Psychology, despite being a relatively new science, has undergone a large number of changes and modifications. To try to explain it, a multitude of schools and currents have existed and coexisted. Some of them have been supported by thousands of psychologists, however, others have not had as much impact on society, but even so, each and every one has contributed new concepts and discoveries.
In this article we present a school which was not very successful at the time, however, in Psychology-Online we cannot ignore that structuralism gave way to new experimental methods and promoted, unfortunately, the development of currents that they would unseat him. Discover What is structuralism in psychology, its characteristics, history and authors.
What is structuralism in psychology
This psychological current born at the beginning of the 20th century has as its main objective describe the structure of the mind. To do this, the search for a table of elements that make up the mind was proposed, just as chemists did with the periodic elements. With this table, the aim was to determine those laws that explained why, through the combination of mental elements, they could converge into more complex experiences.
This current of psychology proposes the understanding of mental processes based on the definition and subsequent categorization of those elements that make up the psyche of people. That is, the authors of the present current considered that all conscious experience could be divided into basic conscious elements.
Characteristics of structuralism in psychology
Titchener considered all experience to be immediate, that is, experience per se. Therefore, he indicated that psychology had to study this immediate experience in itself.
Following this statement, structuralism’s main intention is to determine three specific points of mental life:
- The fact that: catalog the mental elements considered necessary for any conscious experience. To do this, they used the method of introspectiona process where the subject analyzes everything that passes through his mind (observation of himself, his consciousness and his feelings), without any interference from stimulation.
- The how: answer the question of how mental elements are combined.
- The why: perform a search for neurological correlations of mental events.
Through introspection, structuralism concluded that the elementary processes of consciousness are composed of sensations, images and affections. From this, it was determined that an element could be known only by listing its attributes. These attributes were:
- For the images: quality, intensity, duration, clarity and extension.
- For sensations: quality, intensity, duration, clarity and extension. These, in turn, vary within the pleasant-unpleasant dimension.
- For conditions: quality, intensity and duration.
The existence of some 4,000 sensations could be identified, most related to the sense of vision, followed by hearing and finally the rest of the senses.
Example of the theory of structuralism
Below is an example based on the theory of structuralism:
There is a subject who is visually shown a flower. This object, as a whole, forms a series of sensory qualities, since it is composed of a color, a shape, a size, a texture, a smell, etc. The subject could not say the word flower, since by doing so he was abstracting himself from his own experience when observing the concept. What he had to say when observing the object were the sensations that it created in them and in this way see how the person became aware of the object that was presented to them.
Principles of structuralism
Structuralism presents a series of basic postulates:
- Sensations are elementary mental processes.
- There are two determining factors in every physical element, quality and intensity.
- Knowledge must always be empirical.
- The mind and consciousness were the field of study of psychology.
- Introspection was a valid method.
- The mind and body were parallel systems.
History of structuralism in psychology
Structuralism was born with Titchener and his idea that psychology was fundamentally experimentalso all those concepts not based on experimentation could not be called psychology.
In this school, only the description of mental experience was sought. And at the same time, any type of speculation regarding unobservable events was denied, since for them psychology was a scienceand all science seeks the purest knowledge.
It must be taken into account that, although Wundt’s and Titchener’s theories are similar, the first of these did not consider la as a valid method. However, Titchener took advantage of the fact that North America did not yet differentiate between consciousness and the unconscious, to argue that Wundt was also a structuralist.
As the years went by, structuralism changed the object of its introspective analysis, from the elements themselves to their attributes, since as we have said before, they saw that an element could only be known through its attributes.
Structuralism was confronted against the functionalism of William James, which caused this current to be removed from psychology. Currently we do not find evidence of Titchener’s ideas in psychology, however, the introspective method is still used. This current is considered to have “died” with the death of Titchener.
Authors of structuralism in psychology
The most relevant authors of this current are:
- Wilhelm Wundt: he was the initiator of this trend due to his desire to develop experimental psychology, in addition to being the creator of the first experimental psychology laboratory.
- Edward Titchener: He is considered the authentic founder of said school. He was a student of Wundt and even became a member of the APA.
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Bibliography
- Arroyo, JLP, & Ypiens, JLM (2002). Fundamentals of psychology. Ramón Areces University Publishing House.
- Ilizaliturri, J. (2012). Chapter 4. Structuralism.
- Sos, R. (2015). History of Psychology. Jaume I University.
- Rico Ortega, A. (1996). Structuralism.