Which Of The Following Perspectives Dominated American Psychology For Decades?

An error occurred. – Try watching this video on www.youtube.com, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser. Behaviorism’s emphasis on objectivity and focus on external behavior had pulled psychologists’ attention away from the mind for a prolonged period of time.

The early work of the humanistic psychologists redirected attention to the individual human as a whole, and as a conscious and self-aware being.
By the 1950s, new disciplinary perspectives in linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science were emerging, and these areas revived interest in the mind as a focus of scientific inquiry.

This particular perspective has come to be known as the cognitive revolution (Miller, 2003). By 1967, Ulric Neisser published the first textbook entitled Cognitive Psychology, which served as a core text in cognitive psychology courses around the country (Thorne & Henley, 2005). Noam Chomsky was very influential in beginning the cognitive revolution. In 2010, this mural honoring him was put up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (credit: Robert Moran) European psychology had never really been as influenced by behaviorism as had American psychology; and thus, the cognitive revolution helped reestablish lines of communication between European psychologists and their American counterparts.

Furthermore, psychologists began to cooperate with scientists in other fields, like anthropology, linguistics, computer science, and neuroscience, among others. This interdisciplinary approach often was referred to as the cognitive sciences, and the influence and prominence of this particular perspective resonates in modern-day psychology (Miller, 2003).

Feminist Psychology The science of psychology has had an impact on human wellbeing, both positive and negative. The dominant influence of Western, white, and male academics in the early history of psychology meant that psychology developed with the biases inherent in those individuals, which often had negative consequences for members of society that were not white or male.

Women, members of ethnic minorities in both the United States and other countries, and individuals with sexual orientations other than heterosexual had difficulties entering the field of psychology and therefore influencing its development.
They also suffered from the attitudes of white, male psychologists, who were not immune to the nonscientific attitudes prevalent in the society in which they developed and worked.

Until the 1960s, the science of psychology was largely a “womanless” psychology (Crawford & Marecek, 1989), meaning that few women were able to practice psychology, so they had little influence on what was studied. In addition, the experimental subjects of psychology were mostly men, which resulted from underlying assumptions that gender had no influence on psychology and that women were not of sufficient interest to study.

An article by Naomi Weisstein, first published in 1968 (Weisstein, 1993), stimulated a feminist revolution in psychology by presenting a critique of psychology as a science. She also specifically criticized male psychologists for constructing the psychology of women entirely out of their own cultural biases and without careful experimental tests to verify any of their characterizations of women.

Weisstein used, as examples, statements by prominent psychologists in the 1960s, such as this quote by Bruno Bettleheim: “. we must start with the realization that, as much as women want to be good scientists or engineers, they want first and foremost to be womanly companions of men and to be mothers.” Weisstein’s critique formed the foundation for the subsequent development of a feminist psychology that attempted to be free of the influence of male cultural biases on our knowledge of the psychology of women and, indeed, of both genders.

Crawford & Marecek (1989) identify several feminist approaches to psychology that can be described as feminist psychology. These include re-evaluating and discovering the contributions of women to the history of psychology, studying psychological gender differences, and questioning the male bias present across the practice of the scientific approach to knowledge.

Culture has important impacts on individuals and social psychology, yet the effects of culture on psychology are under-studied. There is a risk that psychological theories and data derived from white, American settings could be assumed to apply to individuals and social groups from other cultures and this is unlikely to be true (Betancourt & López, 1993).

One weakness in the field of cross-cultural psychology is that in looking for differences in psychological attributes across cultures, there remains a need to go beyond simple descriptive statistics (Betancourt & López, 1993). In this sense, it has remained a descriptive science, rather than one seeking to determine cause and effect.

For example, a study of characteristics of individuals seeking treatment for a binge eating disorder in Hispanic American, African American, and Caucasian American individuals found significant differences between groups (Franko et al., 2012). The study concluded that results from studying any one of the groups could not be extended to the other groups, and yet potential causes of the differences were not measured.

This history of multicultural psychology in the United States is a long one.
The role of African American psychologists in researching the cultural differences between African American individual and social psychology is but one example.
In 1920, Cecil Sumner was the first African American to receive a PhD in psychology in the United States.

Sumner established a psychology degree program at Howard University, leading to the education of a new generation of African American psychologists (Black, Spence, and Omari, 2004). Much of the work of early African American psychologists (and a general focus of much work in first half of the 20th century in psychology in the United States) was dedicated to testing and intelligence testing in particular (Black et al., 2004).

That emphasis has continued, particularly because of the importance of testing in determining opportunities for children, but other areas of exploration in African-American psychology research include learning style, sense of community and belonging, and spiritualism (Black et al., 2004). The American Psychological Association has several ethnically based organizations for professional psychologists that facilitate interactions among members.

Read a news story about the influence of an African American’s psychology research on the historic Brown v. Board of Education civil rights case: Doll Cultural Study Had Impact on ‘Brown v. Board’. Before the time of Wundt and James, questions about the mind were considered by philosophers. However, both Wundt and James helped create psychology as a distinct scientific discipline.

Wundt was a structuralist, which meant he believed that our cognitive experience was best understood by breaking that experience into its component parts. He thought this was best accomplished by introspection. William James was the first American psychologist, and he was a proponent of functionalism.

This particular perspective focused on how mental activities served as adaptive responses to an organism’s environment. Like Wundt, James also relied on introspection; however, his research approach also incorporated more objective measures as well. Sigmund Freud believed that understanding the unconscious mind was absolutely critical to understand conscious behavior.

This was especially true for individuals that he saw who suffered from various hysterias and neuroses. Freud relied on dream analysis, slips of the tongue, and free association as means to access the unconscious. Psychoanalytic theory remained a dominant force in clinical psychology for several decades.

Gestalt psychology was very influential in Europe.
Gestalt psychology takes a holistic view of an individual and his experiences.
As the Nazis came to power in Germany, Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler immigrated to the United States.
Although they left their laboratories and their research behind, they did introduce America to Gestalt ideas.

Some of the principles of Gestalt psychology are still very influential in the study of sensation and perception. One of the most influential schools of thought within psychology’s history was behaviorism. Behaviorism focused on making psychology an objective science by studying overt behavior and deemphasizing the importance of unobservable mental processes.

John Watson is often considered the father of behaviorism, and B.F.
Skinner’s contributions to our understanding of principles of operant conditioning cannot be underestimated.
As behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory took hold of so many aspects of psychology, some began to become dissatisfied with psychology’s picture of human nature.

Thus, a humanistic movement within psychology began to take hold. Humanism focuses on the potential of all people for good. Both Maslow and Rogers were influential in shaping humanistic psychology. During the 1950s, the landscape of psychology began to change.

A science of behavior began to shift back to its roots of focus on mental processes. The emergence of neuroscience and computer science aided this transition. Ultimately, the cognitive revolution took hold, and people came to realize that cognition was crucial to a true appreciation and understanding of behavior.

How did the object of study in psychology change over the history of the field since the 19th century? In its early days, psychology could be defined as the scientific study of mind or mental processes. Over time, psychology began to shift more towards the scientific study of behavior.

However, as the cognitive revolution took hold, psychology once again began to focus on mental processes as necessary to the understanding of behavior.
In part, what aspect of psychology was the behaviorist approach to psychology a reaction to? Behaviorists studied objectively observable behavior partly in reaction to the psychologists of the mind who were studying things that were not directly observable.

Freud is probably one of the most well-known historical figures in psychology. Where have you encountered references to Freud or his ideas about the role that the unconscious mind plays in determining conscious behavior?

Contents

- 0.0.1 Which was the only approach to dominate American psychology?
- 0.0.2 Which theory dominated psychology for most of the twentieth century?

1 Who dominated American psychology from the 1940s to the 1960s?
- - 1.0.1 What modern developments in psychology have dominated much of the 20th century?
2 What approach dominated American psychology for over 50 years?
3 Which approach dominated American psychology for the first half of the 20th century?
4 Who was the most prominent psychologist of the 20th century?
- - 4.0.1 Which American psychologist founded behaviorism in the early 1900’s?
  - 4.0.2 What hat approach dominated the field of psychology from the 1930s to the 1950s?
5 Which school of thought dominated psychology from the 1920’s through the 1960’s?
- - 5.0.1 What was the most influential school of thought in American psychology until the 1960s?
6 Who were the main theorists in work psychology at the beginning of the 20th century?
7 Who were the 20th century’s most influential researchers in the area of developmental psychology?
- 7.1 What three psychological approaches were popular in the early 20th century?
- 7.2 Which psychological perspective emerged in the 1950s and 1960s?
  - 7.2.1 Which of the following is the most dominant approach to psychology in the US?
8 Is it true that in the 1940s and 1950s psychodynamic theory dominated the practice of psychotherapy?
- - 8.0.1 Which approach to psychotherapy that arose in the 20th century?
- 8.1 What was the dominant school of thought in psychology in the 1950s?
9 Which of the following was the dominant approach to studying psychology from 1913 to the 1950s?
- 9.1 What was the dominant force in American psychology?
  - 9.1.1 What is the American psychological approach?
10 Which of the following is the most dominant approach to psychology in the US?
- - 10.0.1 What is the most used approach in psychology?

Which was the only approach to dominate American psychology?

Learning Objectives – By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Understand the importance of Wundt and James in the development of psychology
Appreciate Freud’s influence on psychology
Understand the basic tenets of Gestalt psychology
Appreciate the important role that behaviorism played in psychology’s history
Understand basic tenets of humanism
Understand how the cognitive revolution shifted psychology’s focus back to the mind

Psychology is a relatively young science with its experimental roots in the 19th century, compared, for example, to human physiology, which dates much earlier. As mentioned, anyone interested in exploring issues related to the mind generally did so in a philosophical context prior to the 19th century.

Two men, working in the 19th century, are generally credited as being the founders of psychology as a science and academic discipline that was distinct from philosophy. Their names were Wilhelm Wundt and William James. This section will provide an overview of the shifts in paradigms that have influenced psychology from Wundt and James through today.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was a German scientist who was the first person to be referred to as a psychologist. His famous book entitled Principles of Physiological Psychology was published in 1873. Wundt viewed psychology as a scientific study of conscious experience, and he believed that the goal of psychology was to identify components of consciousness and how those components combined to result in our conscious experience.

Wundt used introspection (he called it “internal perception”), a process by which someone examines their own conscious experience as objectively as possible, making the human mind like any other aspect of nature that a scientist observed.
Wundt’s version of introspection used only very specific experimental conditions in which an external stimulus was designed to produce a scientifically observable (repeatable) experience of the mind (Danziger, 1980).

The first stringent requirement was the use of “trained” or practiced observers, who could immediately observe and report a reaction. The second requirement was the use of repeatable stimuli that always produced the same experience in the subject and allowed the subject to expect and thus be fully attentive to the inner reaction.

These experimental requirements were put in place to eliminate “interpretation” in the reporting of internal experiences and to counter the argument that there is no way to know that an individual is observing their mind or consciousness accurately, since it cannot be seen by any other person. This attempt to understand the structure or characteristics of the mind was known as structuralism,

Wundt established his psychology laboratory at the University at Leipzig in 1879 ( ). In this laboratory, Wundt and his students conducted experiments on, for example, reaction times. A subject, sometimes in a room isolated from the scientist, would receive a stimulus such as a light, image, or sound.

The subject’s reaction to the stimulus would be to push a button, and an apparatus would record the time to reaction.
Wundt could measure reaction time to one-thousandth of a second (Nicolas & Ferrand, 1999).
A) Wilhelm Wundt is credited as one of the founders of psychology.
He created the first laboratory for psychological research.

(b) This photo shows him seated and surrounded by fellow researchers and equipment in his laboratory in Germany. However, despite his efforts to train individuals in the process of introspection, this process remained highly subjective, and there was very little agreement between individuals. As a result, structuralism fell out of favor with the passing of Wundt’s student, Edward Titchener, in 1927 (Gordon, 1995).

William James (1842–1910) was the first American psychologist who espoused a different perspective on how psychology should operate ( ). James was introduced to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and accepted it as an explanation of an organism’s characteristics. Key to that theory is the idea that natural selection leads to organisms that are adapted to their environment, including their behavior.

Adaptation means that a trait of an organism has a function for the survival and reproduction of the individual, because it has been naturally selected. As James saw it, psychology’s purpose was to study the function of behavior in the world, and as such, his perspective was known as functionalism,

Functionalism focused on how mental activities helped an organism fit into its environment. Functionalism has a second, more subtle meaning in that functionalists were more interested in the operation of the whole mind rather than of its individual parts, which were the focus of structuralism. Like Wundt, James believed that introspection could serve as one means by which someone might study mental activities, but James also relied on more objective measures, including the use of various recording devices, and examinations of concrete products of mental activities and of anatomy and physiology (Gordon, 1995).

William James, shown here in a self-portrait, was the first American psychologist. Perhaps one of the most influential and well-known figures in psychology’s history was Sigmund Freud ( ). Freud (1856–1939) was an Austrian neurologist who was fascinated by patients suffering from “hysteria” and neurosis. Hysteria was an ancient diagnosis for disorders, primarily of women with a wide variety of symptoms, including physical symptoms and emotional disturbances, none of which had an apparent physical cause.

Freud theorized that many of his patients’ problems arose from the unconscious mind. In Freud’s view, the unconscious mind was a repository of feelings and urges of which we have no awareness. Gaining access to the unconscious, then, was crucial to the successful resolution of the patient’s problems. According to Freud, the unconscious mind could be accessed through dream analysis, by examinations of the first words that came to people’s minds, and through seemingly innocent slips of the tongue.

Psychoanalytic theory focuses on the role of a person’s unconscious, as well as early childhood experiences, and this particular perspective dominated clinical psychology for several decades (Thorne & Henley, 2005). (a) Sigmund Freud was a highly influential figure in the history of psychology. Freud’s ideas were influential, and you will learn more about them when you study lifespan development, personality, and therapy. For instance, many therapists believe strongly in the unconscious and the impact of early childhood experiences on the rest of a person’s life.

The method of psychoanalysis, which involves the patient talking about their experiences and selves, while not invented by Freud, was certainly popularized by him and is still used today. Many of Freud’s other ideas, however, are controversial. Drew Westen (1998) argues that many of the criticisms of Freud’s ideas are misplaced, in that they attack his older ideas without taking into account later writings.

Westen also argues that critics fail to consider the success of the broad ideas that Freud introduced or developed, such as the importance of childhood experiences in adult motivations, the role of unconscious versus conscious motivations in driving our behavior, the fact that motivations can cause conflicts that affect behavior, the effects of mental representations of ourselves and others in guiding our interactions, and the development of personality over time.

Westen identifies subsequent research support for all of these ideas.
More modern iterations of Freud’s clinical approach have been empirically demonstrated to be effective (Knekt et al., 2008; Shedler, 2010).
Some current practices in psychotherapy involve examining unconscious aspects of the self and relationships, often through the relationship between the therapist and the client.

You might be interested: What Is The Control Group In Psychology?

Freud’s historical significance and contributions to clinical practice merit his inclusion in a discussion of the historical movements within psychology. Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), and Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) were three German psychologists who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century to escape Nazi Germany.

These men are credited with introducing psychologists in the United States to various Gestalt principles. The word Gestalt roughly translates to “whole;” a major emphasis of Gestalt psychology deals with the fact that although a sensory experience can be broken down into individual parts, how those parts relate to each other as a whole is often what the individual responds to in perception.

For example, a song may be made up of individual notes played by different instruments, but the real nature of the song is perceived in the combinations of these notes as they form the melody, rhythm, and harmony. In many ways, this particular perspective would have directly contradicted Wundt’s ideas of structuralism (Thorne & Henley, 2005).

Unfortunately, in moving to the United States, these men were forced to abandon much of their work and were unable to continue to conduct research on a large scale. These factors along with the rise of behaviorism (described next) in the United States prevented principles of Gestalt psychology from being as influential in the United States as they had been in their native Germany (Thorne & Henley, 2005).

Despite these issues, several Gestalt principles are still very influential today. Considering the human individual as a whole rather than as a sum of individually measured parts became an important foundation in humanistic theory late in the century.

The ideas of Gestalt have continued to influence research on sensation and perception. Structuralism, Freud, and the Gestalt psychologists were all concerned in one way or another with describing and understanding inner experience. But other researchers had concerns that inner experience could be a legitimate subject of scientific inquiry and chose instead to exclusively study behavior, the objectively observable outcome of mental processes.

Early work in the field of behavior was conducted by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936). Pavlov studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex, in which an animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus.

The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivation in response to the presence of food. The salivation reflex could be elicited using a second stimulus, such as a specific sound, that was presented in association with the initial food stimulus several times. Once the response to the second stimulus was “learned,” the food stimulus could be omitted.

Pavlov’s “classical conditioning” is only one form of learning behavior studied by behaviorists. John B. Watson (1878–1958) was an influential American psychologist whose most famous work occurred during the early 20th century at Johns Hopkins University ( ).

While Wundt and James were concerned with understanding conscious experience, Watson thought that the study of consciousness was flawed.
Because he believed that objective analysis of the mind was impossible, Watson preferred to focus directly on observable behavior and try to bring that behavior under control.

Watson was a major proponent of shifting the focus of psychology from the mind to behavior, and this approach of observing and controlling behavior came to be known as behaviorism, A major object of study by behaviorists was learned behavior and its interaction with inborn qualities of the organism.

Behaviorism commonly used animals in experiments under the assumption that what was learned using animal models could, to some degree, be applied to human behavior.
Indeed, Tolman (1938) stated, “I believe that everything important in psychology (except such matters as involve society and words) can be investigated in essence through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice-point in a maze.” John B.

Watson is known as the father of behaviorism within psychology. Behaviorism dominated experimental psychology for several decades, and its influence can still be felt today (Thorne & Henley, 2005). Behaviorism is largely responsible for establishing psychology as a scientific discipline through its objective methods and especially experimentation.

In addition, it is used in behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Behavior modification is commonly used in classroom settings. Behaviorism has also led to research on environmental influences on human behavior.B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) was an American psychologist ( ). Like Watson, Skinner was a behaviorist, and he concentrated on how behavior was affected by its consequences.

Therefore, Skinner spoke of reinforcement and punishment as major factors in driving behavior. As a part of his research, Skinner developed a chamber that allowed the careful study of the principles of modifying behavior through reinforcement and punishment.

This device, known as an operant conditioning chamber (or more familiarly, a Skinner box), has remained a crucial resource for researchers studying behavior (Thorne & Henley, 2005). (a) B.F. Skinner is famous for his research on operant conditioning. (b) Modified versions of the operant conditioning chamber, or Skinner box, are still widely used in research settings today.

(credit a: modification of work by “Silly rabbit”/Wikimedia Commons) The Skinner box is a chamber that isolates the subject from the external environment and has a behavior indicator such as a lever or a button. When the animal pushes the button or lever, the box is able to deliver a positive reinforcement of the behavior (such as food) or a punishment (such as a noise) or a token conditioner (such as a light) that is correlated with either the positive reinforcement or punishment.

Skinner’s focus on positive and negative reinforcement of learned behaviors had a lasting influence in psychology that has waned somewhat since the growth of research in cognitive psychology. Despite this, conditioned learning is still used in human behavioral modification. Skinner’s two widely read and controversial popular science books about the value of operant conditioning for creating happier lives remain as thought-provoking arguments for his approach (Greengrass, 2004).

During the early 20th century, American psychology was dominated by behaviorism and psychoanalysis. However, some psychologists were uncomfortable with what they viewed as limited perspectives being so influential to the field. They objected to the pessimism and determinism (all actions driven by the unconscious) of Freud.

They also disliked the reductionism, or simplifying nature, of behaviorism. Behaviorism is also deterministic at its core, because it sees human behavior as entirely determined by a combination of genetics and environment. Some psychologists began to form their own ideas that emphasized personal control, intentionality, and a true predisposition for “good” as important for our self-concept and our behavior.

Thus, humanism emerged. Humanism is a perspective within psychology that emphasizes the potential for good that is innate to all humans. Two of the most well-known proponents of humanistic psychology are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers (O’Hara, n.d.). Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) was an American psychologist who is best known for proposing a hierarchy of human needs in motivating behavior ( ).

Although this concept will be discussed in more detail in a later chapter, a brief overview will be provided here. Maslow asserted that so long as basic needs necessary for survival were met (e.g., food, water, shelter), higher-level needs (e.g., social needs) would begin to motivate behavior. According to Maslow, the highest-level needs relate to self-actualization, a process by which we achieve our full potential.

Obviously, the focus on the positive aspects of human nature that are characteristic of the humanistic perspective is evident (Thorne & Henley, 2005). Humanistic psychologists rejected, on principle, the research approach based on reductionist experimentation in the tradition of the physical and biological sciences, because it missed the “whole” human being.

Beginning with Maslow and Rogers, there was an insistence on a humanistic research program. This program has been largely qualitative (not measurement-based), but there exist a number of quantitative research strains within humanistic psychology, including research on happiness, self-concept, meditation, and the outcomes of humanistic psychotherapy (Friedman, 2008).

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is shown. Carl Rogers (1902–1987) was also an American psychologist who, like Maslow, emphasized the potential for good that exists within all people ( ). Rogers used a therapeutic technique known as client-centered therapy in helping his clients deal with problematic issues that resulted in their seeking psychotherapy.

Unlike a psychoanalytic approach in which the therapist plays an important role in interpreting what conscious behavior reveals about the unconscious mind, client-centered therapy involves the patient taking a lead role in the therapy session. Rogers believed that a therapist needed to display three features to maximize the effectiveness of this particular approach: unconditional positive regard, genuineness, and empathy.

Unconditional positive regard refers to the fact that the therapist accepts their client for who they are, no matter what he or she might say. Provided these factors, Rogers believed that people were more than capable of dealing with and working through their own issues (Thorne & Henley, 2005). Humanism has been influential to psychology as a whole. Both Maslow and Rogers are well-known names among students of psychology (you will read more about both men later in this text), and their ideas have influenced many scholars. Furthermore, Rogers’ client-centered approach to therapy is still commonly used in psychotherapeutic settings today (O’hara, n.d.) View a brief video of Carl Rogers describing his therapeutic approach. Behaviorism’s emphasis on objectivity and focus on external behavior had pulled psychologists’ attention away from the mind for a prolonged period of time. The early work of the humanistic psychologists redirected attention to the individual human as a whole, and as a conscious and self-aware being.

By the 1950s, new disciplinary perspectives in linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science were emerging, and these areas revived interest in the mind as a focus of scientific inquiry. This particular perspective has come to be known as the cognitive revolution (Miller, 2003). By 1967, Ulric Neisser published the first textbook entitled Cognitive Psychology, which served as a core text in cognitive psychology courses around the country (Thorne & Henley, 2005).

Although no one person is entirely responsible for starting the cognitive revolution, Noam Chomsky was very influential in the early days of this movement ( ). Chomsky (1928–), an American linguist, was dissatisfied with the influence that behaviorism had had on psychology.

He believed that psychology’s focus on behavior was short-sighted and that the field had to re-incorporate mental functioning into its purview if it were to offer any meaningful contributions to understanding behavior (Miller, 2003).
Noam Chomsky was very influential in beginning the cognitive revolution.

In 2010, this mural honoring him was put up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (credit: Robert Moran) European psychology had never really been as influenced by behaviorism as had American psychology; and thus, the cognitive revolution helped reestablish lines of communication between European psychologists and their American counterparts. Furthermore, psychologists began to cooperate with scientists in other fields, like anthropology, linguistics, computer science, and neuroscience, among others.

This interdisciplinary approach often was referred to as the cognitive sciences, and the influence and prominence of this particular perspective resonates in modern-day psychology (Miller, 2003).
Feminist Psychology The science of psychology has had an impact on human wellbeing, both positive and negative.

The dominant influence of Western, white, and male academics in the early history of psychology meant that psychology developed with the biases inherent in those individuals, which often had negative consequences for members of society that were not white or male.

Women, members of ethnic minorities in both the United States and other countries, and individuals with sexual orientations other than heterosexual had difficulties entering the field of psychology and therefore influencing its development. They also suffered from the attitudes of white, male psychologists, who were not immune to the nonscientific attitudes prevalent in the society in which they developed and worked.

An article by Naomi Weisstein, first published in 1968 (Weisstein, 1993), stimulated a feminist revolution in psychology by presenting a critique of psychology as a science.
She also specifically criticized male psychologists for constructing the psychology of women entirely out of their own cultural biases and without careful experimental tests to verify any of their characterizations of women.

Crawford & Marecek (1989) identify several feminist approaches to psychology that can be described as feminist psychology. These include re-evaluating and discovering the contributions of women to the history of psychology, studying psychological gender differences, and questioning the male bias present across the practice of the scientific approach to knowledge.

One weakness in the field of cross-cultural psychology is that in looking for differences in psychological attributes across cultures, there remains a need to go beyond simple descriptive statistics (Betancourt & López, 1993). In this sense, it has remained a descriptive science, rather than one seeking to determine cause and effect.

This history of multicultural psychology in the United States is a long one. The role of African American psychologists in researching the cultural differences between African American individual and social psychology is but one example. In 1920, Cecil Sumner was the first African American to receive a PhD in psychology in the United States.

Since psychologists belonging to specific ethnic groups or cultures have the most interest in studying the psychology of their communities, these organizations provide an opportunity for the growth of research on the impact of culture on individual and social psychology. Read a news story about the influence of an African American’s psychology research on the historic Brown v. Board of Education civil rights case. Before the time of Wundt and James, questions about the mind were considered by philosophers. However, both Wundt and James helped create psychology as a distinct scientific discipline.

Wundt was a structuralist, which meant he believed that our cognitive experience was best understood by breaking that experience into its component parts. He thought this was best accomplished by introspection. William James was the first American psychologist, and he was a proponent of functionalism.

You might be interested: What Can I Do With A Masters In Social Psychology?

Gestalt psychology was very influential in Europe. Gestalt psychology takes a holistic view of an individual and his experiences. As the Nazis came to power in Germany, Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler immigrated to the United States. Although they left their laboratories and their research behind, they did introduce America to Gestalt ideas.

Some of the principles of Gestalt psychology are still very influential in the study of sensation and perception. One of the most influential schools of thought within psychology’s history was behaviorism. Behaviorism focused on making psychology an objective science by studying overt behavior and deemphasizing the importance of unobservable mental processes.

John Watson is often considered the father of behaviorism, and B.F. Skinner’s contributions to our understanding of principles of operant conditioning cannot be underestimated. As behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory took hold of so many aspects of psychology, some began to become dissatisfied with psychology’s picture of human nature.

Thus, a humanistic movement within psychology began to take hold.
Humanism focuses on the potential of all people for good.
Both Maslow and Rogers were influential in shaping humanistic psychology.
During the 1950s, the landscape of psychology began to change.
A science of behavior began to shift back to its roots of focus on mental processes.

The emergence of neuroscience and computer science aided this transition. Ultimately, the cognitive revolution took hold, and people came to realize that cognition was crucial to a true appreciation and understanding of behavior. Based on your reading, which theorist would have been most likely to agree with this statement: Perceptual phenomena are best understood as a combination of their components.

William James
Max Wertheimer
Carl Rogers
Noam Chomsky

B _ is most well-known for proposing his hierarchy of needs.

Noam Chomsky
Carl Rogers
Abraham Maslow
Sigmund Freud

C Rogers believed that providing genuineness, empathy, and _ in the therapeutic environment for his clients was critical to their being able to deal with their problems.

structuralism
functionalism
Gestalt
unconditional positive regard

D The operant conditioning chamber (aka _ box) is a device used to study the principles of operant conditioning.

Skinner
Watson
James
Koffka

A How did the object of study in psychology change over the history of the field since the 19th century? In its early days, psychology could be defined as the scientific study of mind or mental processes. Over time, psychology began to shift more towards the scientific study of behavior.

However, as the cognitive revolution took hold, psychology once again began to focus on mental processes as necessary to the understanding of behavior.
In part, what aspect of psychology was the behaviorist approach to psychology a reaction to? Behaviorists studied objectively observable behavior partly in reaction to the psychologists of the mind who were studying things that were not directly observable.

Which theory dominated psychology for most of the twentieth century?

The comprehensive theory that dominated psychology in the United States for most of the twentieth century was behaviorism. This theory began in Russia, with Pavlov, who first described conditioning.

Who dominated American psychology from the 1940s to the 1960s?

Hull’s behaviorist approach to psychology dominated American Psychology from the 1940s to the 1960s. Hull was interested in developing a theory of behavior based on Pavlov’s law of conditioning. For Hull, behavior could be reduced to the language of physiology.

What modern developments in psychology have dominated much of the 20th century?

The Rise of Behaviorism – Psychology changed dramatically during the early 20th-century as another school of thought known as behaviorism rose to dominance. Behaviorism was a major change from previous theoretical perspectives, rejecting the emphasis on both the conscious and unconscious mind,

Instead, behaviorism strove to make psychology a more scientific discipline by focusing purely on observable behavior. Behaviorism had its earliest start with the work of a Russian physiologist named Ivan Pavlov, Pavlov’s research on the digestive systems of dogs led to his discovery of the classical conditioning process, which proposed that behaviors could be learned via conditioned associations.

Pavlov demonstrated that this learning process could be used to make an association between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus. An American psychologist named John B. Watson soon became one of the strongest advocates of behaviorism.

Initially outlining the basic principles of this new school of thought in his 1913 paper Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, Watson later went on to offer a definition in his classic book “Behaviorism ” (1924), writing: “Behaviorism.holds that the subject matter of human psychology is the behavior of the human being.

Behaviorism claims that consciousness is neither a definite nor a usable concept. The behaviorist, who has been trained always as an experimentalist, holds, further, that belief in the existence of consciousness goes back to the ancient days of superstition and magic.” The impact of behaviorism was enormous, and this school of thought continued to dominate for the next 50 years.

Psychologist B.F. Skinner furthered the behaviorist perspective with his concept of operant conditioning, which demonstrated the effect of punishment and reinforcement on behavior. While behaviorism eventually lost its dominant grip on psychology, the basic principles of behavioral psychology are still widely in use today.

Therapeutic techniques such as behavior analysis, behavioral modification, and token economies are often utilized to help children learn new skills and overcome maladaptive behaviors, while conditioning is used in many situations ranging from parenting to education.

What approach dominated American psychology for over 50 years?

history Intro to Psych – Mini-History of Psychology, or “Wilhelm and Sigmund’s Excellent Adventure!”

Wilhelm Wundt	Considered the founder of the discipline of psychology 1st Psych lab – 1879 in Leipzig, Germany	Studied conscious experience by examining its structure or components parts (sensations, feelings) using individuals who were trained in introspection, This “school of psychology” became known as structuralism,
William James	Instrumental in establishing psychology in the U.S. Published critical text Principles of Psychology in 1890	Instead of focusing on the structure of the mind, James stressed studying the adaptive functions of behavior ; this was the basis of a new school of thought called functionalism.
John Watson B.F. Skinner	John Watson (1924) argued that psychologists, as scientists, should stick to studying observable behavior (not the mind) such as how behavior changes with learning.	This new approach or school of psychology known as behaviorism was also championed by B.F. Skinner and dominated American psychology for nearly 50 years.
Sigmund Freud	Sigmund Freud focused on unconscious causes of behavior	This is known as the psychoanalytic approach or school of thought and the techniques Freud used to try to reveal the hidden causes of behavior became known as psychoanalysis.
	Led by Max Wertheimer (no that’s not Max to the left), yet another group of psychologists focused on perceptual organization and processing.	The “credo” of this school of psychology – Gestalt psychology – is ” The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”
Abraham Carl Rogers Maslow	Carl Rogers didn’t think that either behaviorism or psychoanalysis took into account that which he considered best about humans: free-will and ability to make choices.	He and Maslow, who emphasized every person’s potential for self-development, are 2 key representatives of humanism or humanistic psychology.

history

Which approach dominated American psychology for the first half of the 20th century?

During the first half of the twentieth century, American psychology was dominated by psychoanalysis, followed later by behaviorism. Neither school fully acknowledged qualities of human potential or the study of values, intentions and meaning in human existence.

There was need for a new paradigm that celebrated the inherent value and dignity of human beings.
That paradigm was to be called humanistic psychology.
Humanistic psychology as a “Third Force” had its beginnings in Detroit, in the early 1950s.
It was here that MSP co-founder, Clark Moustakas, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and others first met to discuss the humanistic tenants of self-actualization, health, creativity, intrinsic nature, being, becoming, individuality and meaning.

The humanistic psychological orientation is a contemporary and integrative school of thought. Central tenets of the humanistic approach to psychotherapy include:

fostering greater capacities for self-awareness and understanding of relationships with others;
strengthening relational bonds;
clarification and development of values,
personal meaning and life goals;
promotion of an environment of mutual care,
respect and empathy;
development of a greater sense of personal freedom and choice while respecting the rights and needs of others.

Interests of humanistic psychology include:

the aspirations of individuals, their goals, desires, fears, potential for and actualizing of personal growth, and
qualities of empathy, congruence, authenticity, presence, and intimacy.
Experiences of loss, tragedy, and pain, which are understood as reflecting basic issues concerning the nature of the self, existence, and one’s engagement in the world.

“Humanistic psychology aims to be faithful to the full range of human experience. Its foundations include philosophical humanism, existentialism and phenomenology. In the science and profession of psychology, humanistic psychology seeks to develop systematic and rigorous methods of studying human beings, and to heal the fragmentary character of contemporary psychology through an ever more comprehensive and integrative approach.

Humanistic psychologists are particularly sensitive to uniquely human dimensions, such as experiences of creativity and transcendence, and to the quality of human welfare. Accordingly, humanistic psychology aims especially at contributing to psychotherapy, education, theory, philosophy of psychology, research methodology, organization and management, and social responsibility and change.”* *APA Division 32: Society for Humanistic Psychology.

(2013). About us, Retrieved from http://www.apadivisions.org/division-32/about/index.aspx The Five Basic Postulates of Humanistic Psychology*

Human beings, as human, supersede the sum of their parts. They cannot be reduced to components.
Human beings have their existence in a uniquely human context, as well as in a cosmic ecology.
Human beings are aware and aware of being aware — i.e., they are conscious. Human consciousness always includes an awareness of oneself in the context of other people.
Human beings have some choice and, with that, responsibility.
Human beings are intentional, aim at goals, are aware that they cause future events, and seek meaning, value, and creativity.

* Association for Humanistic Psychology. (2006). Five basic postulates of humanistic psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 46 (3), 239. doi:10.1177/002216780604600301 Want more information about our programs? Have a question you need answered? Click here to have our team answer your questions. Your future is just a click away. Start the application process to join the MSP family!

Who was the most prominent psychologist of the 20th century?

Study ranks the top 20th century psychologists Feature

July/August 2002, Vol 33, No.7Print version: page 281 min read

Psychologists were put to a popularity contest in a new study that appears in the (Vol.6, No.2), which ranks 99 of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century.B.F. Skinner topped the list, followed by Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud and Albert Bandura.

The rankings were based on the frequency of three variables: journal citation, introductory psychology textbook citation and survey response. Surveys were sent to 1,725 members of the American Psychological Society, asking them to list the top psychologists of the century. Researchers also took into account whether the psychologists had a National Academy of Sciences membership, were elected as APA president or received the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and whether their surname was used as an eponym.

“I was not surprised by most of the names who made it toward the top of the list,” says lead researcher Steven J. Haggbloom, PhD, psychology department chair at Western Kentucky University. “But there are some notable names not on the list.” For example, psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, the first to experiment with human learning and memory, didn’t make it. The content I just read: : Study ranks the top 20th century psychologists

Which American psychologist founded behaviorism in the early 1900’s?

John B. Watson

Born	John Broadus Watson January 9, 1878 Travelers Rest, South Carolina, US
Died	September 25, 1958 (aged 80) Woodbury, Connecticut, US
Education	Furman University (MA) University of Chicago (PhD)
Known for	Founding behaviorism Methodological behaviorism Behavior modification
Scientific career
Fields	Psychology
Doctoral advisor	J.R. Angell
Other academic advisors	John Dewey, H.H. Donaldson, Jacques Loeb
Influences	Ivan Pavlov
Influenced	Leonard Bloomfield, Karl Lashley

John Broadus Watson (January 9, 1878 – September 25, 1958) was an American psychologist who popularized the scientific theory of behaviorism, establishing it as a psychological school, Watson advanced this change in the psychological discipline through his 1913 address at Columbia University, titled Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,

What hat approach dominated the field of psychology from the 1930s to the 1950s?

According to Sigmund Koch, neobehaviorism replaced classical behaviorism as the dominant 20th-century program for experimental psychology around 1930; its influence began to wane in the 1950s.

Which school of thought dominated psychology from the 1920’s through the 1960’s?

Watson launches behaviorist school of psychology 1913 As a doctoral student and professor of psychology, John Watson studied the behavior of animals. He especially was interested in stimulus-response reactions to various situations, such as rats going through a maze.

He took the notion of conditioned reflexes developed by Ivan Pavlov and applied it to the study of behavior.
Watson first presented his ideas at psychological meetings between 1908 and 1912, and by 1912 was using the term “behaviorist.” The following year he published an article, “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,” that introduced this distinct new branch of psychology.

It has often been called “the behaviorist manifesto.” “Psychology as the behaviorist views it,” Watson wrote, “is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent on the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness.” These ideas may not have been startlingly original, but they were stated with startling flair.

At a time when science and anything scientific seemed to win automatic approval, Watson’s replacement of intangibles like consciousness and mental states with objectivity and hard data captivated many.
In 1915, he was elected president of the American Psychological Association.
In 1916, he began observing infant humans; until then he had drawn comparisons between animals and humans, but hadn’t experimented with them.

World War I interrupted his work but by 1918 he was back at it. His most famous experiment was conducted in the winter of 1919 and 1920 with a baby known as Albert B. Watson and his assistant gave Albert a white lab rat; he was unafraid and tried to touch the rat.

He was afraid, however, when they clanged metal with a hammer just behind his head, and he cried. A few months later, when Albert was 11 months old, they again gave him the rat, but this time just as he touched it, the metal clang sounded behind his head. That made him cry. This was repeated several times over a few weeks.

Before long just the sight of the rat made Albert cry and try to crawl away. In fact, any furry item – a stuffed toy, a fur coat, even a Santa Claus mask – made Albert cry and be afraid. The experiment successfully showed the behaviorist idea of association in a higher order animal.

Such an experiment would not be permitted with current ethical standards, especially since the researchers never “deconditioned” Albert. Behaviorism came to be widely accepted among psychologists and the general public, becoming the dominant view from the 1920s through the 1960s. It was an especially strong rebuttal to the views pushed by the eugenics movement, which claimed that heredity was the primary force determining a person’s potential and behavior.

Behaviorism, with its promise of the possibility of change, and even improvement, fit in well with the American Dream. It was egalitarian – its principles worked for everyone. Watson’s own rather extreme version of behaviorism has been refined over the years.

What was the most influential school of thought in American psychology until the 1960s?

Summary of the History of Psychology – Before the time of Wundt and James, questions about the mind were considered by philosophers. However, both Wundt and James helped create psychology as a distinct scientific discipline. Wundt was a structuralist, which meant he believed that our cognitive experience was best understood by breaking that experience into its component parts.

He thought this was best accomplished by introspection. William James was the first American psychologist, and he was a proponent of functionalism, This particular perspective focused on how mental activities served as adaptive responses to an organism’s environment. Like Wundt, James also relied on introspection; however, his research approach also incorporated more objective measures as well.

Sigmund Freud believed that understanding the unconscious mind was absolutely critical to understanding conscious behavior. This was especially true for individuals that he saw who suffered from various hysterias and neuroses. Freud relied on dream analysis, slips of the tongue, and free association as means to access the unconscious.

Psychoanalytic theory remained a dominant force in clinical psychology for several decades. Gestalt psychology was very influential in Europe. Gestalt psychology takes a holistic view of an individual and their experiences. As the Nazis came to power in Germany, Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler immigrated to the United States.

Although they left their laboratories and their research behind, they did introduce America to Gestalt ideas. Some of the principles of Gestalt psychology are still very influential in the study of sensation and perception. One of the most influential schools of thought within psychology’s history was behaviorism.

Behaviorism focused on making psychology an objective science by studying overt behavior and deemphasizing the importance of unobservable mental processes. John Watson is often considered the father of behaviorism, and B.F. Skinner’s contributions to our understanding of the principles of operant conditioning cannot be underestimated.

As behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory took hold of so many aspects of psychology, some began to become dissatisfied with psychology’s picture of human nature. Thus, a humanistic movement within psychology began to take hold. Humanism focuses on the potential of all people for good.

You might be interested: What Are Feature Detectors In Psychology?

Early Schools of Psychology: Still Active and Advanced Beyond Early Ideas


School of Psychology	Description	Earliest Period	Historically Important People
Psychodynamic Psychology	Focuses on the role of the unconscious and childhood experiences in affecting conscious behavior.	Very late 19th to Early 20th Century	Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson
Behaviorism	Focuses on observing and controlling behavior through what is observable. Puts an emphasis on learning and conditioning.	Early 20th Century	Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner
Humanistic Psychology	Emphasizes the potential for good that is innate to all humans and rejects that psychology should focus on problems and disorders.	1950s	Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers
Cognitive Psychology	Focuses not just on behavior, but on mental processes and internal mental states.	1960s	Ulric Neisser, Noam Chomsky, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky

Who were the main theorists in work psychology at the beginning of the 20th century?

1900 to 1950 – The first half of the 20th century was dominated by two major figures: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. During this segment of modern psychology’s history, these two theorists established the foundation of analysis, including Freud’s examination of psychopathology and Jung’s analytic psychology.

1900 : Sigmund Freud publishes his landmark book, ” Interpretation of Dreams,”
1901 : The British Psychological Society is established.
1905 : Mary Whiton Calkins is elected the first woman president of the American Psychological Association. Alfred Binet introduces the intelligence test,
1906 : Ivan Pavlov publishes his findings on classical conditioning, Carl Jung publishes “The Psychology of Dementia Praecox,”
1911 : Edward Thorndike publishes “Animal Intelligence,” which leads to the development of the theory of operant conditioning,
1912 : Max Wertheimer publishes “Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement,” which leads to the development of Gestalt psychology,
1913 : Carl Jung begins to depart from Freudian views and develop his own theories, which he refers to as analytical psychology. John B. Watson publishes “Psychology As the Behaviorist Views,” in which he establishes the concept of behaviorism.
1915 : Freud publishes work on repression,
1920 : Watson and Rosalie Rayner publish research on the classical conditioning of fear, highlighting the subject of their experiment, Little Albert,
1932 : Jean Piaget becomes the foremost cognitive theorist with the publication of his work “The Moral Judgment of the Child.”
1942 : Carl Rogers develops the practice of client-centered therapy, which encourages respect and positive regard for patients.

Who were the 20th century’s most influential researchers in the area of developmental psychology?

“Child psychology” redirects here. For the Black Box Recorder song, see Child Psychology (song), Special methods are used in the psychological study of infants. Piaget’s test for Conservation, One of the many experiments used for children. Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire lifespan.

Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking, feeling, and behaviors change throughout life.
This field examines change across three major dimensions, which are physical development, cognitive development, and social emotional development,
Within these three dimensions are a broad range of topics including motor skills, executive functions, moral understanding, language acquisition, social change, personality, emotional development, self-concept, and identity formation,

Developmental psychology examines the influences of nature and nurture on the process of human development, as well as processes of change in context across time. Many researchers are interested in the interactions among personal characteristics, the individual’s behavior, and environmental factors,

This includes the social context and the built environment,
Ongoing debates in regards to developmental psychology include biological essentialism vs.
Neuroplasticity and stages of development vs.
Dynamic systems of development.
Research in developmental psychology has some limitations but at the moment researchers are working to understand how transitioning through stages of life and biological factors may impact our behaviors and development,

Developmental psychology involves a range of fields, such as educational psychology, child psychopathology, forensic developmental psychology, child development, cognitive psychology, ecological psychology, and cultural psychology, Influential developmental psychologists from the 20th century include Urie Bronfenbrenner, Erik Erikson, Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Jean Piaget, Barbara Rogoff, Esther Thelen, and Lev Vygotsky,

What three psychological approaches were popular in the early 20th century?

To begin to understand the different kinds of results each approach can yield, we’ll take a look at three approaches that were common in the early twentieth century: Gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis and behaviorism.

Which psychological perspective emerged in the 1950s and 1960s?

Answer- d. (d) A movement in psychology known as the cognitive perspective started to gain traction in the 1950s and 1960s. At this point, behaviorism and psychoanalysis started to lose ground to cognitive psychology as the predominant method for studying psychology.

Which of the following is the most dominant approach to psychology in the US?

Why is the trait approach considered to be the largest and most dominant approach in contemporary psychology? It helps organize the other approaches because individual differences are the basis for each of the other basic approaches.

Is it true that in the 1940s and 1950s psychodynamic theory dominated the practice of psychotherapy?

During the 1940’s and 1950’s, psychoanalytic theory dominated psychotherapy and greatly influenced psychology. The focus today is more on conscious choice and self direction as opposed to the unconscious. the psychological point of view that emphasizes the effects of experience on behavior.

Which approach to psychotherapy that arose in the 20th century?

+ List Price: $34.95 Member/Affiliate Price: $26.21 Free Shipping For individuals in the U.S. & U.S. territories Pages: 154 Item #: 4317359 ISBN: 978-1-4338-1859-2 Copyright: 2015 Format: Paperback Availability: In Stock

Overview
Table of Contents
Author Bios
Reviews and Awards
Companion Products

Overview Gestalt Therapy provides an introduction to the theory, historical evolution, research, and practice of this process-oriented approach to psychotherapy. Gestalt therapy arose as a reaction to psychodynamism and behaviorism, the dominant approaches of the mid-twentieth century.

Its major tenets — a rejection of traditional notions of objectivity, a radical (for the time) focus on building rapport between therapist and client as a relationship of equals, careful attention to the bodily sensations that accompany strong emotions, and a guiding belief in the therapy room as a problem-solving laboratory in which experimental approaches towards interpersonal relations can be attempted in a safe setting — have been widely incorporated into a broad range of approaches today.

Open-ended and inquisitive rather than a rigid, manualized set of techniques, Gestalt is a set of guiding principles that inspire an active, present-focused, relational stance on the part of the therapist. This essential primer, amply illustrated with case examples featuring diverse clients, is perfect for graduate students studying theories of therapy and counseling, as well as for seasoned practitioners interested in understanding how this approach has evolved and how it might be used in their own practice.

Introduction
History
Theory
The Therapeutic Process
Evaluation
Future Developments
Summary

Suggested Readings References Index About the Authors About the Series Editors Author Bios Gordon Wheeler, PhD, is a licensed psychologist with many years’ experience writing, teaching, training, and practicing using a contemporary field-relational Gestalt therapy model.

He is the author or editor of numerous books and articles in the field, most recently, CoCreating the Field: Intention and Practice in the Age of Complexity (with Deborah Ullman, 2009). Dr.
Wheeler is on the visiting faculty of many Gestalt training institutes around the world, and is long-time president of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where he also served for some years as CEO.

Together with Nancy Lunney Wheeler, he teaches Gestalt Relational Constellations widely around the world. His private practice of coaching, counseling, psychotherapy and consulting is located in Santa Cruz, California. Lena Axelsson, PsyD, was educated and received her Gestalt training in Sweden, moving to the United States in 2000.

Following 4 years living and studying at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, she completed her doctoral work at Ryokan College, where her dissertation was The Use of Relational Gestalt Therapy Informed by Neuroscience in the Treatment of Single Event and Developmental Trauma, After serving for several years as a clinician and a clinical supervisor at Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance Center, working with troubled young people and families in a diverse population, Dr.

Axelsson entered private clinical practice with children, adolescents, adults, couples and families. In addition to her clinical Gestalt training, she has also trained extensively with Peter Levine in Somatic Experiencing. She presents regularly at conferences and in training sessions on Gestalt-based multicultural work, as well as on single event and developmental trauma and the neuroscientific basis of contemporary Gestalt-based trauma and recovery work.

Dr. Axelsson presents as well as part of the faculty of the Esalen Institute Evolution of Gestalt Symposium Series (selected proceedings published in the GestaltPress book series). Her forthcoming work on this topic as applied to couples work will appear in The Couple in the Relational Field (Eds.M. Kraus, A.

Robers, & G. Wheeler, in press). Dr. Axelsson lives in Santa Cruz, California, where she practices as a member of an integrative medical health team. Her special interests include hiking, running, and the diverse cuisines of Europe and the Americas. Reviews and Awards Gestalt Therapy represents an incredibly impressive work that, to students and veteran psychologists alike, provides a meaningful gift that invites us to examine and expand our perceptions, not only of our clients, but also of ourselves and our field.

—PsycCRITIQUES ® This essential primer, amply illustrated with case examples featuring diverse clients, is perfect for graduate students studying theories of therapy and counseling, as well as for seasoned practitioners interested in understanding how this approach has evolved and how it might be used in their own practice.

— Counseling Today Companion Products

Gestalt Therapy In Gestalt Therapy, Dr. Gordon Wheeler discusses and demonstrates the underlying theory of this therapeutic approach:

Shipping Information & Rates
Return Policy
Phone & Mail Ordering
Terms of Sale
Distributors
Permissions & Copyright
Translations & Subsidiary Rights

What was the dominant school of thought in psychology in the 1950s?

Behaviorism : Behaviorism became the dominant school of thought during the 1950s. Based upon the work of thinkers such as John B. Watson, Ivan Pavlov, and B.F. Skinner, behaviorism holds that all behavior can be explained by environmental causes, rather than by internal forces.

Which of the following was the dominant approach to studying psychology from 1913 to the 1950s?

History – Philosophically, ruminations on the human mind and its processes have been around since the times of the ancient Greeks. In 387 BCE, Plato had suggested that the brain was the seat of the mental processes. In 1637, René Descartes posited that humans are born with innate ideas and forwarded the idea of mind-body dualism, which would come to be known as substance dualism (essentially the idea that the mind and the body are two separate substances).

From that time, major debates ensued through the 19th century regarding whether human thought was solely experiential ( empiricism ), or included innate knowledge ( rationalism ). Some of those involved in this debate included George Berkeley and John Locke on the side of empiricism, and Immanuel Kant on the side of nativism.

With the philosophical debate continuing, the mid to late 19th century was a critical time in the development of psychology as a scientific discipline. Two discoveries that would later play substantial roles in cognitive psychology were Paul Broca ‘s discovery of the area of the brain largely responsible for language production, and Carl Wernicke ‘s discovery of an area thought to be mostly responsible for comprehension of language.

Both areas were subsequently formally named for their founders, and disruptions of an individual’s language production or comprehension due to trauma or malformation in these areas have come to commonly be known as Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia,
From the 1920s to the 1950s, the main approach to psychology was behaviorism,

Initially, its adherents viewed mental events such as thoughts, ideas, attention, and consciousness as unobservables, hence outside the realm of a science of psychology. One pioneer of cognitive psychology, who worked outside the boundaries (both intellectual and geographical) of behaviorism was Jean Piaget,

With the development of new warfare technology during WWII, the need for a greater understanding of human performance came to prominence. Problems such as how to best train soldiers to use new technology and how to deal with matters of attention while under duress became areas of need for military personnel. Behaviorism provided little if any insight into these matters and it was the work of Donald Broadbent, integrating concepts from human performance research and the recently developed information theory, that forged the way in this area.
Developments in computer science would lead to parallels being drawn between human thought and the computational functionality of computers, opening entirely new areas of psychological thought, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon spent years developing the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) and later worked with cognitive psychologists regarding the implications of AI. This encouraged a conceptualization of mental functions patterned on the way that computers handled such things as memory storage and retrieval, and it opened an important doorway for cognitivism,
Noam Chomsky ‘s 1959 critique of behaviorism, and empiricism more generally, initiated what would come to be known as the ” cognitive revolution “. Inside psychology, in criticism of behaviorism, J.S. Bruner, J.J. Goodnow & G.A. Austin wrote “a study of thinking” in 1956. In 1960, G.A. Miller, E. Galanter and K. Pribram wrote their famous “Plans and the Structure of Behavior”. The same year, Bruner and Miller founded the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies, which institutionalized the revolution and launched the field of cognitive science.
Formal recognition of the field involved the establishment of research institutions such as George Mandler ‘s Center for Human Information Processing in 1964. Mandler described the origins of cognitive psychology in a 2002 article in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences

Ulric Neisser put the term “cognitive psychology” into common use through his book Cognitive Psychology, published in 1967. Neisser’s definition of “cognition” illustrates the then-progressive concept of cognitive processes: The term “cognition” refers to all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used.

It is concerned with these processes even when they operate in the absence of relevant stimulation, as in images and hallucinations,
Given such a sweeping definition, it is apparent that cognition is involved in everything a human being might possibly do; that every psychological phenomenon is a cognitive phenomenon.

But although cognitive psychology is concerned with all human activity rather than some fraction of it, the concern is from a particular point of view. Other viewpoints are equally legitimate and necessary. Dynamic psychology, which begins with motives rather than with sensory input, is a case in point.

What was the dominant force in American psychology?

Control Behaviorism has been the dominant force in the creation of modern American psychology. However, the unquestioned and unquestioning nature of this dominance has obfuscated the complexity of behaviorism. Control serves as an antidote to this historical myopia, providing the most comprehensive history of behaviorism yet written.

Mills successfully balances the investigation of individual theorists and their contributions with analysis of the structures of assumption which underlie all behaviorist psychology, and with behaviorism’s role as both creator and creature of larger American intellectual patterns, practices, and values.

Furthermore, Mills provides a cogent critique of behaviorists’ narrow attitudes toward human motivation, exploring how their positivism cripples their ability to account for the unobservable, inner factors that control behavior. Control ‘s blend of history and criticism advances our understanding not only of behaviorism, but also the development of social science and positivism in twentieth-century America.

What is the American psychological approach?

What is APA? In this section we are going to look at how you can set up a paper in APA style. Specifically, we are going to look at citing books and journal articles within your research paper. APA is the style of documentation of sources used by the American Psychological Association.

Which of the following is the most dominant approach to psychology in the US?

What is the most used approach in psychology?

1. The Psychodynamic Perspective – The psychodynamic perspective originated with the work of Sigmund Freud, This view of psychology and human behavior emphasizes the role of the unconscious mind, early childhood experiences, and interpersonal relationships to explain human behavior, as well as to treat mental illnesses.

The id is the part of the psyche that includes all the primal and unconscious desires.The ego is the aspect of the psyche that must deal with the demands of the real world.The superego is the last part of the psyche to develop and is tasked with managing all of our internalized morals, standards, and ideals.

While the psychodynamic perspective is not as dominant today, it continues to be a useful psychotherapeutic tool.

Sabrina Sarro