Major Perspectives in Psychology
Psychology is a discipline that asks and answers the fundamental question, why do we behave the way we do and think the way we think?. The best way to characterize the different approaches that are taken to answer the question of psychology is to identify them as major perspectives. The major perspectives represent fundamental assumptions that underlie the research questions and methods that are used in order to answer the questions of psychology. Most all perspectives define psychology as the discipline interested in studying human behavior and mental processes, but that covers a lot of ground and the causes of behavior and mental processes are not always clear.
This outline will attempt to catalogue the major perspectives and give the reader a sense of the underlying assumptions, the philosophical foundations, the research methods, and the outcomes or practices that result from the efforts of researchers and practitioners. Let's just begin with a list of the perspectives and a short description.
1. Psychodynamic Perspective:
Probably the approach that has been most popularly associated with the discipline of psychology for the past century is the psychodynamic, psychoanalytic perspective. Sigmund Freud, who was medically trained in neurology, developed a theory of personality that made the assumption that human motivation was propelled by conflicts between instinctual, mostly unconscious, psychological forces. He called these intrapsychic elements the id, ego and superego. (You know the drill)
This psychodynamic theory caught on like wild fire and due to its explanatory power for human behavior, became very popular over the following century. Freud's therapeutic method, called psychoanalysis, was developed to identify the underlying conflicts between intrapsychic structures and resolve them by bringing them