Chapter Three

Schools of Psychology

1.    Psychoanalysis

A. Sigmund Freud 

Austrian neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis. His creation of psychoanalysis was at once a theory of the human psyche, a therapy for the relief of its ills, and an optic for the interpretation of culture and society.

Psychoanalytic Theory

He developed the technique of free association. By encouraging the patient to express any random thoughts that came associatively to mind, the technique aimed at uncovering hitherto unarticulated material from the realm of the psyche that Freud, following a long tradition, called the unconscious. Because of its incompatibility with conscious thoughts or conflicts with other unconscious ones, this material was normally hidden, forgotten, or unavailable to conscious reflection.

Freud interpreted that source in terms of Sophocles tragedy Oedipus Rex (Oedipus complex). The universal applicability of its plot, he conjectured, lies in the desire of every male child to sleep with his mother and remove the obstacle to the realization of that wish, his father.  

B.  Alfred Adler

Psychiatrist whose influential system of individual psychology introduced the term inferiority feeling, later widely and often inaccurately called inferiority complex. He developed a flexible, supportive psychotherapy to direct those emotionally disabled by inferiority feelings toward maturity, common sense, and social usefulness.

Individual psychology maintains that the overriding motivation in most people is a striving for what Adler somewhat misleadingly termed superiority (i.e., self-realization, completeness, or perfection). This striving for superiority may be frustrated by feelings of inferiority,( inadequacy, or incompleteness arising from physical defects, low social status, pampering or neglect during childhood, or other causes encountered in the course of life). Individuals can compensate for their feelings of inferiority by developing their skills and abilities, or, less healthily, they may develop an inferiority complex that comes to dominate their behaviour.

2. Behaviourisms

A.  Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

Russian physiologist known chiefly for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex. In a now-classic experiment, he trained a hungry dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, which was previously associated with the sight of food. He developed a similar conceptual approach, emphasizing the importance of conditioning, in his pioneering studies relating human behaviour to the nervous system. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiologyor Medicine in 1904 for his work on digestive secretions.

B.  John Broadus Watson

American psychologist who codified and publicized behaviourism, an approach to psychology that, in his view, was restricted to the objective, experimental study of the relations between environmental events and human behaviour in term of stimulus and response.

His first major work, Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, was published in 1914. In it he argued forcefully for the use of animal subjects in psychological study and described instinct as a series of reflexes activated by heredity. He also promoted conditioned responses as the ideal experimental tool.

C.   Edward Lee Thorndike 

American psychologist whose work on animal behaviour and the learning process led to the theory of connectionism, which states that behavioral responses to specific stimuli are established through a process of trial and error that affects neural connections between the stimuli and the most satisfying responses.

He first proposed his two behavioral laws, the law of effect and the law of exercise. The law of effect stated that those behavioral responses that were most closely followed by a satisfying result were most likely to become established patterns and to occur again in response to the same stimulus. The law of exercise stated that behaviour is more strongly established through frequent connections of stimulus and response.

D. Burrhus Frederic Skinner 

American psychologist and an influential exponent of behaviourism, which views human behaviour in terms of responses to environmental stimuli and favours the controlled, scientific study of responses as the most direct means of elucidating human nature.

His experiences in the step-by-step training of research animals led Skinner to formulate the principles of programmed learning, which he envisioned to be accomplished through the use of so-called teaching machines. Central to his approach is the concept of reinforcement, or reward. The student, learning by use of the machine at his own pace, is rewarded for responding correctly to questions about the material he is trying to master. Learning is thereby presumably reinforced and facilitated.