Transcription
Structuralism in psychology.
Psychological structuralism was founded by Wilhelm Wundt, who used controlled methods such as introspection to break down consciousness to its basic elements without sacrificing any of the properties of the whole. It was further developed by student Edward B. Titchener. It is important to note that structuralism is considered as the first school of thought in psychology.
At the core of structuralism in psychology is its attempt to examine the adult mind in terms of analyzing the basic elements of thoughts and sensations and afterward to discover the manner by which these segments fit together in complex structures. The aim here was to record thoughts and sensations and to analyze them into their constituent elements in much the same way as a chemist analyzes chemical compounds in order to get at the underlying structure.
Introspection.
Structuralism's main technique, introspection, is the process by which a person looks inward at their own mental processes to gain insight into how they work. It is the self-observation of one's consciousness. One's introspection was not a casual affair but a highly practiced form of self-examination. He trained psychology students to make observations that were not biased by personal interpretation or previous experience and used the results to develop a theory of conscious thought. Here, highly trained assistants would be given a stimulus such as a ticking metronome and would reflect on the experience. They would report what the stimulus made them think and feel. The same stimulus, physical surroundings, and instructions were given to each person.
Titchener's structuralism used experimental technique known as introspection and used it to focus on the structures of the human mind. Anything that could not be investigated using this technique, Titchener believed, was not in the domain of psychology. Titchener believed that the use of introspection, which utilized observers who had been rigorously trained to analyze their feelings and sensations when shown a simple stimulus, could be used to discover the structures of the mind. It is interesting to note that he spent the bulk of his career devoted to this task.
Titchener's structuralism stressed three important tasks in the study of the human mind, namely: one, to discover how many processes there were, identify the elements of these processes, and explain how they work together; two, to analyze the laws governing the connections between the elements of the mind; and three, to evaluate the connections between the mind and nervous system. Titchener trained his students to become skilled at trained introspection and to report only the sensations as they were experienced without reliance on meaning words, which he called a stimulus error.
Titchener's influence.
For approximately 20 years, Titchener dominated American psychology. He was also extremely prolific, publishing 216 books and papers during his lifetime. He trained a number of influential psychologists, supervising the doctoral work of nearly 60 students, including Margaret Floy Washburn and Edwin G. Boring. Yet today, his work is rarely mentioned outside of a purely historical context. He maintained a powerful hold on American psychology during his lifetime and contributed to psychology becoming a respected branch of the sciences, but his influence began to wane following his death.
Structuralism may have enjoyed a brief period of dominance in psychology, but the school of thought essentially died out following the death of its founder. It did, however, lead to the development of other movements, including functionalism, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology.