PSY 4130 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Great Man Theory, Zeitgeist, Gestalt Psychology
15 May 2018
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PSY 4130 Midterm Review:
Lecture #1 Introduction
School of Psychology: Group of psychologist's associated by their ideas; not necessarily geographically close
together
Schools of Thought: Academic Psychology (1-4)/ Medical Psychology (5-7)
1. Structuralism: E.B Titchener's system of psychology, which dealt with the conscious experience as
dependent on experiencing persons (What is the structure of the mind)
2. Functionalism: a system of psychology concerned with the mind as it is used in an organism's
adaptation to its environment (What is the function of the mind? To help us adapt to our environment)
3. Behaviourism: John B. Watson's science of behaviour, which dealt solely with observable behavioural
acts that could be described in objective terms
4. Gestalt Psychology: a system of psychology that focuses largely on learning and perception, suggesting
that combining sensory elements produces pattern with properties that did not exist in individual
elements
5. Psychoanalysis: Freud's theory of personality and system of psychotherapy (dealing with the
unconscious)
6. Humanistic Psychology: a system of psychology that emphasizes the study of conscious experience and
the wholeness of human nature (conscious experience)
7. Cognitive Psychology: a system of psychology that focuses on the process of knowing, on how the mid
actively organizes experiences
Lecture #2 History
The Data of History: Reconstructing Psychology's Past
• Key issues in History:
a. Old versus new history
b. Presentism vs historicism
c. External versus internal history: not in text- internal to the discipline of psych, external influence
psychology and are external to the discipline
d. Personalistic versus naturalistic
• Personalistic - Great Man Theory
▪ The view that progress and change in scientific history are attributable to the ideas
of unique individuals (without that individual things would be different or would not
have occurred Ex. Freud)
• Naturalistic -Zeitgeist (spirit of the times)
▪ The view that progress and change in scientific history are attributable to the
zeitgeist, which makes a culture receptive to some ideas but not to others (the state
of culture makes science ready to accept certain ideas at a particular point in time)
▪ Multiples: two or more people working independently come up with similar ideas at
about the same time
▪ Having an idea that is ahead of its time happens because the discovery happen
before the state of science was ready for it, being an important person means your
work will get more attention, people aren't willing to accept it if it is "ahead of its
time"
Old way: Presentism, internal and Personalistic: emphasis a study of ideas, great philosophers, classical
studies, break through discoveries
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New way: Historicist, external and naturalistic: more attention to context of what's happen, extra disciplinary
events
Histography:
• The principles, methods and philosophical issues of historical research
• Ex. Techniques and principles employed in historical research
Data of history:
• The materials used to reconstruct lives, events, eras
• Differ from data of science
• Unique; not replicable, conditions not controlled
• Data fragments- descriptions written by participants, letters, diaries, interviews, official accounts, etc.
• Secondary sources- meta analysis, textbook
• Primary sources- Archives (area of a library that hold unpublished info), original data from the
experiment and the write up for it
• Information at the university where the person worked
• Bibliographic sources
• General knowledge
Problems with the writing of history:
1. Data selection problems
• Difficulties assessing the worth of data
a. Lost or suppressed data
o Lost permanently or temporarily
o Suppressed: Freud's materials to be opened in the 21st century
o Restricted and inaccessible
o Altered- for self-interest
• To protect the reputation of people
o Reliability of eyewitness accounts
b. Data distorted in translation
o Deliberately: Freud's use of Ich (I), Einfall (intrusion)
o Lack of equivalents between languages, Ex. Gestalt
o Distorted by a participant when recording an event
c. Self-serving data
o Recounting pivotal events
o Conscious or unconscious bias
o Can sometimes seek corroborating evidence
o Ex. Freud's self-depiction as a martyr to his cause
2. Interpretation Problems
• Influenced by
o Individual characteristics of the historian (Ex. Are they bias?)
o Historical context (Ex. What approach are they using?)
Contextual Problems in Psychology
• Zeitgeist: The intellectual and cultural climate or spirit of the times
a. Economic opportunity as a contextual force
• Turn of the 20th century: more PhD's than academic positions
• Burgeoning US population
• American pragmatism: practical utility of psychology
• Result application of psychology to real world problems
b. War as a contextual force
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• World War I: Army Alpha and Beta tests
• Between the wars: leading European psychologists fled to the US
• World War II
o Clinical psychologists: assessment and treatment
o Personnel selection
o Engineering, human factors psychology
• Influence on theorists: Freud's Thanatos (his view of people started to become darker,
destructive instinct starts to appear in his theory)
c. Prejudice as a contextual force
• Discrimination against women
o Denied admission to graduate schools or faculty positions
o Women denied PhD's they had earned
• Discrimination based on ethnic origin
o Jews precluded from assuming academic positions
o African Americans denied graduate study altogether
• The identity politics movement (looking at identity characteristics like gender or ethnic origin)
o Effects on graduate school admissions and earned doctorates
o Legitimization of research questions, issues, and procedures
o Effects on the APA: divisions, ethics, non-sexist, language
Lecture #3 Philosophy
The spirit of Mechanism:
• Zeitgeist of the 17th -19th century- influenced psychology
• Physics and mechanics
• Mechanism: Natural processes are mechanically determined and are explained by the laws of physics
and chemistry
o The universe as a great machine
• Growth of science
• Growth of technology
o Clocks: metaphor because they are predictable and precise, thought of as a model for the
physical universe, set in motion by the creator
o Automata: mechanical people in a sense, garden works, water powered garden, built to imitate
human motion
• Influenced Descartes theory of how nerves function
• Determinism: acts are determined by past events, if we understand we can predict and then we can
control
• Reductionism: explains phenomenon by looking at one on a different simpler level, reduce to basic
parts (Ex. To explain molecules you would look at atoms), complex ideas to simple ideas
• Empiricism
• Begin to question church dogma
• Renaissance humanism: idea that we are interested in people, how they think, behave, feel and what
they are capable of
o Individualism: looking at people and being concerned about their potential
o Ritualized religion -> Personalized religion
o Resistance to the science proposed by Aristotle
• Required blind acceptance when combined with religion
• Reawakening of objective inquiring
Francis Bacon: (1561-1626)
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Document Summary
School of psychology: group of psychologist"s associated by their ideas; not necessarily geographically close together. The data of history: reconstructing psychology"s past: key issues in history: The view that progress and change in scientific history are attributable to the ideas of unique individuals (without that individual things would be different or would not have occurred ex. Freud: naturalistic -zeitgeist (spirit of the times) Old way: presentism, internal and personalistic: emphasis a study of ideas, great philosophers, classical studies, break through discoveries. New way: historicist, external and naturalistic: more attention to context of what"s happen, extra disciplinary events. The principles, methods and philosophical issues of historical research. Secondary sources- meta analysis, textbook experiment and the write up for it. Information at the university where the person worked: bibliographic sources, general knowledge. Problems with the writing of history: data selection problems, difficulties assessing the worth of data, lost or suppressed data.
