached to the lever. As the cat pulled the string
with its paw, the door of the box opened and it escaped. When the cat was put into the box a number of
times, it learnt to use the string to escape. Therefore, based on this observation, Thorndike came up with
his laws of learning.
Thorndike also emphasized on a concept important to learning, which he called the “Recency
effect.” He saw in his experiments on cats that the last act in the series of acts by the cats, which is
reinforced, is learnt quickly. For example if a cat is rewarded for the last act which it performs in a series of
acts, the last one shall be learnt by the cat. Therefore, as the name implies, the law relates to the most recent
act performed by the subject which is learnt by it.
Thorndike performed further experiments to substantiate his laws of learning. This further
experimentation and observation lead him to repeal the law of exercise, and modify the law of effect. He
then proposed the “law of belongingness” to explain animal learning.

iii. Law of belongingness
The law of belongingness states that only relevant responses that “belong” to the learning situation
are learnt. For example, the moving of paws by the cat in the puzzle box is learnt but not pricking
of ears.
Thorndike could be classified as a behaviorist because he explained learning as a psychological
function in behavioristic, observational terms. He did try to look into consciousness but restricted his
studies to the behavior of animals and used comparative psychology to explain human behavior and
learning.

Albert Weiss
Albert Weiss was an early behaviorist who was born in 1879 and died in 1931. He was born in
Germany but he came to America when he was very young. He studied and worked for the rest of his life in
America, therefore he is considered to be an American behaviorist.
The era of the behaviorists was the time when man had adopted a rational approach towards
gaining of knowledge and speculation was no more considered as a means for it. This was the time after the
industrial revolution which changed the outlook of mankind completely. Writing on psychology, Weiss
asserted that anything that cannot be studied with the methods of natural sciences should not be a part of
psychology. In other words, anything that is based on mere speculation and cannot be substantiated by
concrete evidences should not be a part of psychological study. In other words psychology should concern
itself only with observable concrete facts and not with elements, structure or functions of consciousness
because these variables are not directly observable. As the Functionalists and Structuralists before the
behaviorists had been trying to develop theories about the structure and functions of consciousness, Weiss
rejected their approach. To him their methods of explaining phenomena were based on speculative studies.
Weiss further stated that psychologists only pretend when they regard introspection as a method of
scientific data collection. This was the method adopted by the schools before the Behaviorists.
One of the important arguments of Weiss is that there are no mental forces apart from
physiological forces which are reducible to physical forces. In other words, all mental forces can be studied
using a physiological approach and not considering them to be extraordinary forces which cannot be
studied through ordinary scientific methods of inquiry.
Another contribution of Albert Weiss is that he also noted the impact of social forces on a person.
He said that every person’s behavior is impacted by social forces. This means that the social environment, in
which an individual lives, influences his or her behavior and thinking. Therefore, he regarded human beings
as a product of biological and social factors. He stated that humans are biological and social in nature and
psychology is a bio-social science which focuses on relating the biological processes of learning and human
behavior with the social environment that is responsible for them.

Edwin Holt
Edwin Holt was another early behaviorist who was born in 1873 and died in 1946. He was at two
of the top universities in America; Harvard and at Princeton. He agreed with the contemporary point of
view prevailing on the American continent that psychology should concern itself only with directly
observable facts and data. The speculative methods of learning and exploring were rejected by him like all
other behaviorists. Therefore, he also declared psychology be a scientific discipline which was based on
rationality. Only the facts that could be substantiated should be considered in psychology.
Holt further proposed that psychology should concern itself with behavior, therefore he is also
considered as a behaviorist. According to him, behavior is the result of two factors:

i. Learning
Learning takes place when an organism is exposed to internal or external stimulation, e.g.
internal stimulation may be hunger, thirst etc. while external stimulation may be heat, coldness
etc. Organism behaves in response to these stimuli.

ii. Canalization
Further, behavior is also the result of canalization which is what we learn in our childhood.
Childhood experiences influence and produce behavior and in any study of psychology we
must not ignore those childhood experiences.

Walter Hunter
The third early behaviorist was Walter Hunter, born in 1889 and died in 1953. He proclaimed that
he started with dealing in psychology of experience and shifted to psychology of behavior.
He proposed, agreeing with his contemporary psychologists, that psychology should concern itself
with observation of behavior of humans and should not concern itself with the problems of consciousness.
He said that Wundt was partly correct when he studied consciousness as the subject matter of psychology
because consciousness is merely a name used to describe concrete objects in the environment. In other
words, a person’s consciousness mostly comprises of objects in his environment, which is a view point
similar to the one given by Weiss. Environment plays a dominant role in determining a person’s behavior
and his habits. The prime example relevant here is the impact of the industrial revolution. The example
could be related to the behavior of the psychologists themselves. As the environment of mankind changed
from speculation to rationality and factualism, psychologists also shifted towards scientific outlook. The
need was to have the greatest productivity from the labor force, which was of course related to the study of
behavior. Therefore, psychologists shifted towards the study of behavior. The point remains, that the
environment and social circumstances have a profound impact on the behavior of the individuals which
psychology tends to identify and study.
Hunter chose experimental method as his method of investigation and he is credited with the
development of temporal maze for his experiments. Temporal maze was used to conduct experiments in
which an animal was allowed to find its way around the maze to the food. When the animal had become
familiar with the maze, it would take much less time to reach the food and thus Hunter drew his
conclusions based on these observations. He conducted experiments on delayed reaction time of animals
for which he is known for. He is also considered as a behaviorist because of his scientific outlook and his
emphasis on behavioral approach towards psychology.

J.B.Watson
J.B. Watson is regarded as the founder of the school of behaviorism. He was born in 1878 and died
in 1958. He began as a student of philosophy at the University of Chicago, but later turned to psychology.
He taught for a number of years at Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore USA, where he set up his animal
laboratories. Later he shifted to the corporate world and offered advice to industry relating to advertising
and marketing.
Watson taught that psychology should ignore consciousness and concentrate on concrete facts:
psychology. This was one of the founding principles of the behaviorists’ approach. He further said that
psychologists must discard all reference to consciousness and must only look at behavior of animals and
man. Because of his stress on behavior to the neglect of consciousness, he called himself a behaviorist. He
was the first one to proclaim himself as a behaviorist. His methodology revolutionized the subject of
psychology giving a new outlook to it. As consciousness was no more regarded as the concrete method of
gaining knowledge, therefore, psychology focused merely on factual evidences and observable phenomena
after the advent of this school. A measure of how seriously his appeal was taken by his professional
colleagues is that he was elected as the President of American Psychological Association.
In one of his books, entitled “Behavior,” he enumerated what behaviorism is all about in
psychology. As the functionalists and the structuralists had defined psychology as the study of
consciousness, Watson defined, as opposed to them, psychology as the science of behavior. Behavior of
animals and humans was in his view what needed to be studied for an understanding of psychology.
Furthermore, Watson asserted that psychologists should use only objective, experimental methods
and should not use introspection as a method. He said that the aim of the study of psychology should be to
provide prediction and control of behavior. This is the basic aim of behaviorism. Behaviorists tend to
develop methods and techniques to control and predict human behavior in order to get the most out of
them. Behaviorism emerged in times when the industrial revolution took place. At that moment in the
history of mankind, the focus was on increasing the productivity of workforce.
According to Watsonian behaviorism, behavior can be studied in terms of stimulus-response
patterns. This means, that a stimulus is received by organism and it responds. For example, when someone
touches a hot object, he immediately withdraws his hand from the object. In other words, the hotness of
the object serves as the stimulus while the withdrawing action of the individual is his or her response to the
stimulus. Watson therefore stated that there is nothing mysterious in this action and reaction and all of it
could be explained in simple physiological terms.
Watson denied the value of introspection as data for psychology but said that a “verbal report,”
may be obtained from the subject after the experiment. For example, if an individual is placed in a series of
experiments, he may then be asked about the feelings and the emotions that he faced during the
experiments. It is different from introspection in the sense that here the report is based on the
circumstances that have been artificially created for the experiment. Therefore, verbal report, in view of
Watson may be a source of information for psychologists, but he clearly denied the introspection as a
means.
One of the important contributions of Watson is that in his opinion, thinking is nothing but
“implicit behavior.” For example, when an individual manipulates images in his mind, thinking takes place.
The individual relates these images together forming an explanation for the phenomenon that he is trying to
study. Therefore thinking is also a kind of behavior. Watson agreed with the viewpoint of Ivan Pavlov
about learning and said that we learn according to the laws of conditioning as given by Pavlov.
Watson suggested that memory and images are nothing but sensory activities in the brain. This
again refers to the study of behaviorism as a physiological phenomenon rather than a mysterious one. He
said that the sensory activities of the brain can be classified as “molecular behavior.”
Watson further proclaimed that by controlling the environment of an organism we could control
and predict its behavior. This is known as environmentalism, that organism is affected by its environment.
It is similar to the idea of Tabula Rasa given by John Locke. According to Locke, the mind of a new born
baby is like a clean slate which is written upon by the surrounding environment. Watson’s contribution to
psychology was one of the major developments in the study of psychology.

__________________
Born with personality is an accident but dying as a personality is an achievement.

NEO-BEHAVIORISTS

B.F. Skinner

One of the most prominent psychologists, who was impressed by Watsonian behaviourism on the
one hand and Pavlovian conditioning on the other was another American B.F. Skinner, born in the year
1904 and died in 1990. He worked at Harvard University and carried on his experiments on animals, writing
many books and articles. His main research work is now known by the title of Instrumental or Operant
Conditioning.
Working on white rats and pigeons, in specially devised cages, known as Skinner boxes he observed
how animals learn. He therefore adopted an experimental method of learning. He also purported the idea of
learning by conditioning but his conditioning was different from that of Pavlov. Later Pavlov’s conditioning
came to be known as classical conditioning while Skinner’s conditioning was called instrumental or operant
conditioning.
One of the contributions of B.F. Skinner is that he distinguished between positive reinforcement
and negative reinforcement, where positive reinforcement is when a response is positively rewarded and
negative reinforcement is when a response is negatively rewarded or punished. In other words, if a subject,
who is hungry, is rewarded on its act with food, the reinforcement is positive. On the other hand, if a
subject is punished on his or her act but being beaten up or being subjected to some kind of torture, or
even a less sever punishment such as denial of food, the reinforcement given to him according to Skinner is
negative reinforcement.
According to Skinner, learning takes place by four schedules of reinforcement:
i. Fixed ratio schedule
ii. Variable ratio schedule
iii. Fixed interval schedule
iv. Variable interval schedule
Reinforcement is given to the subjects according to these scales. Fixed ratio is, when reinforcement
is given after a fixed number of responses. Variable ratio is when reinforcement is given after variable
number of responses. Fixed interval is reinforcement is given after a fixed time period. Variable interval is
when reinforcement is given after a variable time interval.
Based upon his experiments he proposed in his famous book: “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” that
change in whole society is necessary for the betterment.

Karl Lashley
An important contributor to the behaviourist school is Karl Lashley, born in 1890 and died in 1958.
He was a pupil of Watson. Adopting from Watson, he proposed that psychology is a science of behaviour
and behaviour is the result of activity of the cerebral cortex, a part of the brain. This is one of his greatest
contributions in psychology which lead to the development of two principles given by Lashley himself.

i. Principle of equi-potentiality:
According to Lashley, one part of the cortex is the same as another part. Therefore, even if one
part is cut off, the brain activity still takes place. In other words, both parts of the cortex have
equal potential to make the brain work properly.

ii. Principle of mass action:
He also proposed that the more the cortex in mass, the better the learning and called it the
“principle of mass action.” So Lashley showed that behaviour and more precisely learning is a
function of the activity of the cortex.

Donald Hebb
Donald Hebb was a Canadian psychologist, who showed that, when a part of the human brain was
removed accidentally, it did not affect a person’s IQ. It is similar to Lashley’s principle of equi-potentiality
which stated that if one part of the cortex is removed, the brain continues to function as with the full
cortex.

Harvey Harlow
Another psychologist Harvey Harlow, of University of Wisconsin showed that curiosity,
exploration and manipulation effect animal learning. This meant that if a subject is curious about certain
phenomenon, it would have a different learning pattern as compared to other subjects. Further, exploration
and manipulation also affect learning.

Hobart Mowrer
Hobart Mowrer at the University of Illinois showed that factors such as hope and disappointment
influence learning.
Behaviourism slowly had introduced such mentalistic concepts as curiosity, hope, disappointment,
etc. So behaviourism slowly moved away from dealing with purely observational data and started looking
into psychological factors.

__________________
Born with personality is an accident but dying as a personality is an achievement.

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
There were two major trends in psychology at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning
of the 20th century. In Europe, Wundt’s structuralist psychology was the major influence, and in America
behaviorist psychology was the dominant trend. In 1912 three German psychologists located in and around
Frankfurt, Germany, independently of each other had come to the conclusion that in the past psychologists
had overlooked the linkage between consciousness and behavior. Therefore these psychologists started to
concert efforts to develop a system of psychology that took into view the unity of human beings. These
efforts laid the foundation of a new look called Gestalt psychology, the purpose of which was to avoid
piecemeal study of psychology and to present a holistic view. In other words, the Gestalt psychology
adopted both the behaviorist’s views and the structuralists’ views. Gestalt is a German word meaning
patterns. The structuralists were focusing on the consciousness as the key element in the study of
psychology while the behaviorists were focusing on the prediction and control of behavior. The group of
students and researchers related to this concept developed the Gestalt School.

Max Wertheimer
Max Wertheimer belonged to the Gestalt school of psychology. He was born in 1886 and died in
1943. He studied at the universities of Prague, Berlin. His original researches, while he was a professor at
Frankfurt and Berlin, placed him in the forefront of contemporary psychology. Wertheimer came to the
United States in 1933, shortly before the Nazis seized power in Germany. Wertheimer’s discovery (1910–
12) of the phi-phenomenon (concerning the illusion of motion) gave rise to the influential school of Gestalt
psychology. His early experiments, in collaboration with Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka, introduced a
new approach (macroscopic as opposed to microscopic) to the study of psychological problems. In the
latter part of his life he directed much of his attention to the problem of learning; this research resulted in a
book, posthumously published, called Productive Thinking.
One of the greatest contributions of Wertheimer is that he showed by his experiments that if two
lines are shown to a subject and the time period of exposure between these two lines is small, the subject
sees these two lines as one line moving from its position to the position of the other line. Wertheimer called
this phenomenon “Apparent movement” or phi-phenomenon. Therefore, according to Wertheimer, Phiphenomenon
or apparent movement is when we see one image move from one place to another, when
physically there is no movement. In case of the lines shown by Wertheimer, the horizontal or the vertical
lines did not move at all, but instead, on line appeared after the other. The interval between the
disappearance and the appearance of the other line was so short that to the subjects it appeared that the
lines were moving from their positions into the other positions. The greatest impact of this discovery can be
seen in its application in the movie camera. When a movie is being played on a cinema screen it is actually
the phi-phenomenon which is working. The images of the movie are all still images captured by the camera
but the interval between the movements of the images is so short that the characters of the movie seem as
moving to the observer. Television is another example where the image is created by a small dot which
moves across the screen and the characters appear to be moving.
Wertheimer explained this phi-phenomenon as being due to a tendency on the part of human mind
to fill in the gaps. For further explanation, when the line which was perceived by the observer as moving is
analyzed, we see that the movement from the horizontal to the vertical or vice versa, has been developed by
the observer’s brain, while there is no movement at all. Therefore human mind has the tendency to develop
something to fill into the gap. Based upon this tendency, Wertheimer discovered many factors which help
human beings to perceive things in patterns or Gestalts. He called these factors, the factors of organization.
They are factors that help us to perceive in patterns or Gestalts. Some of these factors are:

o Similarity
If you see many dots and small lines, you see dots as one group, pattern, gestalt etc. and lines as
another group. This is similarity leading to gestalts or patterns based on groups.

o Proximity
If you see many dots close to each other, and then some dots separated, you see the closely located
dots as one group of gestalt. This is nearness or proximity leading to gestalt.

o Closure
If a part of a familiar shape is missing we tend to fill it up, and see the shape as whole, this is
closure leading to gestalt. For example, if one of the corners of a star is missing, we tend to fill in
the missing part by ourselves and perceive the star as its complete shape. Therefore closure also
results in gestalt.
These are factors that are in the stimulus field that help us to perceive gestalts. There are some subjective
factors also that help in this whole perception. For example, mental set, or set is a subjective factor that
helps perceptual organization. Mental set of set can be explained with the help of the following examples: if
a person is taking a walk in a garden, and before he came here, he was warned by his friend that there were
snakes in the garden; his mental set would be to see snakes in the garden. Therefore, he is likely to confuse a
twig with a snake and be afraid of it. This is an example of mental set.
Habit or familiarity is another factor that leads to perceptual organization. For example, if a person is
familiar with certain objects he may be able to formulate a gestalt very quickly. Same is the case with habit.
Wertheimer, through his observation and experimentation discovered those factors that influence
perception.
Wertheimer also tried to discover what is creative thinking or problem solving thinking. Creative
thinking or problem solving thinking had become a subject of interest for psychologists at the turn of the
century since creative thinking was the key to development as newer fields of study were explored by
mankind. He observed young children and adults in his quest to determine what is creative or problem
solving thinking and how it takes place. He also interviewed one of the greatest minds of the 20th century,
Albert Einstein, to see how he produced his Theory of Relativity. Based upon these observations,
Wertheimer noted various operations related to creative or problem solving thinking. He said we should
avoid a piecemeal approach, not let our biases affect our thinking and should not blindly follow our habits.
In other words, he said that we should ensure that our dispositions do not affect our thinking and we are
able to concentrate on discovering new rather than analyzing new from the already existing point of views.
That is how we can become productive, creative thinkers.
Wertheimer is known as a Gestalt psychologist because he tried to determine the patterns of
perception that an individual follows.

Wolfgang Kohler

Wolfgang Kohler was born in 1880 and he died in 1943. He was a German but is known mostly as
an American psychologist because he worked in America. From 1913 to 1920 he was director of a research
station at Tenerife, Germany. Later he served as both professor of psychology and director of the
Psychology Institute, Berlin. He came to the United States in 1934, where he became professor of
psychology at Swarthmore College. Köhler is best known for his experiments with problem-solving in apes
at Tenerife and the influence of his writings in the founding of the school of Gestalt psychology. His
writings include Gestalt Psychology and The Mentality of Apes.
Kohler’s main contribution in the Gestalt School is his discovery of learning by insight. He
conducted experiments on monkey and saw that monkeys were able to solve their problems through
insight. He saw that monkeys were able to attach sticks together to reach far off objects which they thought
was food. They would also pile up boxes to reach high places if they wanted to. Kohler concluded that
learning takes place by insight. Monkeys thought about what to do first and then performed the action.
Based on this observation, Kohler concluded trial and error as a method of learning.
Kohler also postulated the concept of isomorphism which means that there is kind of a mental map
of the objects in environment, and this mental map helps in learning by insight. This means that in the mind
of individuals, there is a map which according to him is the explanation of the things around him. In other
words, the map is the individual’s perception about the world around him. This concept was called
isomorphism by Kohler. These were some of the contributions of Wolfgang Kohler.

Kurt Koffka
The other prominent contributor in the Gestalt school was Kurt Koffka who was born in 1886 and
died in 1941. He was an American psychologist but was born in Germany. Before settling permanently in
the United States in 1928 as a professor at Smith, he taught at Cornell and at the Univ. of Wisconsin. With
Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler he is credited with developing the theories that gave rise to the
school of Gestalt psychology. His book Growth of the Mind (1924) was considered responsible for
awakening much interest in Gestalt concepts.
Koffka’s concept of field theory was an important concept of the Gestalt school. He distinguished
between the geographical field and the field of experience. Geographical field is the actual environment
while the field of experience is the mindset of the observer. Humans react to the field of experience and not
to the geographical field. The geographical field is the actual field which represents the real world around.
The field of experience represents the experiences or the dispositions of the person who experiences the
field. For example, if a person goes for a walk in the garden and he knows that there have been witnesses of
snakes in that garden, he is quite likely to confuse a twig with a snake. This means that the person has
actually considered only the field of experience and ignored the geographical field or the reality. This is what
Koffka tried to explain. In his views, an individual tends to ignore the geographical field in face of the field
of experience which dominates his understanding or perceptions. The field of experience in the above
example may have been established by someone telling the person that there are snakes in the garden or
some previous incidents of snake sighting that the person might have heard of. These were some of the
contributions of Kurt Koffka.

Productive or Problem Solving Thinking:

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
Productive thinking or problem solving thinking and learning by insight has been explained very thoroughly
by two psychologists, one in America and the other in the European Continent. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi,
born in 1934, is a psychology professor at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California and is
the former head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago. He is noted for his work in
the study of happiness, creativity, subjective well-being, and fun, but is best known as the architect of the
notion of flow and for his years of research and writing on the topic. He is the author of many books and
over 120 articles or book chapters. He interviewed and studied over two thousand creative people and
discovered some common elements in them. Some of those were; smart and naïve, playful and disciplined,
humble and proud, having great physical energy etc. Martin Seligman, former president of the American
Psychological Association, described Csikszentmihalyi as the world's leading researcher on positive
psychology. He is one of the most widely cited psychologists today, in a variety of fields related to
psychology and business.

Edward De Bono
The European who is famous in this regard is Edward De Bono (born in May 19, 1933) who was at
Cambridge University and developed his theory of Lateral Thinking which is akin to creative or problem
solving thinking. He developed some exercises to inculcate lateral thinking. Some of his exercises are,
“question” “rotate,” discover “dominant idea” etc. Edward de Bono is a psychologist and physician. De
Bono writes prolifically on subjects of lateral thinking, a concept he is believed to have pioneered. De Bono
is also a consultant who has worked with companies such as Coca-cola and Ericsson. In 1979 he cofounded
the School of Thinking with Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson.

Kurt Lewin
Kurt Lewin was born in 1890 and died in 1947. He worked and taught with other prominent
Gestalt psychologists in Berlin until 1932, when he immigrated to USA and joined the University of Iowa.
Later, Lewin set up the Research Centre for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
One of the contributions of Kurt Lewin is his theory which he called the Field Theory. The field
theory concept was also given by another Gestalt psychologist by the name of Kurt Koffka, but, Lewin’s
theory was different from the one given by Koffka. According to Lewin’s theory, the field, or the
environment around the individual has many attractions which may be positive or negative. The positive
attractions may be to achieve a goal in life or to help some one in trouble. On the other hand, negative
attraction may be to take undue advantage of someone in trouble. These attractions may also be called
positive or negative opportunities. According to Lewin’s theory, because of these positive and negative
opportunities, conflicts arise in the mind of individuals who have the chance to avail either of the two
opportunities. Often both the opportunities may result in significant good for the individual while the
negative one may offer more value. Therefore, the conflict arises in the mind of the individual whether to
go for the positive opportunity with lesser good and satisfaction through doing the right thing, or to go for
the negative opportunity.
Lewin is a prominent Gestalt psychologist for his contribution in discovering the kinds of mental
conflicts that result in frustration and are responsible for a number of problems in people’s lives. He
proposed three kinds of conflicts that a person may be faced with:

i. The approach-approach conflict
The approach-approach conflict is a sort of conflict in which an individual is faced with the
challenge of liking between two things. He may only be able to approach one at time and the choice
creates the conflict. While choosing one of the options he foregoes the other one and the
approach-approach conflict comes up.

ii. Approach-avoidance conflict
The approach-avoidance conflict refers to when the individual is faced with the choice of avoiding
something or approaching something. This is the simplest of the three conflicts and the most
common one, where something attractive might have to be avoided because of an ethical reason.
For example making money through gambling is although attractive but avoiding it or approaching
it presents a conflict to the mind, since it is not ethically correct in our society to make money
through gambling.

iii. Avoidance-avoidance conflict
Avoidance-avoidance conflict refers to the conflict which arises because the individual faces the
challenge of which thing to avoid out of the options which all need to be avoided. For example, if a
sick person has to take bitter medicine, he would certainly want to avoid it. But on the other hand,
he is left with the other choice of accepting the sickness, which he would again want to avoid.
Therefore, the avoidance-avoidance conflict refers to the condition in which the mind has a conflict
because of two things which need to be avoided.
The other important contribution that came out of Lewin’s work at University of Iowa is his theory
of leadership; and the measurement of leadership phenomenon. He recognized three different styles of
leaders:

i. Authoritarian
As the name implies, an authoritarian leader is the one who intends to make use of his
authority to carry out the decision making process. He likes little sharing of his power and
depends more on his own instincts and thoughts.

ii. Democratic
A democratic leader is the one who believes in considering the thoughts and opinions of others
for decision making. He lets others share their thoughts and make decisions based upon
consensus.

iii. Laissez-faire
A laissez-faire leader is the one who is willing to delegate power and authority to others for
making decisions. He lets other decide on some matters and leads more from the back seat.
Although Lewin started as a Gestalt psychologist in Germany but after migrating to the USA he
became more involved in group dynamics and there he set up a center which provided some very important
contributions in the field of group dynamics. Group dynamics is the study of behavior of individuals in
groups and the behavior of groups as a whole.

__________________
Born with personality is an accident but dying as a personality is an achievement.

Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud was and Austrian psychiatrist who was born in 1856 and died in 1939. He worked at Vienna
and later in England. He is the inventor of psycho-analysis as a method of treatment. Born in Moravia, he
lived most of his life in Vienna, receiving his medical degree from the Univ. of Vienna in 1881.
Freud was a doctor, writer, researcher and a professor. When Freud graduated from the medical school and
started doing research that was the time when hypnotism was a prevalent method of treatment of mental
disorders. He was impressed with works of Charcot, using hypnotism. Working with Joseph Breuer he saw
the advantages and disadvantages of hypnotism as a method of treatment.
His medical career began with an apprenticeship under J. M. Charcot in Paris, and soon after his return to
Vienna he began his famous collaboration with Josef Breuer on the use of hypnosis in the treatment of
hysteria.
Based upon his practice, he formulated the concept of unconscious mind and its role in creating mental
diseases. Freud discovered the unconscious functions of mind which according to him were responsible for
mental diseases.
Freud also thought that the parts of the mind play a dominant role in creating mental diseases. He gave the
parts of mind as follows:

Id
The Id is the irrational and emotional part of the mind. At birth a baby’s mind is all Id – want, want, want.
The Id is the primitive mind. It contains all the basic needs and feelings. And it has only one rule--the
“pleasure principle”: “I want it and I want it all now”.

Ego
The Ego functions with the rational part of the mind. The Ego develops out of growing awareness that you
can’t always get what you want. The Ego relates to the real world and operates via the “reality principle”.
The Ego realizes the need for compromise and negotiates between the Id and the Superego. The Ego's job
is to get the Id's pleasures but to be reasonable and bear the long-term consequences in mind. The Ego
denies both instant gratification and pious delaying of gratification.

The Superego
The Superego is the last part of the mind to develop. It might be called the moral part of the mind. The
Superego becomes an embodiment of parental and societal values. It stores and enforces rules. It constantly
strives for perfection, even though this perfection/ideal may be quite far from reality or possibility. Its
power to enforce rules comes from its ability to create anxiety.
The Superego has two subsystems: Ego Ideal and Conscience. The Ego Ideal provides rules for good
behavior, and standards of excellence towards which the Ego must strive. The Ego ideal is basically what
the child’s parents approve of or value. The Conscience is the rules about what constitutes bad behavior.
The Conscience is basically all those things that the child feels his or her parents will disapprove or punish.
According to Freud, all human beings develop psychologically and during this process they pass through
different stages of psycho-sexual development. He said that the unconsciousness expresses itself in mental
symptoms, dreams and psychopathology of everyday life. He developed the theory of psycho-pathology of
everyday life. Slips of tongue, slips of memory etc. are representative of psychopathology of everyday life.
He developed the theory of interpretation of dreams. He explained dream work in terms of: Manifest
Contents; Latent Content, Displacement, Condensation, Symbolism etc.
Sigmund Freud formulated a theory of defense mechanisms. Some of them include denial, repression,
regression and projection. The id, the ego, and the superego formulate the model that Freud used to
describe the components of human personality. The ego, tempered by the superego, is that conscious part
that acts as mediator between the instinctual drives of the unconscious id and the social environment.
According to Freud, the ego has developed what he calls defense mechanisms, to cover for the wild
demands of the id, which would rarely be socially acceptable. All of the defenses can be described as a
combination of denial or repression with different ways of rationalization.
When we rationalize, we are distorting the facts to make the event or our own impulses less threatening;
that is, diluting the anxiety to a manageable level. We often come to believe our own distortions, or excuses,
or even lies.
Repression
The unconscious purpose of repression operates in a person who is not able to recall a threatening situation
or may completely forget that a disliked person ever was a part of his/her life. Phobias can be examples of
repression because the person has an unreasonable fear but may have no idea how it originated.
Denial
Denial is characterized by having a conscious awareness at some level, but simply denies the reality of the
experience by pretending it is not there. An example: a person who faints at a horrible real-life occurrence,
such as the death of a loved one. Or, that same person might intellectually know that a person has died but
refuses to “accept it” while she may still wait for the usual time the person came back from work.
On a lighter note, a student may refuse to pick up her final grade from a difficult class because she knows it
is not an acceptable grade. She simply denies the reality of the grade. As a defense mechanism, denial
becomes more difficult to maintain as one matures. Its use requires much energy and the mind looks at
other possibilities of defense.
Regression
Regression involves a movement back in developmental time to when a person felt safe and secure. Often,
that is childhood. For example, person who has suffered a difficult divorce or death of a spouse may want
to revisit the home of his/her childhood – those tender years before pain overruled all other feelings.
Projection
Projection is attributing your own unacceptable impulses to someone else. The impulses are still judged
unacceptable but they belong to someone else, not you. At that point you are free to criticize that person
for having such terrible impulses. The final result is that you no longer feel threatened and you can maintain
your self-esteem by ignoring an objectionable aspect of yourself.
These were some examples of defenses that a person develops. Based upon his observations, Freud also
developed a theory of neurosis. According to his theory:
Neurosis=Predisposition + trauma
Which means that Neurosis is the result of a predisposition which is inclination or a tilt toward something,
and trauma which is a sudden shock resulting from, for example, an unexpected incident.
Based upon his experience he formulated his method of treatment of mental disorders which is called
psychoanalysis. The procedure of psychoanalysis includes:
o Free association
o Interpretation of dreams
o Interpretation of psychopathology of everyday life
o Analysis of resistance
o Analysis of transference
Freud also wrote extensively on ancient religions, social psychology and other topics.

Anna Freud
Anna Freud was born on December 3, 1895 and she died on October 9, 1982. She was the sixth and last
child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to
the newly born field of psychoanalysis.
Her field of specialization was Child Psychology. As such, the formation of the fields of child
psychoanalysis and child developmental psychology can be attributed to Anna Freud. Her main
contribution in this field was the Identification with aggressor among the children who dominates the rest
of the children.
Anna Freud furthermore developed different techniques of assessment and treatment of children disorders,
thereby contributing to our understanding of anxiety and depression as significant problems among
children.

Heinz Hartmann
Heinz Hartmann was born in 1894 at Vienna, Austria and he died in 1970. He was a psychiatrist and
psychoanalyst. He is considered one of the founders and principal representatives of ego psychology.
Hartmann was born to a family known for producing writers and academics. His own father was a
professor of history, and his mother was a pianist and sculptor. Hartmann’s interest was in Freudian
theories.
He chose to enter into analysis with Freud and was noted as a shining star amongst analysts of his
generation. His work marked the development of the theoretical movement known as Ego-psychology. He
elaborated the functions of ego. He stated that Ego integrates and coordinates tendencies in humans.

Ernst Kris
Being a follower of Freud, Ernst Kriss further elaborated the role of ego. According to him Ego controls
regression.

__________________
Born with personality is an accident but dying as a personality is an achievement.

Carl Gustav Jung

Carl Gustav Jung was born in Switzerland in 1870. Jung wanted to study archaeology at university, but his
family was too poor to send him further than Basel, where they did not teach this subject, so instead Jung
studied medicine at the University of Basel. Towards the end of studies here he decided to specialize in
psychiatric medicine. He later worked in a psychiatric hospital in Zurich.
Following World War I, Jung became a worldwide traveler. He visited Northern Africa shortly after, then
New Mexico and Kenya in the mid-1920s. In 1938, he delivered lectures on Psychology and Religion, at
Yale University. During this period of his life Jung visited India. His experience in India led him to become
fascinated and deeply involved in Eastern philosophies and religions, helping him to come up with key
concepts of his ideology, including integrating spirituality into everyday life and appreciation of the
unconscious.
Jung was impressed with Freud; he met Freud, worked and delivered lectures with him, but disagreed and
developed his own theoretical framework and method of treatment, called Analytical Psychology. Jung died
in 1961 in Zurich, Switzerland.
Like Freud, Jung also divided the mind into conscious and unconscious parts, but according to him
unconscious has different layers.
o The upper layer is the personal unconscious.
o And the deeper layer is the collective unconscious.
The personal unconscious has repressed materials, and the collective unconscious has experiences of
forefathers and generations in the form of archetypes. The collective unconscious could be thought of as
the DNA of the human psyche. Just as all humans share a common physical heritage and predisposition
towards specific physical forms (like having two legs, a heart, etc.) so do all humans have a common
psychological predisposition. However, unlike the quantifiable information that composes DNA, the
collective unconscious is composed of archetypes.
In contrast to the objective material world, the subjective realm of archetypes can not be fully understood
through quantitative modes of research. Instead it can be revealed more fully through an examination of the
symbolic communications of the human psyche in art, dreams, religion, myth, and the themes of human
relational/behavioral patterns. Devoting his life to the task of exploring and understanding the collective
unconscious, Jung theorized that certain symbolic themes exist in every individual. These themes, according
to Jung, are called archetypes.
Some archetypes given by Jung are:
o Anima (woman in man) and Animus (man in woman)
o Shadow
Jung identified the anima as being the unconscious feminine component of men and the animus as the
unconscious masculine component in women. However, this is rarely taken as a literal definition; in modern
era many Jungian practitioners believe that every person has both an anima and an animus. Jung stated that
the anima and animus act as guides to the unconscious unified self.
The shadow is an unconscious complex that is defined as the repressed and suppressed aspects of the
conscious self. There are constructive and destructive types of shadow. On the destructive side, it often
represents everything that the conscious person does not wish to acknowledge within themselves. For
instance, someone who identifies as being kind has a shadow that is harsh or unkind. Conversely, an
individual who is brutal has a kind shadow. The shadow of persons who are convinced that they are ugly
appears to be beautiful. On the constructive side, the shadow may represent hidden positive influences. So a
total personality is the result of personal unconscious and collective unconscious with the influence and
impact of all the archetypes.
Based upon his experiments, observations and clinical practice, he formulated his personality theory. He
stated that personality has two types:
o Introvert
o Extrovert
The extrovert orientation "finds meaning outside the self", in the surrounding world, whereas the introvert
is introspective and finds it within.
He also theorized that personality has four functions:
o Sensory function
o Thinking function
o Emoting function
o And intuiting function
The sensory function refers to the rational part of the personality, where logic plays the dominant part.
Emoting functions refers to the emotional part of the consciousness. The intuiting function refers to the
ability to foresee things.
Therefore, according to Jung, there are eight personality types, depending upon introversion or extroversion
and the four functions of each type namely:
1) Introverted Sensory
2) Introverted Thinking
3) Introverted Emoting
4) Introverted Intuiting
5) Extroverted Sensory
6) Extroverted Thinking
7) Extroverted Emoting
8) Extroverted Intuiting
These were some of the contributions of Carl Jung.

Carl Gustav Jung developed an elaborate theory of dreams and dream interpretation. Jung proposed that
the average dream is similar in structure to a drama; Jung maintained that however some dreams could be
too short or fragmented to fit into this structure. Unlike Freud, Jung believed that the manifest dream (the
dream as remembered) contains the actual meaning of the dream – the dream is therefore not distorted or
disguised in any way. It is a message or natural expression of the unconscious. Therefore, interpretation
should be based upon a series of dreams rather than a single dream. The usual practice was to interpret each
dream separately, irrespective of what was in the following dream. In Jung’s view, dreams show wishes,
desires, conflicts and even give warning about future. He said that a dream is difficult to interpret and
understand since it is expressed in its own unique language of symbols. In order to interpret a dream, Jung
used the process of amplification. In essence, amplification involves elaborating a dream image in order to
determine its significance through direct and indirect association. This is achieved by gaining an insight into
the dreamer's personal associations with the image (direct association), in order to discover the feelings
evoked by a particular dream image or symbol. The meaning and significance of a particular word or image
can vary greatly between individuals depending on the effect it has had on his/her life. The cultural
significance of the image, as well as drawing parallels from the symbolism contained in folklore, history,
fairytales, religion, mythology, rituals etc.
As mentioned earlier, Jung believed that a series of dreams is much easier to interpret than a single dream.
This is due to the fact that significant images will be repeated and the basic ideas and themes behind the
dreams can be recognized more easily. A series of dreams usually indicates a complex conflict. Jungian
dream interpretation also places a great deal of importance on the conscious situation of the dreamer. The
dream is not an isolated event and cannot be detached from the dreamer's everyday life.
Jung developed a system of psycho-therapy based upon his theory of analytical psychology. According to
Jung psychotherapy is not healing but helping to develop. He rejected free association and adopted
dialogue, discussion and full confession.
The steps involved in Jungian therapy are:
• Reading (for some)
• Collaboration with the therapist
• Focusing on the situation at present
• Making any insight concrete and finding a way to put it into practice.
He also used interpretations of dreams in his method. He further took into view the positive side neurosis.
Jung also stressed the importance of religion in life. He stated that to cure is to make a person symptom
free, but the aim of psychotherapy is individuatio

__________________
Born with personality is an accident but dying as a personality is an achievement.

Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler was born in the suburbs of Vienna, Austria, on February 7, 1870 and died in 1937. He received
a medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1895. He began his medical career as an ophthalmologist,
but he soon switched to general practice. He then turned to psychiatry, and in 1907 was invited to join
Freud's discussion group. After writing papers on organic inferiority, which were quite compatible with
Freud's views, he wrote, first, a paper concerning an aggression instinct, which Freud did not approve of,
and then a paper on children's feelings of inferiority, which suggested that Freud's sexual notions be taken
more metaphorically than literally.
Although Freud named Adler the president of the Viennese Analytic Society and the co-editor of the
organization's newsletter, but Adler didn't stop his criticism. A debate between Adler's and Freud's
supporters was arranged, but it resulted in the resigning of Adler with nine other members of the
organization, to form the Society for Free Psychoanalysis in 1911. This organization became The Society for
Individual Psychology in the following year. He died of a heart attack on May 28, 1937.
Individual psychology refers to the idea that we should see people as wholes rather than parts. The word
individual means literally "un-divided." Second, instead of talking about a person's personality, with the
traditional sense of internal traits, structures, dynamics, conflicts, and so on, Adler preferred to talk about
lifestyle. Life style refers to how you live your life, how you handle problems and interpersonal relations.
Alfred Adler postulates a single "drive" or motivating force behind all our behavior and experience. He
called that motivating force “striving for perfection”. It is the desire we all have to fulfill our potentials, to
come closer and closer to our ideal. It is very similar to the more popular idea of self-actualization. Further,
according to Adler the concept of “organic inferiority” is one of the most important factors in human
psychology. He thought that because of organic inferiority a person develops “striving for superiority.”
This striving for superiority leads to:
o Compensation
o Over compensation
Compensation means striving to overcome. Since we all have problems, short-comings, inferiorities of one
sort or another, Adler felt, earlier in his writings that our personalities could be accounted for by the ways in
which we do -- or don't -- compensate or overcome those problems. One way to compensate inferiority
feelings or complex is to become aggressive. The person develops a drive to aggression but also has socialinterest. As a result of compensation for inferiority, drive to aggression and social interest a person develops
a style of life. A person’s mental diseases can also be understood as his style of life.
Adler also stated that as a result of organic inferiority, a person develops feelings of inferiority. He may also
develop inferiority complex. Adler says it's a matter of being overwhelmed by our inferiority. If you are
moving along, doing well, feeling competent, you can afford to think of others. If you are not thinking of
others, if life is getting the best of you, then your attentions become increasingly focused on yourself.
Obviously, everyone suffers from inferiority in one form or another. For example, Adler began his
theoretical work considering organic inferiority that is, the fact that each of us has weaker, as well as
stronger parts of our anatomy or physiology.
Adler noted that many people respond to these organic inferiorities with compensation. They make up for
their deficiencies in some way: The inferior organ can be strengthened and even become stronger than it is
in others; or other organs can be overdeveloped to take up the slack which is overcompensation.
Sadly, there are also many people who cannot handle their difficulties, and led lives of quiet despair. If you
are overwhelmed by the forces of inferiority -- whether it is your body hurting, the people around you
holding you in contempt, or just the general difficulties of growing up -- you develop an inferiority complex.
The Adlerian therapy consists of:
• A good human relationship between patient and doctor
• Direct conversation
• Dream interpretation
• Analysis of childhood memories
• Likes and dislikes of heroes
• Body of languages sitting, walking, talking etc.
In other words, Adler believed in considering a number of factors when examining an individual for the
disorders he or she has developed. To him these disorders may have their roots in childhood or the
environment in which the person is living.

__________________
Born with personality is an accident but dying as a personality is an achievement.

NEO-FREUDIANS

Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan was born in 1894 and died in 1949. He was born in United States, Washington
D.C., worked there. He was a physician by training and later became a psychiatrist. Sullivan is considered
one of the prominent Neo-Freudians because of the similarities between his and Sigmund Freud’s theories.
Sullivan was impressed by Freud and Ruth Benedict, the anthropologist, so his point of view
reflects these influences. He put forward the view that a baby feels euphoria because his mother feeds and
protects him, and the baby wants that state to last for the longer time. The mother may convey insecurity by
empathy in him if she is tense herself. So a person’s psyche is the result of interpersonal relationships, the
beginning of which is the relationship of an infant and a mother. Sullivan says that because of interpersonal
relationships, the concept of self develops. He defined three types of self:
􀂉 “Good me”
􀂉 “Bad me”
􀂉 “Not me”
The good me is everything we like about ourselves. It represents the part of us we share with others and
that we often choose to focus on, because it doesn’t produce anxiety. The bad me represents those aspects
of the self that are considered negative and are therefore hidden from others and possibly even from the
self. The anxiety that we feel is often a result of recognition of the bad part of ourselves, such as when we
recall an embarrassing moment or experience guilt from a past action.
The final part of us, called the not-me, represents all those things that are so anxiety provoking that we can
not even consider them a part of us. Doing so would definitely create anxiety which we spend our lives
trying to avoid. The not-me is kept out of awareness by pushing it deep into the unconscious.
He put forward the view that because of our interpersonal relationships we come to have three types of
experiences:
􀂉 Prototaxic experience
􀂉 Parataxic experience
􀂉 Syntaxic experience
Prototaxic Experience refers to the first kind of experience the infant has and the order or arrangement in
which it occurs. Parataxic experiences are felt as concomitant, not recognized as connected in an orderly
way. The child cannot yet relate them to one another or make logical distinctions among them. What is
experienced is assumed to be the 'natural' way of such occurrences, without reflection and comparison.
Since no connections or relations are established, there is no logical movement of 'thought' from one idea
to the next. The parataxic mode is not a step by step process. Experience is undergone as momentary,
unconnected states of being.
The child gradually learns the 'consensually validated' meaning of language - in the widest sense of language.
These meanings have been acquired from group activities, interpersonal activities, and social experience.
Consensually validated symbol activity involves an appeal to principles which are accepted as true by the
hearer. And when this happens, the youngster has acquired or learned the syntaxes mode of experience.
Sullivan stated that there are about seven stages of human development:
1. Infancy
From birth to about age one, the child begins the process of developing, but Sullivan did not emphasize
as much on the younger years as Freud did.
2. The childhood period
This is from infancy to 8 years. In this the child needs supervision, guidance is dependent. The
development of speech and improved communication is the key in this stage.
3. The juvenile era
The main focus as a juvenile is the need for playmates and the beginning of healthy socialization
4. Pre-adolescence; 8 to 12 years
During this stage, the child's ability to form a close relationship with a peer is the major focus. This
relationship will later assist the child feeling worthy and likable. Without this ability, forming the
intimate relationships in late adolescence and adulthood will be difficult.
5. Early adolescence
This is from 13 to 18 years and this is when peers and teachers influence him. The onset of puberty
changes this need for friendship to a need for sexual expression. Self worth will often become
synonymous with sexual attractiveness and acceptance by opposite sex peers.
6. Adolescence
Stresses and storms of sexuality begin to dominate in this period. The need for friendship and need for
sexual expression get combined during late adolescence. In this stage a long term relationship becomes
the primary focus. Conflicts between parental control and self-expression are commonplace.
7. Maturity
This is when a person becomes a responsible citizen. The struggles of adulthood include financial
security, career, and family. With success during previous stages, especially those in the adolescent
years, adult relationships and much needed socialization become easier to attain. Without a solid
background, interpersonal conflicts that result in anxiety become more commonplace.
Sullivan’s therapy mainly related to schizophrenia and he discovered that interview was an important tool of
psychotherapy. He used empathy as another tool of psychotherapy.

Karen Horney
Karen Horney was born in 1885 and died in 1952. She was an American psychoanalyst and is classified as a
Neo-Freudian. Horney was a pioneering theorist in personality, psychoanalysis, and feminine psychology.
She got training in psychoanalysis and practiced it for a number of years; in 1937 she broke off
from the orthodox system and established her own theory and practiced it.
She disagreed with Freud on his emphasis on sexuality as the main driving force of human behaviour. She
put forward the view that parental roles can produce basic anxiety in a child and that is one of the main
driving forces in a person. The child sees the world as hostile, and he feels helpless. Childhood’s basic
anxiety appears in later adult life, turning a person into a neurotic. As a result of anxiety the child becomes
aggressive to overcome helplessness and anxiety. His reactions to anxiety and aggression may take the form
of:
o Disguised hostility
o Temper tantrums
o Withdrawal
She calls these reactions neurotic trends. Disguised hostility is the first neurotic trend. Most children facing
parental indifference use this strategy. They often have a fear of helplessness and abandonment, or what
Horney referred to as basic anxiety.
Horney's second neurotic trend is aggression, also called the moving-against solution. Here, children's first
reaction to parental indifference is anger, or basic hostility.
The final neurotic trend is withdrawal, often labeled the moving-away-from or resigning solution. When
neither aggression nor disguised hostility eliminates the parental indifference, Horney recognized that
children attempt to solve the problem by becoming self- sufficient. This represents the neurotic trend of
withdrawal.

Karen Horney was an American psychoanalyst and is classified as a Neo-Freudian. Horney was a pioneering theorist in
personality, psychoanalysis, and feminine psychology.
Karen Horney offered a list of ten neurotic needs which are:
1. Need for approval
2. Need for domination
3. Confine life
4. Independence
5. Perfection
6. Power
7. Exploiting others
8. Prestige
9. Ambition
10. Admiration
These needs lead to neurotic trends.
Neurotic trends appear as three kinds in social dealing:
i. Movement towards
Some children who feel a great deal of anxiety and helplessness move toward people in order to seek help
and acceptance. They are striving to feel worthy and can believe the only way to gain this, through the
acceptance of others. These people have an intense need to be liked, involved, to be important, and
appreciated. So they will often fall in love quickly or feel an artificial but very strong attachment to people,
even they may not know well. Their attempts to make that person love them create a clinginess and
neediness and it often results in the other person leaving the relationship.
ii. Movement away
The final possible consequence of a neurotic household is a personality style filled with a social behaviour
and an almost indifferent to others. If they don't get involved with others, they can't be injured by them.
While it protects them from emotional pain of relationships, it also keeps away all positive aspects of
relationships. It leaves them feeling alone and empty.
iii. Movement against
Another way to deal with insecurities and anxiety is to try to force your power onto others in hopes of
feeling good about yourself. Those with this personality style come across as bossy, demanding, selfish, and
even cruel. Once again, relationships appear doomed from the beginning.
The idealized image of the self is an attempt by a person to integrate his personality. Horney distinguishes
between situational neurosis and character neurosis. Her method of treatment was to discover the neurotic
needs, the movement away, movement towards, and movement against plus bring it to the attention of the
person.

Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm is another psychoanalyst who was trained in classical Freudian mode but later developed his
own theory and system. Born in 1900 and died in 1980, he worked and practiced in Chicago and New York,
U.S.A. In his famous book “Escape from Freedom” written in 1941 he proclaimed his break from Freud
and classical psychoanalysis.
Fromm asserted in the book that man has become free, but he longs to become dependent, and longs to
belong; this is man’s dilemma. It means that although man has become free, he has experienced freedom
from the terms/requisites of the society, yet the internal desire to be affiliated with someone still exists. In
other words, man wants to be related to a group which becomes his identity. This forms the basis of a
society. Further, this craving to belong may also be to have affection from someone.
Fromm said that this need for freedom and dependence creates orientations. Orientations are relatively
prominent forms in which we spend our energy. He identified five orientations:
i. Receptive orientation
Receptive orientation is represented in a submissive and meek attitude. This means that man tends to accept
what is being enforced upon him in order to satisfy his desire to belong to someone or some group.
ii. Exploitative orientation
Exploitative orientation means to be aggressive and using others for own purposes. This orientation entails
that a person makes use of others for achieving his personal motives, which may not be in other person’s
interest.
iii. Hoarding orientation
Hoarding orientation is represented in distrust for others and rigidity shown by a person. In other words, a
person who feels that he cannot trust others tends to keep everything with himself. He also becomes rigid
in his approach not letting anything change his dispositions.
iv. Marketing orientation
Marketing orientation is represented when the person adopts socially approved ways of behaviour and
dealing with others and sells himself. In other words the person behaves in a manner which is liked by
others. Therefore, he markets himself in front of others.
v. Productive Orientation
Productive orientation is the healthy way of life. This is the way of life where the individual realizes his full
potential.
The first four are neurotic orientations. In later life Fromm became more of a social philosopher than a
psychoanalyst and wrote and delivered lectures on his view of psychology and society.

__________________
Born with personality is an accident but dying as a personality is an achievement.

ERIKSON and MORENO

Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson was born in 1902 and he died in 1994. His contribution to psychology particularly relates to
how he portrayed the psychological development of a person. Erikson was not formally educated like the
vast majority of his psychodynamic colleagues. Although his parents pushed him for medical school,
Erikson saw himself as an artist and spent his youth wandering through Europe living the artist's life. Later
impressed with the psychoanalytical school, he started developing his own theories of personality
development.
He was influenced by Freud’s description of psycho-sexual development but he thought that the
development of a person should be viewed as psychosocial development rather than psycho-sexual
development. This means that the development of a person is greatly influenced by the social environment
in which he lives rather than the influence of sexual development from which he goes through.
Erikson further asserted that the development of a person continues throughout his life. In other words,
whatever the stage of life is, may be infancy or adulthood, a person goes through series of changes caused
by the environment. He thought that each developmental stage requires a person to make new adjustments
and develop new patterns of social interaction.
According to Erikson, in this developmental journey a person passes through eight stages.
The eight stages are:
i. Trust vs. Mistrust
In first year of life, the child is suspicious, fearful. From birth to one year, children begin to learn the ability
to trust others based upon the consistency of their caregiver(s). If trust develops successfully, the child gains
confidence and security in the world around him and is able to feel secure even when threatened.
Unsuccessful completion of this stage can result in an inability to trust, and therefore a sense of fear about
the inconsistent world. It may result in anxiety, heightened insecurities, and an over feeling of mistrust in
the world around them.
ii. Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt.
From the age of one to three years, children begin to assert their independence, by walking away from their
mother, picking which toy to play with, and making choices about what they like to wear, to eat, etc. If
children in this stage are encouraged and supported in their increased independence, they become more
confident and secure in their own ability to survive in the world. If children are criticized, overly controlled,
or not given the opportunity to assert themselves, they begin to feel inadequate in their ability to survive,
and may then become overly dependent upon others, lack self-esteem, and feel a sense of shame or doubt
in their own abilities.
iii. Initiative vs. Guilt
About age three to six, children assert themselves more frequently. They begin to plan activities, make up
games, and initiate activities with others. If this opportunity is given, children develop a sense of initiative
and feel secure in their ability to lead others and make decisions. Conversely, if this tendency is suppressed,
either through criticism or control, children develop a sense of guilt. They may feel like a nuisance to others
and will therefore remain followers, lacking in self-initiative.
iv. Industry vs. Inferiority
From six years to puberty, children begin to develop a sense of pride in their accomplishments. They initiate
projects, see them through the view of completion, and feel good about what they have achieved. During
this time, teachers play an increased role in the child’s development. If children are encouraged andreinforced for their initiative, they begin to feel industrious and feel confident in their ability to achieve
goals. If this initiative is not encouraged, and is restricted by parents or teacher, then the child begins to feel
inferior, doubting his own abilities and therefore he may not reach his potential.
v. Identity vs. Role Confusion
During adolescence, the transition from childhood to adulthood is most important. Children are becoming
more independent, and begin to look at the future in terms of career, relationships, families, housing, etc.
During this period, they explore possibilities and begin to form their own identity based upon the outcome
of their explorations. This sense of ‘who they are’ can be hindered, which results in a sense of confusion
about themselves and their role in the world.
vi. Intimacy vs. Isolation
Going through the young adulthood we begin to share ourselves more intimately with others. We explore
relationships leading toward longer commitments with someone other than a family member. Successful
completion can lead to comfortable relationships, a sense of commitment, safety, and care within a
relationship. Avoiding intimacy, fearing commitment and relationships can lead to isolation, loneliness, and
sometimes depression.
vii. Generativity vs. Self absorption
During middle adulthood, we establish our careers, settle down within a relationship, begin our own families
and develop a sense of being a part of the bigger picture. We give back to society through raising our
children, being productive at work, and becoming involved in community activities and organizations. By
failing to achieve these objectives, we become stagnant and feel unproductive.
viii. Integrity vs. Despair
As we grow older and become senior citizens, we tend to slow down our productivity, and explore life as a
retired person. It is the time when we contemplate our accomplishments and are able to develop integrity if
we see ourselves as leading a successful life. If we see our lives as unproductive, we feel guilt about our
pasts, or feel that we did not accomplish our life goals; we become dissatisfied with life and develop despair
often leading to depression and hopelessness.
The first four stages relate to development of the child and the last four with development of the adult.
Erikson believed that depending upon each stage of development a person must be viewed and understood
differently

J.L. Moreno
Dr. Jacob Levy Moreno was born on 18 May 1889 and he died on 14 May 1974. He was a leading
psychiatrist, theorist and educator. He is the founder of Psychodrama, Sociometry and one of the pioneers
of Group Psychotherapy. He studied medicine, mathematics, and philosophy at the University of Vienna,
becoming an M.D. in 1917.
He was inspired by Freud but severely criticized his theory and method, because he thought Freud gave so
much emphasis on individual’s life and ignored group influences on him. He also thought that Freud
ignored behavior and concentrated on thoughts. He was of the view that mental disease was due to lack of
spontaneity. And that the mental disease was a reflection of man’s social and familial relationships. He
thought it could be relieved/cured by increasing spontaneity in a person and by providing a person an
opportunity where he could relive his familial and social situation.
Moreno developed the technique of “Psychodrama” to achieve those two purposes. Psychodrama consists
of:
Stage
It is the setup in which the analysis is performed.
A director
The psychiatrist acts as the director who conducts the drama.
Protagonist
The protagonist is the central character around which the drama revolves.
Audience
Audiences are the people who witness the drama.
Role playing
Role playing refers to the performance of various acts in the drama.
Role reversal
Role reversal refers to the exchange of roles between characters of the play. Each character plays the role of
another so that he may get familiar with the intricacies of the other role.
All of the techniques and processes of psychodrama demand creativity from the protagonist. Creativity
increases spontaneity leading to mental health. Moreno also developed a number of techniques to measure
group phenomena. This he called “Sociometry.” Group phenomenon or sociometry refers to the behavior
of individual in group situations and overall behavior of the group. Sociometry had very profound effect on
such modern subjects as Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management.

__________________
Born with personality is an accident but dying as a personality is an achievement.