3. Principal theories of modern psychology

A. Behaviourism

Behaviourists hold the following views:

• The mind is seen as a processor of symbols that mirror the world's structure and a reservoir of information.

• Knowledge is an external reality mapped onto learners. It exists independently of instruction.

• Thought is governed by external reality.

• The structure of the real world is independent of understanding.

A behaviourist learning event is characterized by:

• Prescribed knowledge is transmitted to learners according to a pre-planned programme.

• Specific activities are carried out to achieve the objectives.

• Learning is shaped by repetition and reinforcement as the learner responds to specific stimuli.

• The learner has no control of learning or on the time span of the event.

• The educator is the authoritarian and centre of the event.

• Evaluation is done individually at the end of the learning event to determine if objectives were met.

• Failure means that the concept/learning content will be repeated until it is mastered.

Positive Aspects of Behaviourism:

• Guarantees specific learning. Objectives are predetermined by the educator. These objectives should clearly define the terminal behaviour to be displayed by the learner, the criterion or standard by which behaviour will be evaluated and the conditions under which the behaviour will be displayed.

• Specific and objective outcomes for learning can be set: Learner knows what is expected of him/her. The learner is focused on a clear goal and can respond automatically to the cues of the goal.

• Stimulus-Response theory: Learning is assumed to have occurred when the learner reacts correctly according to the stimulus. The correctness of the response is predetermined by the educator.

• Uses time more efficiently (according to educator).

• Success of outcomes easily measurable.

• Easy to implement and automate.

Criticisms against Behaviourism:

• Oversimplification of human behaviour.

• Sees human being as an automaton instead of creature of will and purpose.

• Learning something by repeating it many times without thinking about it carefully or without understanding it.

• Limited transfer of knowledge.

• Limited retention unless reinforced.

• Limited learning by association. Students are unable to put the pieces together and apply them to other situations.

• Problem solving skills not developed. The learner may find themselves in a situation where the stimulus to the correct response does not occur, therefore, the learner cannot respond.

• Learner sees much of the learning as irrelevant to his everyday life.

• The stimulus is provided by the educator. The presence of the educator is therefore critical for the event to be successful.

• Learner is usually externally motivated. Motivation for correctly responding to a stimulus is directly related to the time between the response and the reinforcement.

• Very little cooperation between learners.

Learning is not viewed as dependent on context and culture. Learning as a social process is negated.

B. Gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology is a school of psychology that deals mainly with the processes of perception. According to Gestalt psychology, images are perceived as a pattern or a whole rather than merely as a sum of distinct component parts. The context of an image plays a key role. For instance, in the context of a city silhouette the shape of a spire is perceived as a church steeple. Gestalt psychology tries to formulate the laws governing such perceptual processes.

Gestalt psychology began as a protest. At the beginning of the 20th century associanizm dominated psychology. The associationist view that stimuli are perceived as parts and then built into images excluded as much as it sought to explain; for instance, it allowed little room for such human concepts as meaning and value. About 1910, German researchers Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka rejected the prevailing order of scientific analysis in psychology. They did not, however, reject science; rather they sought a scientific approach more nearly related to the subject matter of psychology. They adopted that of field theory, newly developed in physics. This model permitted them to look at perception in terms other than the mechanistic atomism of the associationists.

Gestalt psychologists found perception to be heavily influenced by the context or configuration of the perceived elements. The word Gestalt can be translated from the German approximately as “configuration.” The parts often derive their nature and purpose from the whole and cannot be understood apart from it. Moreover, a straightforward summation process of individual elements cannot account for the whole. Activities within the total field of the whole govern the perceptual processes.

The approach of Gestalt psychology has been extended to research in areas as diverse as thinking, memory, and the nature of aesthetics. Topics in social psychology have also been studied from the structuralist Gestalt viewpoint, as in Kurt Lewin’s work on group dynamics. It is in the area of perception, however, that Gestalt psychology has had its greatest influence.

In addition, several contemporary psychotherapies are termed Gestalt. These are constructed along lines similar to Gestalt psychology’s approach to perception. Human beings respond holistically to experience; according to Gestalt therapists, any separation of mind and body is artificial. Accurate perception of one’s own needs and of the world is vital in order to balance one’s experience and achieve “good Gestalten.” Movement away from awareness breaks the holistic response, or Gestalt. Gestalt therapists attempt to restore an individual’s natural, harmonic balance by heightening awareness. The emphasis is on present experience, rather than on recollections of infancy and early childhood as in psychoanalysis. Direct confrontation with one’s fears is encouraged.

The Gestalt Principles

These principles are:

• Similarity

Similarity occurs when objects look similar to one another. People often perceive them as a group or pattern.

  The example above (containing 11 distinct objects) appears as a single unit because all of the shapes have similarity.

Unity occurs because the triangular shapes at the bottom of the eagle symbol look similar to the shapes that form the sunburst.

  When similarity occurs, an object can be emphasised if it is dissimilar to the others. This is called anomaly.

 

The figure on the far right becomes a focal point because it is dissimilar to the other shapes.

• Continuation

Continuation occurs when the eye is compelled to move through one object and continue to another object.

 

Continuation occurs in the example above, because the viewer's eye will naturally follow a line or curve. The smooth flowing crossbar of the "H" leads the eye directly to the maple leaf.

• Closure

Closure occurs when an object is incomplete or a space is not completely enclosed. If enough of the shape is indicated, people perceive the whole by filling in the missing information.

Although the panda above is not complete, enough is present for the eye to complete the shape. When the viewer's perception completes a shape, closure occurs.

• Proximity

Proximity occurs when elements are placed close together. They tend to be perceived as a group.

The nine squares above are placed without proximity. They are perceived as separate shapes. 

When the squares are given close proximity, unity occurs. While they continue to be separate shapes, they are now perceived as one group.

 

The fifteen figures above form a unified whole (the shape of a tree) because of their proximity.

• Figure and Ground

Figure-ground is another Gestalt psychology principle. The classic example is this one...

Basically, we seem to have an innate tendency to perceive one aspect of an event as the figure or fore-ground and the other as the ground or back-ground. There is only one image here, and yet, by changing nothing but our attitude, we can see two different things. It doesn’t even seem to be possible to see them both at the same time!

C. Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that investigates internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory and language. The school of thought arising from this approach is known as cognitivism which is interested in how people mentally represent information processing. It had its foundations in the Gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka, and in the work of Jean Piaget, who provided a theory of stages/phases that describe children's cognitive development. Cognitive psychologists use psychophysical and experimental approaches to understand, diagnose, and solve problems, concerning themselves with the mental processes which mediate between stimulus and response. Cognitive theory contends that solutions to problems take the form of algorithms – rules that are not necessarily understood but promise a solution, or heuristics—rules that are understood but that do not always guarantee solutions. Cognitive science differs from cognitive psychology in that algorithms that are intended to simulate human behaviour are implemented or implementable on a computer. In other instances, solutions may be found through insight, a sudden awareness of relationships.

Contemporary cognitive theory has followed one of two broad approaches: the developmental approach derived from the work of Jean Piaget and concerned with “representational thought” and the construction of mental models (“schemas”) of the world, and the information-processing approach, which views the human mind as analogous to a sophisticated computer system.

D. Psychoanalysis

What is Psychoanalysis?

Today psychoanalysis is very familiar for the wide public.

Psychoanalysis spread everywhere but not only due to the interest in its therapeutic method. Psychoanalysis applied in literature, sociology, anthropology and ethnology, religion and mythology, incited the interest of a public that had no inclination towards its clinical use.

Finally, psychoanalysis also distinguished itself through media using the most common means: radio, TV or films. Famous films put an emphasis on psychoanalysts. There was even a film dedicated to Sigmund Freud which presented the years of his beginnings in psychoanalysis.

The multitude and complexity of the sources from which we receive today signals about psychoanalysis raise an important issue: psychoanalysis is no longer clearly defined in the eyes of the wide public. Today nobody knows for sure what psychoanalysis is and wants. Unfortunately, no effort is made in order to clarify this crucial aspect

So we must clearly state right from the beginning what psychoanalysis is. Psychoanalysis is the name (1) of a procedure for the investigation of mental processes, (2) of a method (based upon that investigation) for the treatment of neurotic disorders and (3) of a collection of psychological information obtained along those lines, which is gradually being accumulated into a new scientific discipline.

Consequently there is nothing vague in the definition of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a specific mind investigation technique and a therapy inspired from this investigation.

The psychoanalytical science that we were mentioning at the third point comes to light from Freud's famous study called Totem and Taboo, in which he launches himself in social and anthropologic analysis relying on the knowledge extracted from applying psychoanalysis to neurosis therapy.

Freud's Theory

Freud didn't exactly invent the idea of the conscious versus unconscious mind, but he certainly was responsible for making it popular. The conscious mind is what you are aware of at any particular moment, your present perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have you.

The unconscious includes all the things that are not easily available to awareness, including many things that have their origins there, such as our drives or instincts, and things that are put there because we can't bear to look at them, such as the memories and emotions associated with trauma.

According to Freud, the unconscious is the source of our motivations, whether they be simple desires for food or sex, neurotic compulsions, or the motives of an artist or scientist. And yet, we often resist becoming conscious of these motives, and they are often available to us only in disguised form.

Freud’s structural model consists of three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the agency of the "psychical apparatus" which contains much of what is inherited (there are also inherited ego characteristics), including the instincts. Psychic energy gets displaced and transformed, and then eventually discharged through action. Psychic determinism is that the instincts determine human behaviour, modified by the ego.

The ego is the agency that acts as an intermediary between the id and the external world. It is charged with gaining control over the demands of the instincts, and choosing which ones to satisfy and when. The ego seeks pleasure and avoids unpleasure. The ego not only has to balance the id with reality, but also with the superego. The superego is the agency formed over time by the parents and society of the individual. It observes, orders, judges, and threatens the ego with punishment just like the parents whose place it has taken. We are generally aware of it as our conscience.