Foundations of Psychology Case

Foundations of Psychology

There are four major psychological perspectives in modern psychology that have a distinct school of thought. Each one of these perspectives contain fundamental assumptions. “We will examine four perspectives that guide current psychological thinking. . .[that] offer the same kind of broad, orienting approach as a scientific paradigm” (Kowalski & Westen, 2011, p. 12). Even though individual and distinct, these perspectives intertwined and helped influence the development of psychology to answer how the mind and body work as one.

The Psychodynamic Perspective

Developed by Sigmund Freud in the late nineteenth century was the psychodynamic perspective. The psychodynamic perspective, Freud concluded, rested on these three premises;

“First, people’s actions are determined by the way thoughts, feelings, and wishes are connected in their minds. Second, many of these mental events occur outside of conscious awareness. Third, these mental processes may conflict with one another, leading to compromises among competing motives” (Kowalski & Westen, 2011, p. 13).

Although, much criticism has taken place in the psychodynamic theory, the psychological perspective’s “primary method has been the analysis of case studies that behaviorist John B. Watson refers to the theory as voodooism” (Kowalski & Westen, 2011, p. 13). Leveled against the psychodynamic theory is the failure of being scientifically grounded, and it remains a violation of falsifiability criterion.

The Behaviorist Perspective

Early in the twentieth century. Ivan Pavlov, during the course of an experiment, made an accidental and substantial discovery. "The perspective pioneered by John Watston and B. F. Skinner focuses on the relation between observable behaviors and environmental events or stimuli” (Kowalski & Westen, 2011, pp. 15-17). Focused on learning, the behaviorist perspective studied the way in which environmental events controlled behavior.

The dominant perspective in psychology was behaviorism back in the early twenties to the 1960s in North America. It had lost its purest form over these three decades as psychology became concerned again “with the study of mental processes. Many psychologists have come to believe that thoughts about the environment are just as important in controlling behavior as the environment itself” (Kowalski & Westen, 2011, p. 17).

The Cognitive Perspective

Psychology, in the last 40 years has undergone a cognitive revolution. Today, cognition leads psychology as the study of behavior did back in the twentieth century. "The Cognitive perspective focuses on the way people perceive, process, and retrieve information" (Kowalski & Westen, 2011, p. 17).

The Cognitive Perspective examines