Theories of Psychology

Unit 1 IP

Theories of Early Psychology

by

Yolonda Ward

Professor Geoff Hacker

November 14, 2009

Psychology is about the academics and applied scientific studies of mental behaviour and processing. Psychology also involves the use of knowledge to various areas in human activity. It studies goings-on from daily life, the job, and your interactions with the people around you such as your family. Psychology also delves into the treatment of severe mental health problems of persons of all ages and backgrounds. Basically, it's the science of why people do the things that they do. Imagine all the practical applications of understanding, and how they can be applied to understand why people think and act. Psychology has held many of the same basic principles since the beginning. However with advanced studies each field emphases on differences in understanding and behaviors. While there are differences between various theoretical approaches and paradigms in psychology, the science of psychology embraces them all, even the most completely contrasting.

Structuralism, Functionalism, and Humanistic Psychology all revolve around the extensive areas as emotions, insight, individualism, social dynamics and functions, and many other behavior traits. These areas also identify some of the aspects of the whole person with emphasis on the diet, exercise, transpersonal self, and spirit. (www.ahpweb.org/rowan) Structuralism is progression in the intellectual disciplines that explore the dealings between basic elements such as opposing variations, contrast in relation to the larger social system. Structuralism is basic the determination of consciousness. Like Structuralism, Functionalism delved deep. Now the consciousness existed, what was its functional purpose of it and its basic mental process.

The structuralism process is the same in all cultures, and that these mental processes exist in the form of binary oppositions (Winthrop 1991). These opposites are simple concepts that we use daily. Some of these oppositions include male vs. female, hot vs. cold, and black vs. white. Society has come to view such oppositions in contested ways. For example, the colors white and black. Black is used as a sign of darkness, danger, and wickedness. The color white is seen as purity and goodness. Another example of a contested binary opposition is rational vs. emotional, in which the rational term is usually privileged and associated with men, while emotional is inferior and associated with women. Men are thought of as rulers because they are not emotional. Women are not seen in the same manner, not because there is truth to this conception, because they are thought to be beneath men mentally.

Structuralists aim to understand the underlying meaning involved in human thought as expressed in cultural acts. Structuralism seems to give emphasis to that the thought that fundamentals of civilization must be understood in terms of their relationship to the entire system in which they are a part of. Elements of a culture are not explanatory in and of themselves, but rather they are a part of a much bigger and more important structure of the system itself. It is thought today that structuralism is too involved with emotional behaviors which cannot