Structuralism in
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
(also structural psychology) is a theory of consciousness developed by
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and ...
and his student
Edward Bradford Titchener. This theory was challenged in the 20th century.
Structuralism as a school of psychology seeks to analyze the adult mind (the total sum of experience from birth to the present) in terms of the simplest definable components and then to find how these components fit together to form more complex experiences as well as how they correlate to physical events. To do this, psychologists employ introspection,
self-reports of sensations, views, feelings, and emotions.
[ ]
Titchener
Edward B. Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener (11 January 1867 – 3 August 1927) was an English psychologist who studied under Wilhelm Wundt for several years. Titchener is best known for creating his version of psychology that described the structure of the mind: ...
, along with
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and ...
, is credited for the theory of structuralism. It is considered to be the first "school" of
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
. Because he was a student of
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and ...
at the
University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
, Titchener's ideas on how the mind worked were heavily influenced by Wundt's theory of
voluntarism and his ideas of
association
Association may refer to:
*Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal
*Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry
*Voluntary associatio ...
and
apperception Apperception (from the Latin ''ad-'', "to, toward" and ''percipere'', "to perceive, gain, secure, learn, or feel") is any of several aspects of perception and consciousness in such fields as psychology, philosophy and epistemology.
Meaning in philo ...
(the passive and active combinations of elements of consciousness respectively). Titchener attempted to classify the structures of the mind, like
chemists
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...
classify the
elements of
nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
, into the
nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
.
Titchener said that only observable events constituted that science and that any speculation concerning unobservable events has no place in society (this view was similar to the one expressed by
Ernst Mach
Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach ( , ; 18 February 1838 – 19 February 1916) was a Moravian-born Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the physics of shock waves. The ratio of one's speed to that of sound is named the Mach ...
). In his book, ''Systematic Psychology'', Titchener wrote:
Mind and consciousness
Titchener believed the mind was the accumulated experience of a lifetime. He believed that he could understand reasoning and the structure of the mind if he could define and categorize the basic components of mind and the rules by which the components interacted.
Introspection
The main tool Titchener used to try to determine the different components of
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
was
introspection
Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's s ...
. Titchener writes in his ''Systematic Psychology.'':
The state of consciousness which is to be the matter of psychology ... can become an object of immediate knowledge only by way of introspection or self-awareness.
and in his book ''An Outline of Psychology'':
...within the sphere of psychology, introspection is the final and only court of appeal, that psychological evidence cannot be other than introspective evidence.
Titchener had very strict guidelines for the reporting of an introspective analysis. The subject would be presented with an object, such as a pencil. The subject would then report the characteristics of that pencil (color, length, etc.). The subject would be instructed not to report the name of the object (pencil) because that did not describe the raw data of what the subject was experiencing. Titchener referred to this as stimulus error.
In his translation of Wundt's work, Titchener illustrates Wundt as a supporter of
introspection
Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's s ...
as a method through which to observe consciousness. However, introspection only fits Wundt's theories if the term is taken to refer to psychophysical methods.
Introspection
Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's s ...
literally means 'looking within', to try to describe a person's memory, perceptions, cognitive processes, and/or motivations.
Elements of the mind
Titchener's theory began with the question of what each element of the mind is. He concluded from his research that there were three types of mental elements constituting conscious experience:
Sensations (elements of perceptions),
Image
An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...
s (elements of ideas), and
affections
Affection or fondness is a " disposition or state of mind or body" that is often associated with a feeling or type of love. It has given rise to a number of branches of philosophy and psychology concerning emotion, disease, influence, and ...
(elements of emotions). These elements could be broken down into their respective properties, which he determined were
quality
Quality may refer to:
Concepts
*Quality (business), the ''non-inferiority'' or ''superiority'' of something
*Quality (philosophy), an attribute or a property
*Quality (physics), in response theory
*Energy quality, used in various science discipli ...
,
intensity,
duration
Duration may refer to:
* The amount of time elapsed between two events
* Duration (music) – an amount of time or a particular time interval, often cited as one of the fundamental aspects of music
* Duration (philosophy) – a theory of time and ...
,
clearness
Clarity may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities
* Clarity, a magic spell in the online game ''EverQuest''
* Clarity, a fictional drug from the film '' Minority Report''
Music Albums
* ''Clarity'' (Jimmy Eat World album)
...
, and extensity. Both sensations and images contained all of these qualities; however, affections were lacking in both clearness and extensity. And images and affections could be broken down further into just clusters of sensations. Therefore, by following this train of thinking all thoughts were images, which being constructed from elementary sensations meant that all complex reasoning and thought could eventually be broken down into just the sensations which he could get at through
introspection
Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's s ...
.
Interaction of elements
The second issue in Titchener's theory of structuralism was the question of how the mental elements combined and interacted with each other to form conscious experience. His conclusions were largely based on ideas of
associationism
Associationism is the idea that mental process
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and pr ...
. In particular, Titchener focuses on the
law of contiguity, which is the idea that the thought of something will tend to cause thoughts of things that are usually experienced along with it.
Titchener rejected Wundt's notions of
apperception Apperception (from the Latin ''ad-'', "to, toward" and ''percipere'', "to perceive, gain, secure, learn, or feel") is any of several aspects of perception and consciousness in such fields as psychology, philosophy and epistemology.
Meaning in philo ...
and creative synthesis (
voluntary action
Voluntary action is an anticipated goal-oriented movement. The concept of voluntary action arises in many areas of study, including cognitive psychology, operant conditioning, philosophy, neurology, criminology, and others. Additionally, voluntary ...
), which were the basis of Wundt's voluntarism. Titchener argued that
attention
Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Atte ...
was simply a manifestation of the "clearness" property within sensation.
Physical and mental relationship
Once Titchener identified the elements of
mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
and their interaction, his theory then asked the question of why the elements interact in the way they do. In particular, Titchener was interested in the relationship between the conscious experience and the physical processes. Titchener believed that physiological processes provide a continuous substratum that give psychological processes a continuity they otherwise would not have. Therefore, the nervous system does not cause conscious experience, but can be used to explain some characteristics of mental events.
Wundt and structuralism
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and ...
instructed Titchener, the founder of structuralism, at the
University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
. The 'science of immediate experience' was stated by him. This simply means that the complex perceptions can be raised through basic sensory information. Wundt is often associated in past literature with structuralism and the use of similar introspective methods. Wundt makes a clear distinction between pure introspection, which is the relatively unstructured self-observation used by earlier philosophers, and experimental introspection. Wundt believes this type of
introspection
Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's s ...
to be acceptable since it uses laboratory instruments to vary conditions and make results of internal perceptions more precise.
The reason for this confusion lies in the translation of Wundt's writings. When Titchener brought his theory to
America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, he also brought with him Wundt's work. Titchener translated these works for the American audience, and in so doing misinterpreted Wundt's meaning. He then used this translation to show that Wundt supported Titchener's own theories. In fact, Wundt's main theory was that of psychological voluntarism (''psychologische Voluntarismus''), the doctrine that the power of the will organizes the mind's content into higher-level thought processes.
[Wilhelm Max Wundt (1897)]
''Outlines of Psychology''
Grundriss der Psychologie
.
Wundt proposed a theory of human psychological
perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
and
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
. He drew a parallel from what his contemporaries studying physics and chemistry were doing, that is breaking down substances into chemical elements (atoms); attempting to do the same for human psychology, Wundt proposed that a complex human perceptual experience could be decomposed into elementary sensations.
He proposed
introspection
Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's s ...
(self-examination) as the guide to source the information on what is going on in a perception experience, and to break it down into sensory components.
[Mather, George (2006) Foundations of Perception, Psychology Press]
ch.1 p.32
/ref>
Because Wundt's (and later Titchener's) ideas centered on viewing consciousness as a structure (composed by the building blocks of the elementary sensations into which it could be broken down into), their approach was labeled structuralism.[Weber, Ann L. and Johnson, Joseph (2011) Introduction to Psychology]
p.5
/ref> Edward Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener (11 January 1867 – 3 August 1927) was an English psychologist who studied under Wilhelm Wundt for several years. Titchener is best known for creating his version of psychology that described the structure of the min ...
brought and developed Wundt's ideas into the United States. Titchener spoke in 1898 of "structural standpoint", defining structuralism as a neutral observational approach based on introspection, and also adopting the elementaristic approach of building up a whole from its basic elements.[Meike Watzlawik, Alina Kriebel, Jaan Valsiner (2015) ''Particulars and Universals in Clinical and Developmental Psychology: Critical Reflections A book honoring Roger Bibace'', p]
33
44-45
/ref>
Criticisms
Structuralism has faced a large amount of criticism, particularly from the school of psychology, functionalism which later evolved into the psychology of pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
(reconvening introspection into acceptable practices of observation). The main critique of structuralism was its focus on introspection as the method by which to gain an understanding of conscious experience. Critics argue that self-analysis was not feasible, since introspective students cannot appreciate the processes or mechanisms of their own mental processes. Introspection
Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's s ...
, therefore, yielded different results depending on who was using it and what they were seeking. Some critics also pointed out that introspective techniques actually resulted in retrospection – the memory of a sensation rather than the sensation itself.
Behaviorists, specifically methodological behaviorists, fully rejected even the idea of the conscious experience as a worthy topic in psychology, since they believed that the subject matter of scientific psychology should be strictly operationalized in an objective and measurable way. Because the notion of a mind could not be objectively measured, it was not worth further inquiry. However, radical behaviorism
Radical behaviorism is a "philosophy of the science of behavior" developed by B. F. Skinner. It refers to the philosophy behind behavior analysis, and is to be distinguished from methodological behaviorism—which has an intense emphasis on ...
includes thinking, feeling, and private events in its theory and analysis of psychology. Structuralism also believes that the mind could be dissected into its individual parts, which then formed conscious experience. This also received criticism from the Gestalt school of psychology, which argues that the mind cannot be broken down into individual elements.
Besides theoretical attacks, structuralism was criticized for excluding and ignoring important developments happening outside of structuralism. For instance, structuralism did not concern itself with the study of animal behavior
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objective ...
, and personality
Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, mos ...
.
Titchener himself was criticized for not using his psychology to help answer practical problems. Instead, Titchener was interested in seeking pure knowledge that to him was more important than commonplace issues.
Alternatives
One alternative theory to structuralism, to which Titchener took offense, was functionalism (functional psychology). Functionalism was developed by William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
in contrast to structuralism. It stressed the importance of empirical, rational thought over an experimental, trial-and-error philosophy. James in his theory included introspection (i.e., the psychologist's study of his own states of mind), but also included things like analysis (i.e., the logical criticism of precursor and contemporary views of the mind), experiment (e.g., in hypnosis or neurology), and comparison (i.e., the use of statistical means to distinguish norms from anomalies) which gave it somewhat of an edge. Functionalism also differed in that it focused on the how useful certain processes were in the brain to the environment you were in and not the processes and other detail like in structuralism.
Contemporary structuralism
Researchers are still working to offer objective experimental approaches to measuring conscious experience, in particular within the field of cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
and is in some ways carrying on the torch of Titchener's ideas. It is working on the same type of issues such as sensations and perceptions. Today, any introspective methodologies are done under highly controlled situations and are understood to be subjective and retrospective. Proponents argue that psychology can still gain useful information from using introspection in this case.
See also
* Association of ideas
Association of ideas, or mental association, is a process by which representations arise in consciousness, and also for a principle put forward by an important historical school of thinkers to account generally for the succession of mental phenomen ...
* Associationism
Associationism is the idea that mental process
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and pr ...
* Mentalism (psychology)
In psychology, mentalism refers to those branches of study that concentrate on perception and thought processes, for example: mental imagery, consciousness and cognition, as in cognitive psychology. The term ''mentalism'' has been used primarily ...
* Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
* History of psychology
Psychology is defined as "the scientific study of behavior and mental processes". Philosophical interest in the human mind and behavior dates back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Persia, Greece, China, and India.
Psychology as a field of ...
* Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
Notes
References
* Danziger, Kurt. "Wundt and the Two Traditions in Psychology." In ''Wilhelm Wundt and the Making of a Scientific Psychology'', by R. W. Rieber, 73-88. New York, NY: Plenum Press, 1980.
* Hergenhahn, B.R. ''An Introduction to the History of Psychology''. 6th Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2009.
* Leahey, T.M. "The mistaken mirror: On Wundt's and Titchener's psychologies." ''Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences'', 17, (1981): 273-282.
* Robinson, Daniel N. ''Toward a Science of Human Nature''. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1982.
* Uttal, William R. ''The War Between Mentalism and Behaviorism: On the Accessibility of Mental Processes''. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2000.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Structuralism (Psychology)
Psychological theories