Structuralism and Functionalism in the Development of Psychology

The Structuralist and Functionalist Schools of Thought have influenced the Development of Psychology as a Science
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“The Structuralist and Functionalist Schools of Thought have influenced the development of Psychology as a Science.”
In the early development of psychology, the two primary schools of thought include functionalism and structuralism, on which the psychological principles and perception depend. The structuralism school of thought emphasizes the mental consciousness that breaks into different components to process mental experiences. Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener are the two prime contributors in exploring structuralism from different perspectives and proposing introspection for self-examining the thoughts. The first school of thought faced criticism from the functionalists (Wozniak, n.d). According to Thirunavakkarasu and Krishnan (2017), functionalism argued that human psychology depends on the mind functionality and adaptations to the external environment. Functionalism was formed to critique structuralist thought, and William James expressed his thoughts by pointing on the significance of mental processes to function the mindset. The functionalist authors further claimed that structuralism is a subjective approach to understand human psychology, as it depends on the internal influences only, which is challenging to observe and are less reliable.
Structuralism and Functionalism in The Development of Psychology as A Science
Elaborating on the structuralist school of thought on the development of psychology, Wundt explained that the consciousness theory evaluates the components of the mental experience, including feelings, mental images and sensations, to create complex experiences. He further magnified introspection to analyze the self with individual personality and values related to their motivation to feel something or act accordingly. Structuralism is still implemented in modern psychology in the meditating process, where individuals analyze feelings based on experimental psychology (Walters, 2020). Thus, structuralism led American psychology for multiple years, but the new school of thought limit its recognition i...