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Foundations Of Psychology

The foundations of modern psychology date back as far as philosophers such as Socrates and Aristotle. They are the building blocks of what many people have come to rely on for help when they need it most as well as helping scientists to understand how our brains function. Though the schools of thought have gone through a lot of changes over the last two thousand years, the basic foundations are still there.
Many of the philosophical questions of BC are still a core part of modern psychology. One of the oldest questions is if humans are slaves to determinism or if we are free beings with the will to choose the path we take in life. Those that believe in free will tend to agree with philosophers such as Rene’ Descartes “who contended that human action follows from human intention – that people choose a course of action and act on it,” (Kowalski & Westen 2005, p7), whereas those that follow the school of determinism will agree with people like Democritus who is thought to have had similar theories to those of modern scientists (Downey 2006, p1).
Two of the major schools of thought that were most prevalent in psychology’s earliest years were Structuralism and Functionalism. Structuralism followed Wundt and Titchener’s theories of Introspection, and Functionalism, whose founder William James wrote the first textbook in psychology in 1890, explained psychological processes through the functions or roles they have in our thinking. (Kowalski & Westen 2005). The psychodynamic perspective studies various conscious or unconscious mental and emotional processes that develop early in childhood and how they affect people and their behaviors or mental states throughout their lives. Psychodynamics understands that sometimes these mental processes will not agree with each other. The behaviorist perspective attempts to explain psychological processes as learned behaviors that are the result of one’s environment or experiences. The cognitive perspective looks at the way our brains...