Psycholody

Psychology 101-C

E-mail: dmorgenson@wlu.ca
Office: Science Building, Room 203
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 10:30 – 11:30

Teaching Assistant – Alana Greco
Teaching Assistant Office – TBA
TA Office Hours – TBA         

Psychology is just one of the many approaches to understand the world better.

Freud said: “The two single most important things in our lives are love and work. Structured labour and love give life meaning”.

Abnormal behaviour is always cut from normal cloth. Psychology emphasizes the application of scientific methods.

Neutrality of knowledge: Can knowledge ever be neutral? It is actually how we apply that knowledge that is neutral. There is always a motive behind the things we pursue.  Ask why and not how.

Psychology, as a science, was started officially in 1879. Although many argue that it is a science of behaviour, it is actually a study of experience. The study of psychology is difficult because:

• The complexity of the organism we are studying – Humans are very complex creatures. Is it possible for a single human system to understand the entirety of the human personality?
• Ethical Questions – Should we study human behaviour? In studying it, do we violate human beings? “Never use a human being as a means to an end”.

• Confidential nature of the research
• Discomfort or harm?
• Deception? Can we justify deception in our experiences?

• Tuskegee study: They injected African-American convicts with syphilis inn order to see the effect it had on their brain when it attacked
• Prison study: He asked university students to act as prison guards in order to understand the effect dealing with prisoners has on them.
• Two approaches:

• Deontological – never use a human being as means to an end

• Joseph Goldberger discovered that pellagra was a result of nothing more than a niacin shortage, not a virus. He performed studies on himself and his wife instead of using other people.

• Consequentialism – The consequences are fine as long as one’s ends are noble

• Psychophobia – We are reluctant to know more and more about ourselves. We are willing to explore exterior darkness, yet we are reluctant to explore our inner darkness. These people disturbed the sleep of humans and contributed to this apparent psychophobia.

• Copernicus: When people discovered the world was heliocentric and not geocentric, people wanted to burn him.
• Darwin: Darwin claimed that we had much in common with animals. Similarly, people revolted because he moved us from divinity to animal-like.
• Freud: Most of what drives us is below the level of consciousness. This once again enraged people.
• Young: Young argued about our dark side, and how we our only fully functional human beings when we acknowledge this side of ourselves.
• Galileo: Colleagues of Galileo refused to look into his telescope, once again exemplifying psychophobia.
• It is almost as though the pursuit of knowledge is dangerous.
• Plato “Every student is a light. Every student is a spark waiting to dispel the darkness”.

• The context of human existence is changing dramatically

• Science and technology are redefining our understanding of terms that are given to us at the beginning of consciousness. Many argue we are abdicating our sense of self and handing it over to computer and machine metaphors/analogies. Our computer lives are more important than our flesh and blood relationships.

• They are redefining life itself, what it means to be a human and nature

• Technological advances are so fast that more technological, social and psychological changes have occurred in the pat 75 years than the rest of human history

• We are suffering from sensory overload – there is just too much to process so we are closing more and more of what I happening around us. How can we maintain a frame of reference when things are moving so quickly?

• Concerns about redefining what a family means – How we define a family has a profoundly important implications for civil society in general
• Subjective split between modern human beings and the rest of nature

• Now we have to think about to protect nature from the excesses of human actions rather than the opposite

• The ability to create change and the idea that change is always desirable is now a global obsession

• Before continuity was the desired state of affairs, but now we are always obsessed with change. Slow continuity is no longer good enough

• Symbolic language has been radically altered

• For example, heaven used to carry a very sacred meaning, and today we speak of space, an endless void. We used to speak of Mother Nature with a reverence, but now we speak lifelessly of matter and physical makeup.
• There is now less transcendence in our consciousness
• What we need is a re-enchantment of the human and of nature, meaning that we should realize that there is something sacred about the human being, and of earth
• “Human beings without spirit are garbage”. Franz Kafka

Psychology has a very long past but a relatively short history. Psychologists tend to think they have the answers to all the questions, even though they have been struggled with for thousands of years.

Psyche to Soma – There were thinkers many years ago that struggled with these same questions, it was not just Freud

Plato – We struggle to make sacred ideas, as they are much more important then the body or behaviour

• Rationalism – Logic and focused thought we can understand our reality

Aristotle

• Empiricism – Experimentation and research will help us understand our reality

Formal Academic Schools of Psychology

December 1879

Wilhelm Wundt and his associates established the school of structuralism in Germany. He was considered a very mediocre student, until he became very sick in his twenties. Then he began to contemplate in his forced idleness.

• Structuralism – Argues that the mind consists of structures

• Introspection was the method Wundt used. He would hold up an apple, then proceed to ask his students to describe the apple. It is red, it has a stem etc. Wundt argued that each of these descriptive terms represented a building brick of the mind. Through introspection, he believed we could understand exactly what one was feeling, thinking, wanting at any given moment.
• The complaints:

• Reductionistic – It reduces intricate experiences and thoughts into a few words
• Elemental – They tried to combine basic elements into a whole
• Mentalistic – It studies only the verbal reports, but what about the experiences that cannot be described.

• Functionalism – They felt that the organism in all its parts had a purpose, a goal. That goal is to adapt, so instead of studying what “is” the mind, they asked what is it’s function?

• Darwin argued that the goal is to adapt and survive
• William James – Wrote the original text “Principles of Psychology”

• One of the founders of this school
• Took Darwin’s research on natural selection into account
• Argued that consciousness is a continuous flow of thoughts, so by analyzing it in ‘elements’ the structuralists were simply looking at static points of that flow.
• Stream of consciousness

• John Dewey – Another founder of the school

• He emphasized that one learns by doing

• It gave rise to clinical psychology, business psychology, personality tests, intelligence tests etc.

• Behaviorism – Based on the premise that psychology should be the study of observable behavior, nothing more.

• Mental processes are not subject to study because they are so private
• The emphasis of this school was based on stimulus-response relationships. We respond in situations the same way for which we have been rewarded in the past. (Often referred to as S-R psychology)
• Watson – Became president of the American Psychological Association in 1920 when Behaviorism dominated for years

• Conditioned Emotional Response – Albert was 11 months old, and whenever the researchers introduced a furry creature, they followed by making a very loud noise. Ultimately, he burst into tears anytime he saw something furry, even a fake Santa beard.
• He believed he could create anything he wanted to by manipulating rewards and reinforcements (Nurture over nature)

• Skinner argued that freedom and dignity are non-existent. That if you felt free, it’s simply because those feelings were reinforced.

• Radical Behaviorism
• All behavior is fully governed by external stimuli

• Pavlov – Conditional response

• He showed that dogs could be trained to salivate in response to an auditory stimulus like a tone. It strengthened the argument of S-R psychology

• Gestalt psychology – The individual should be treated a fully functioning whole. We tend to see things in patterns.

• The brain imposes patterns on imposing stimuli

• Ex. The brain, responding to random bursts, imposed meaning on them and thus created dreams

• We perceive an integrity on stimuli

• Ex. If he asked us to draw an incomplete circle that he drew on the board, we would draw a full circle

• Gestatlists argue that building a tower, for example, is the whole.
• Closure – Our brain always thinks and sees in terms of patterns, that is why we want closure
• They began to see children and school as a whole. If the child is having trouble at home, he will not do well at school. If he does not eat breakfast, he will not do well on the test. The child is viewed as a pattern.

• Psychoanalysis

• Freud – Came closer to developing a complete theory of human behavior than anyone else in history

• No specific type of psychology is embedded in us as much as Freudian
• The unconscious contains thoughts, memories, and desires that are well below the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exert great influence on behavior
• Psychoanalytic theory attempts to explain personality, motivation and mental disorders by focusing on unconscious determinants of behavior

• Id, Ego, Superego

• The Third Force, Humanistic Existentialism – a theoretical orientation that emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and their potential for personal growth

• Appalled at how reductionistic other schools were. They believe that reductionism has created a society of anonymity, conformity.
• Emphasizes choice. A good environment will lead to good choices, whereas the opposite is also true

1. Unique – There is only one of us
2. Spontaneity – We are spontaneous creatures, not like behaviorism
3. Internal Locus of Control – One believes that their successes are a result of their drive, hard work and commitment. Your destiny is a function of your behaviors. External is the opposite.
4. Existential in our lives

• You are free
• You make choices
• You are responsible for those choices

• Albert Camus argues that we are living a life that has no meaning; it is absurd.

• What makes us so powerful is that we no it is pointless, yet we do it anyway
• The Stranger

• Existence precedes essence.

• Put away race, color, language, all those essences

Bio-Pycho-social model