Foundations of Psychology

Foundations of Psychology Paper

There are six major schools of thought in psychology. The first thought would be functionalism. Functionalism is the theory that influenced contemporary psychology the most. Psychological functionalism attempts to describe thoughts and what they do without asking how they do it (Koenig, 1999-2013). The next school of thought would be Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychologists believe that the human mind works by interpreting data through various laws, rules or organizing principles, turning partial information into a whole (Koenig, 1999-2013). After Gestalt psychology comes psychoanalysis. This therapy started with Sigmund Freud. The psychoanalytic therapy explains human behavior by looking at the subconscious mind (Koenig, 1999-2013). Sigmund Freud believed that at the root of human development is the instinct to aspire for pleasure, which Freud described as sexual in nature. Next is behaviorism. Behaviorists believe that observing behavior, rather than attempting to analyze the inner workings of the mind itself, provides the key to psychology. This makes psychology open to experimental methods with results that can be replicated in the same way as any scientific experiment (Koenig, 1999-2013). Next would be humanistic psychology. This school of thought teaches to understand psychology by looking at individuals and their motivations. A systems of needs, such as food, love, and self-esteem determine a person’s behavior to various extents (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Finally, there is cognitivism. Cognitive psychology follows behaviorism by understanding the mind through scientific experimentation, but it differs from it by accepting that psychologists can study and understand the internal workings of the mind and mental processes. It rejects psychoanalysis, as it regards psychoanalytic theories about the subconscious mind as subjective and not open to scientific analysis (Koenig, 1999-2013).

The two major divisions within the nervous system would be peripheral nervous system (PNS) and the central nervous system (CNS). The PNS is the system in our bodies that carry message to and from the CNS. There are two subdivisions in the PNS: the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. The somatic nervous system consists of the sensory neurons that receive information through sensory receptors in the skin, muscles, and other parts of the body such as the eyes, and the motor neurons that direct the action of the skeletal muscles (Kowalski