Special fields of psychology
unconscious is composed of two parts; the personal unconscious, which
contains the results of the individual’s entire experience, and the
collective unconscious, the reservoir of the experience of the human race.
In the collective unconscious exist a number of primordial images, or
archetypes, common to all individuals of a given country or historical era.
Archetypes take the form of bits of intuitive knowledge or apprehension and
normally exist only in the collective unconscious of the individual. When
the conscious mind contains no images, however, as in sleep, or when the
consciousness is caught off guard, the archetypes commence to function.
Archetypes are primitive modes of thought and tend to personify natural
processes in terms of such mythological concepts as good and evil spirits,
fairies, and dragons. The mother and the father also serve as prominent
archetypes.
An important concept in Jung’s theory is the existence of two basically
different types of personality, mental attitude, and function. When the
libido and the individual’s general interest are turned outward toward
people and objects of the external world, he or she is said to be
extroverted. When the reverse is true, and libido and interest are centered
on the individual, he or she is said to be introverted. In a completely
normal individual these two tendencies alternate, neither dominating, but
usually the libido is directed mainly in one direction or the other; as a
result, two personality types are recognizable.
Jung rejected Freud’s distinction between the ego and superego and
recognized a portion of the personality, somewhat similar to the superego,
that he called the persona. The persona consists of what a person appears
to be to others, in contrast to what he or she actually is. The persona is
the role the individual chooses to play in life, the total impression he or
she wishes to make on the outside world.
Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler, another of Freud’s pupils, differed from both Freud and Jung
in stressing that the motivating force in human life is the sense of
inferiority, which begins as soon as an infant is able to comprehend the
existence of other people who are better able to care for themselves and
cope with their environment. From the moment the feeling of inferiority is
established, the child strives to overcome it. Because inferiority is
intolerable, the compensatory mechanisms set up by the mind may get out of
hand, resulting in self-centered neurotic attitudes, overcompensations, and
a retreat from the real world and its problems.
Adler laid particular stress on inferiority feelings arising from what he
regarded as the three most important relationships: those between the
individual and work, friends, and loved ones. The avoidance of inferiority
feelings in these relationships leads the individual to adopt a life goal
that is often not realistic and frequently is expressed as an unreasoning
will to power and dominance, leading to every type of antisocial behavior
from bullying and boasting to political tyranny. Adler believed that
analysis can foster a sane and rational “community feeling” that is
constructive rather than destructive.
Otto Rank
Another student of Freud, Otto Rank, introduced a new theory of neurosis,
attributing all neurotic disturbances to the primary trauma of birth. In
his later writings he described individual development as a progression
from complete dependence on the mother and family, to a physical
independence coupled with intellectual dependence on society, and finally
to complete intellectual and psychological emancipation. Rank also laid
great importance on the will, defined as “a positive guiding organization
and integration of self, which utilizes creatively as well as inhibits and
controls the instinctual drives.”
Other Psychoanalytic Schools
Later noteworthy modifications of psychoanalytic theory include those of
the American psychoanalysts Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack
Sullivan. The theories of Fromm lay particular emphasis on the concept that
society and the individual are not separate and opposing forces, that the
nature of society is determined by its historic background, and that the
needs and desires of individuals are largely formed by their society. As a
result, Fromm believed, the fundamental problem of psychoanalysis and
psychology is not to resolve conflicts between fixed and unchanging
instinctive drives in the individual and the fixed demands and laws of
society, but to bring about harmony and an understanding of the
relationship between the individual and society. Fromm also stressed the
importance to the individual of developing the ability to fully use his or
her mental, emotional, and sensory powers.
Horney worked primarily in the field of therapy and the nature of neuroses,
which she defined as of two types: situation neuroses and character
neuroses. Situation neuroses arise from the anxiety attendant on a single
conflict, such as being faced with a difficult decision. Although they may
paralyze the individual temporarily, making it impossible to think or act
efficiently, such neuroses are not deeply rooted. Character neuroses are
characterized by a basic anxiety and a basic hostility resulting from a
lack of love and affection in childhood.
Sullivan believed that all development can be described exclusively in
terms of interpersonal relations. Character types as well as neurotic
symptoms are explained as results of the struggle against anxiety arising
from the individual’s relations with others and are a security system,
maintained for the purpose of allaying anxiety.
Melanie Klein
An important school of thought is based on the teachings of the British
psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Because most of Klein’s followers worked with
her in England, this has come to be known as the English school. Its
influence, nevertheless, is very strong throughout the European continent
and in South America. Its principal theories were derived from observations
made in the psychoanalysis of children. Klein posited the existence of
complex unconscious fantasies in children under the age of six months. The
principal source of anxiety arises from the threat to existence posed by
the death instinct. Depending on how concrete representations of the
destructive forces are dealt with in the unconscious fantasy life of the
child, two basic early mental attitudes result that Klein characterized as
a “depressive position” and a “paranoid position.” In the paranoid
position, the ego’s defense consists of projecting the dangerous internal
object onto some external representative, which is treated as a genuine
threat emanating from the external world. In the depressive position, the
threatening object is introjected and treated in fantasy as concretely
retained within the person. Depressive and hypochondriacal symptoms result.
Although considerable doubt exists that such complex unconscious fantasies
operate in the minds of infants, these observations have been of the utmost
importance to the psychology of unconscious fantasies, paranoid delusions,
and theory concerning early object relations.
4. Behaviriourism
The literature of this school of psychology is still awaiting its
bibliographer. Though this interpretation of human actions and
reactions has been strongly criticized by other psychologists, the
leading figures - B.F.Skinner, J.B.Watson and E.C.Tolman - have also
been recognized and respected as great scholars. Skenner`s own summary
About behaviorism, 1974, contained numerous bibliographic references to
this important interpretation of man’s relationship to the world around
him. Strange compilation of references designed to show the errors of
this school of psychology was published by A.A.Roback in 1923 as part
of his critical discussion entitled Behaviorism and Psychology; it is
now only of historical interest.
We have already referred to Robert 1 Watson`s The history of psychology
and behavioral sciences: a bibliographic guide, 1978. in our discussion
of the general background guides to psychology. It suffices to note,
here, that this work, though by one of the leading scholars of the
behaviorist school, is not, and does not pretend to be, a bibliography
of Behaviourism. In some respects the same can be said of
C.Heidenreich`s Dictionary of personality: behavior and adjustment
terms, which appeared in 1968. Both these books have been compiled by
leading members of this behaviorist school and unquestionably
representative of the views of that school. We have mentioned these
works here for that reason, but stress that these are scholarly and
unbiased reference works which do not include or misrepresent
references to other interpretations of human behavior.
5. Gestalt psychology
Gestalt Psychology, school of psychology that deals mainly with the
processes of perception. According to Gestalt psychology, images are
perceived as a pattern or a whole rather than merely as a sum of
distinct component parts. The context of an image plays a key role. For
instance, in the context of a city silhouette the shape of a spire is
perceived as a church steeple. Gestalt psychology tries to formulate
the laws governing such perceptual processes.
Gestalt psychology began as a protest. At the beginning of the 20th
century, associationism dominated psychology. The associationist view
that stimuli are perceived as parts and then built into images excluded
as much as it sought to explain; for instance, it allowed little room
for such human concepts as meaning and value. About 1910, German
researchers Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kцhler, and Kurt Koffka rejected
the prevailing order of scientific analysis in psychology. They did
not, however, reject science; rather they sought a scientific approach
more nearly related to the subject matter of psychology. They adopted
that of field theory, newly developed in physics. This model permitted
them to look at perception in terms other than the mechanistic atomism
of the associationists.
Gestalt psychologists found perception to be heavily influenced by the
context or configuration of the perceived elements. The word Gestalt
can be translated from the German approximately as “configuration.” The
parts often derive their nature and purpose from the whole and cannot
be understood apart from it. Moreover, a straightforward summation
process of individual elements cannot account for the whole. Activities
within the total field of the whole govern the perceptual processes.
The approach of Gestalt psychology has been extended to research in
areas as diverse as thinking, memory, and the nature of aesthetics.
Topics in social psychology have also been studied from the
structuralist Gestalt viewpoint, as in Kurt Lewin’s work on group
dynamics. It is in the area of perception, however, that Gestalt
psychology has had its greatest influence.
In addition, several contemporary psychotherapies are termed Gestalt.
These are constructed along lines similar to Gestalt psychology’s
approach to perception. Human beings respond holistically to
experience; according to Gestalt therapists, any separation of mind and
body is artificial. Accurate perception of one’s own needs and of the
world is vital in order to balance one’s experience and achieve “good
Gestalten.” Movement away from awareness breaks the holistic response,
or Gestalt. Gestalt therapists attempt to restore an individual’s
natural, harmonic balance by heightening awareness. The emphasis is on
present experience, rather than on recollections of infancy and early
childhood as in psychoanalysis. Direct confrontation with one’s fears
is encouraged.
6. Cognition psychology
Cognition, act or process of knowing. Cognition includes attention,
perception, memory, reasoning, judgment, imagining, thinking, and speech.
Attempts to explain the way in which cognition works are as old as
philosophy itself; the term, in fact, comes from the writings of Plato and
Aristotle. With the advent of psychology as a discipline separate from
philosophy, cognition has been investigated from several viewpoints.
An entire field—cognitive psychology—has arisen since the 1950s. It studies
cognition mainly from the standpoint of information handling. Parallels are
stressed between the functions of the human brain and the computer concepts
such as the coding, storing, retrieving, and buffering of information. The
actual physiology of cognition is of little interest to cognitive
psychologists, but their theoretical models of cognition have deepened
understanding of memory, psycholinguistics, and the development of
intelligence.
Social psychologists since the mid-1960s have written extensively on the
topic of cognitive consistency—that is, the tendency of a person’s beliefs
and actions to be logically consistent with one another. When cognitive
dissonance, or the lack of such consistency, arises, the person
unconsciously seeks to restore consistency by changing his or her behavior,
beliefs, or perceptions. The manner in which a particular individual
classifies cognitions in order to impose order has been termed cognitive
style.
7. Tests and Measurements
Many fields of psychology use tests and measurement devices. The best-
known psychological tool is intelligence testing. Since the early 1900s
psychologists have been measuring intelligence—or, more accurately, the
ability to succeed in schoolwork. Such tests have proved useful in
classifying students, assigning people to training programs, and
predicting success in many kinds of schooling. Special tests have been
developed to predict success in different occupations and to assess how
much knowledge people have about different kinds of specialties. In
addition, psychologists have constructed tests for measuring aspects of
personality, interests, and attitudes. Thousands of tests have been
devised for measuring different human traits.
A key problem in test construction, however, is the development of a
criterion—that is, some standard to which the test is to be related.
For intelligence tests, for example, the usual criterion has been
success in school, but intelligence tests have frequently been attacked
on the basis of cultural bias (that is, the test results may reflect a
child’s background as much as it does learning ability). For vocational-
interest tests, the standard generally has been persistence in an
occupation. One general difficulty with personality tests is the lack
of agreement among psychologists as to what standards should be used.
Many criteria have been proposed, but most are only indirectly related
to the aspect of personality that is being measured.
Very sophisticated statistical models have been developed for tests,
and a detailed technology underlies most successful testing. Many
psychologists have become adept at constructing testing devices for
special purposes and at devising measurements, once agreement is
reached as to what should be measured.
Types of Tests
Currently, a wide range of testing procedures is used in the U.S. and
elsewhere. Each type of procedure is designed to carry out specific
functions.
Achievement Tests . These tests are designed to assess current performance
in an academic area. Because achievement is viewed as an indicator of
previous learning, it is often used to predict future academic success. An
achievement test administered in a public school setting would typically
include separate measures of vocabulary, language skills and reading
comprehension, arithmetic computation and problem solving, science, and
social studies. Individual achievement is determined by comparison of
results with average scores derived from large representative national or
local samples. Scores may be expressed in terms of “grade-level
equivalents”; for example, an advanced third-grade pupil may be reading on
a level equivalent to that of the average fourth-grade student.
Aptitude Tests. These tests predict future performance in an area in which
the individual is not currently trained. Schools, businesses, and
government agencies often use aptitude tests when assigning individuals to
specific positions. Vocational guidance counseling may involve aptitude
testing to help clarify individual career goals. If a person’s score is
similar to scores of others already working in a given occupation,
likelihood of success in that field is predicted. Some aptitude tests cover
a broad range of skills pertinent to many different occupations. The
General Aptitude Test Battery, for example, not only measures general
reasoning ability but also includes form perception, clerical perception,
motor coordination, and finger and manual dexterity. Other tests may focus
on a single area, such as art, engineering, or modern languages.
Intelligence Tests. In contrast to tests of specific proficiencies or
aptitudes, intelligence tests measure the global capacity of an individual
to cope with the environment. Test scores are generally known as
intelligence quotients, or IQs, although the various tests are constructed
quite differently. The Stanford-Binet is heavily weighted with items
involving verbal abilities; the Wechsler scales consist of two separate
verbal and performance subscales, each with its own IQ. There are also
specialized infant intelligence tests, tests that do not require the use of
language, and tests that are designed for group administration.
The early intelligence scales yielded a mental-age score, expressing the
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