With the development of computer technology in the 1960s, it became possible to monitor the processes in the brain with new technologies. This reduced the effect of behavioral current.
This trend has been replaced by cognitive psychology. Today, it has become possible to study human mental processes with scientific impartiality, especially thanks to technological innovations. As a result, mainstream psychology has become a branch of science that studies both behavior and mental processes.
Although the beginning of psychology was in Europe, the progress and acceleration of the studies were in America thanks to the scientists who immigrated to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most psychologists are still in America today, but psychology is rapidly becoming universal.
Wundt was researching consciousness in Germany, while Sigmund Freud was researching the unconscious in Austria. As a medical doctor, Freud believed that all behavior and mental processes had a physical basis in the nervous system. However, in the late 1800s, he changed his mind under the influence of several of his patients. The common feature of these patients was that although they showed symptoms of illness, they had no physical cause for their illness. Freud, who met with these patients with methods such as hypnosis, suggested that the causes of their diseases were not physical, and that the problems they had thrown out of their consciousness gave birth to the diseases.
After these discussions, Freud came to the conclusion that there was only one cause for all behavior, even serious mental problems. According to him, the reason was conflicts in our subconscious. For nearly fifty years
Freud gathered his work and ideas under the name of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis includes both a theory of personality, a theory of mental illness, and a series of treatments.
Freud’s theory was not built on extensive laboratory studies, but on a limited number of case studies. Therefore, it is not accepted as completely scientific and valid today. However, Freud laid the foundation for many theories in psychology with his innovations.
functionalism
William James and G. Stanley Hall established the first psychology laboratories in America and gave direction to psychology. James rejected both Wundt’s and structuralists’ approaches. According to James, there is no point in dividing consciousness into parts that cannot work on its own. Instead, he focused on how perceptions, memory, or other mental processes facilitate people’s adaptation to their environment, in line with Darwin’s theory of evolution. This trend is called “functionalism” and it is geared towards understanding how consciousness plays a role in people’s ability to make decisions and solve problems.
Behaviourism
Behaviorism is an important movement that dominated psychology between 1920-1960. This current is based on Darwin’s ideas. After 1900, Darwin’s theory of evolution led psychologists to study animals to understand humans. If humans and animals had evolved in similar ways, then working with animals might be a viable way to understand human behavior. During this period, psychologists learned a lot about learning, memory, problem solving, and other mental processes by observing animals.
During the same period, John B. Watson claimed that the most important source of knowledge in psychology was observable behavior. For Watson, it made no sense to focus either on the conscious or the unconscious. The key was to focus on observable behaviors. Watson argued that the most important process is learning, and that both animals and humans can adapt to their environment as a result of learning. B. F. Skinner was another pioneer of the behavioral movement by studying conditioning.
