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Unit 2. perspectives in psychology
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| F | American Psychological Association MONITOR online VOLUME 30, NUMBER 11 December 1999 Psychology continues to redefine itself Psychology's scope shifts with the field's evolution. At the end of the last century, psychology concerned itself mainly with the study of mind and consciousness through introspection, the description of experience. At the end of this century, after a long period of struggle to define psychology only in terms of science and behavior, the focus has broadened to a science and practice concerned with human behavior as well as the mental processes that underlie physical and mental health. Meanwhile, the search for an ideal definition continues, but more by way of its subdisciplines rather than by any meaningful global definition. Through the first decade of the 20th century, there was general agreement among the major schools of psychological thought that psychology studied consciousness and mind in a systematic and scientific way. The method used was one form or another of the description of experience. There was not always agreement, however, as to what the terms consciousness, mind, science, description or even experience meant. The inability to agree on the results of these kinds of experiments led to discouragement with introspective description. In the second decade of the century, behavior arose to rival consciousness as the focus of psychology. In 1913, John B. Watson, then at Johns Hopkins University, defined psychology entirely in behavioral terms. He held that the goal of psychology as viewed by a behaviorist was the "prediction and control of behavior." Watson urged the redefinition of psychology to "the science of behavior," but it took decades for this definition to take hold fully. James R. Angell, Watson's professor at the University of Chicago, noted as early as 1918 the pressure to shift the focus of psychology from consciousness to behavior. Angell moderated the position by defining behavior as "thinking, feeling and acting"–thereby attempting to salvage the definition posited by Angell's Chicago functionalists. Earlier in the century, Angell's functionalism allowed the study of behavior along with consciousness but objected to the elementism that Watson proposed. Across the 1920s and 1930s, definitions in psychology textbooks and in theoretical discussions dropped references to "mind" and "consciousness." The new generation of psychologists emphasized less what psychology was than what it did. There was still some hesitancy to give up mental aspects entirely, however, though in practice the subject of introspection largely disappeared by the 1930s. In 1928, John F. Dashiell at the University of North Carolina defined the discipline as "a scientific study of human nature." One reason for the shift of emphasis away from the mental is the fact that experimental psychologists in the late 1920s were more likely to work in the areas of learning or habit than in the introspection of sensations. Another reason for the broad definition is that by the late 1920s, psychology was becoming too complex to be defined in one sentence. Different subfields–among them abnormal, educational, physiological and developmental–were beginning to develop in their own right. Howard C. Warren, in his influential 1934 Dictionary of Psychology, gave four definitions of psychology, ranging from "a branch of science that investigates mental phenomena or mental operations" to "the science concerned with the mutual interrelations of organism and environment through transmission of energy," to "the systematic investigation of the behavior of organisms" to "the science of the self or personal individual." This last definition reflected the growing interest in fields outside of traditional "experimental" psychology. Even in the 1940s and 1950s there still was hesitation in some quarters to define psychology only behaviorally. Norman Munn, for example, defined psychology as "the science of experience and behavior" in his 1946 textbook. Floyd Ruch avoided a global definition entirely in his 1953 introductory textbook, defining psychology in terms of its fields of study. It was only in the early 1960s that one finds definitions in most textbooks solely behavioral. In 1963 Clifford Morgan, for example, in his popular introductory textbook, related the "generally accepted definition" of psychology as "the science of human and animal behavior." Animals had become central to behavior theory which, for better or worse, had captured experimental psychology in America. In the late 1960s, however, that singular status for behavior began to change when cognitive psychology emerged. The 1960s also saw the rise of humanistic psychology, and that helped to move psychology to a renewed emphasis on experience. By the 1970s, psychology's definition shifted yet again toward a more moderate and commonly defined "science of behavior and experience." In the last two decades of the century, the recognition that psychology is not only a science but also a practice has come to the fore, resulting in a definition that reflects the wide range of present-day psychology. Today, psychology is most often defined as "the study of behavior and underlying mental phenomena." In reality, though, psychology is more and more meaningfully defined in terms of the particular field under study rather than as a whole, making it less of a unified discipline and more an umbrella for a loose confederation of subdisciplines. Psychology continues to redefine itself. Retrieved May, 2004, from http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec99/ss2.html |
Unit 2. perspectives in psychology
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