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Forms of Psychology

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many different ideas and thoughts that have made up the world of psychology. Psychology is best defined as the scientific investigation of mental processes and behavior (Kowalski & Westen, 2009). How researchers and theorists have come about the scientific investigation has made the world of psychology that more interesting. In the many perspectives of psychology, there are positives and negatives sides but none of them are right or wrong, they are just the viewpoints of many ideas that make up the psychology world. Some of these thoughts and perspectives are functionalism, psychodynamic, and cognitive, as well as many others. These perspectives and theories are what have made the foundations and history of psychology. The field of psychology started in the late nineteenth when researchers became to experiment and explore what they believed caused the mind to function. The two earliest ideas and thoughts were structuralism and functionalism. Structuralism came about by Edward Titchener, he basically studied the basic thoughts and ideas of consciousness or the mind (Kowalski & Westen, 2009). He thought that if he studied everything that came through the mind, it would give a good insight as to how the mind functioned. Functionalism on the hand studied the functions or processes that came about in helping people adapt to environments. William James, one of the founders, believed that the actual study and observation of people and animals could help discover why they behaved the way they did. It emphasized that people were different (Calkins, 1906). From these two theories and ideas came many other perspectives or schools of thoughts. These are the ones that are better known in today’s society. The first is the psychodynamic perspective, which was brought about by Sigmund Freud. This perspective is based on three main ideas. Those are that people’s actions are

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