10 Perspectives of Early Psychology

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Structuralism is "the earliest approach in modern psychology, founded by Wilhelm Wundt; its goal was to evaluate the basic elements of a cognizant experience: (Davis and Palladino, 2000). Wilhelm had a student whose name was Edward Tichener. Upon his research, Tichener depended upon a method that he liked to call introspection, "in which participants gave verbal reports of their conscious experiences" (Davis and Palladino, 2000).

In the late 1800's the United States became the founders of a new perspective known as functionalism. "It was an approach to psychology that focused on the purpose of consciousness" (Davis and Palladino, 2000). The basic consensus was how the mind went about what it did and why. "Because consciousness was like a continually flowing stream, it could not be easily broken down into its elements as Wundt had hoped.

According to James, if it were broken down into elements, it would lose its reality" (Davis and Palladino, 2000).

Members whom believed in Gestalt Psychology were: Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler. These gentlemen believed "that our perception of a whole is different from our perception of an individual stimuli" (Davis and Palladino, 2000). This psychology is founded on the principals known as "apparent motion, in which a rapid sequence of stationary images creates the illusion of movement, as in a movie" (Rock & Palmer, 1990). The name Gestalt is an actual German word which could translate into shape, or pattern in English.

The behavioral perspective "focuses on the observable behavior and emphasis the learned nature of behavior" (Davis and Palladino, 2000).Unlike the other approaches, the behavioral perspective accentuates...