History of psychology (II)

Learning is one of the major topics in psychology; behaviorism made it the central topic. Under the behaviorist point of view, every human behavior is learned, and every human being can be taught new behaviors. Watson was heavily influenced by the works of Ivan Pavlov. Subsequently, how learning was accomplished was the subject of many prominent psychologists, and many experiments with animals were carried out whose results where said to be transferable to humans. Among these scientists were Edward C. Tolman, Edward L. Thorndike, and Clark Hull. Their theories about learning were influential in the area of educational psychology.

The next psychologist of the behaviorist school to became a well-known figure was B. F. Skinner. Skinner brought forward a variant of behaviorism, called radical behaviorism, which took consciousness in consideration. He was the creator of a famous device to perform experiments with animals, called the Skinner box. In this box, a rat presses a lever, or a pigeon pecks a key to obtain some reward, thus permitting to uncover the principles of conditioning. He argued that language was a learned skill, acquired by action of the mechanisms of punishment and reward, and independent of genetic factors. In this view, he was at odds with another theorist, Noam Chomsky, who contended that no theory of learning could explain the acquisition of language. Skinner wrote a book where he advanced some ideas about society that were very controversial.

While in America the behaviorist movement was expanding, in Europe a new form of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, had made its appearance with the publishing in 1900 of Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. A physician and neurologist, Freud founded his therapy in models of hydrodynamics that were developed at the end of the nineteenth century. He was more interested in the clinical treatment of patients than in the development of theoretical models. However, until his death he constantly updated his conceptual model, called psychodynamic psychology, according with the breakthroughs made at clinical work. He thus provided clinical psychologists with a scheme to frame their professional work, which encompassed the today widely known concepts of ego, id, and superego. Disciples of Freud who introduced variations to his theory were Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, among others. An invitation that G. Stanley Hall made to Freud to speak at Clark University marked the introduction of psychoanalysis in the United States.

As early as 1942, an alternative to behaviorism and psychoanalysis was brought out by Carl Rogers with his client-centered therapy. Rogers' proposal was part of a movement founded in the philosophical schools of phenomenology and existentialism, which received, among others, the names of "humanistic psychology" or the "third force." Two key concepts of humanistic psychology are the importance of self-concept (how it develops and how it affects behavior), and the idea of the person as growing towards the full expression of his potentialities. Mental disorders are caused by society hindering this natural development. Leading figures of this movement, related with the human potential movement of the 1960s and 1970s, were Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, and Fritz Perl.

Another approach to the study and treatment of emotional disorders is cognitive psychology, and its corresponding clinical branch, cognitive therapy. Behaviorism had banned all study of higher mental processes arguing that they were outside the scope of stimulus-response model. Cognitive psychology broke the prohibition and undertook the study of activities such as thinking, problem solving, and creativity, as well as returning to older subjects like memory and perception. Cognitive therapy, evolved mainly during the 1970s, assumes that mental disorders are caused by an ill conception of the world. The perceptions and beliefs of the patient are considered as the determinants of his emotions and behaviors. Leading cognitive therapists were Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis.

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