Structuralism in Psychology

INTRODUCTION

The school of structuralist psychology began in the late 19 century, shortly after psychology separated from philosophy as a distinct scientific discipline. Structuralism is an intellectual movement which began in France in the 1950’s and is seen in the works of anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss. One of the most basic ideas of structuralism is the belief that things cannot be understood in isolation, they have to be seen in the larger structures they are part of. So structuralism seeks the inter relationships through which meaning is produced.

       Structuralism, in psychology, a systematic movement founded in Germany by Wilhelm Wundt and mainly identified with Edward B. Titchener. Structuralism is "Study of text as a whole and the kinds of interrelationships/contrasts that the system builds into it to make it meaningful”. Contrasts are often times highlighted by calling attention to their basic oppositional/binary structure. structuralism seeks the inter relationships through which meaning is produced. "In the literary theory structuralist criticism relates literary texts to a larger structure which may be a particular genre, a range of inter-textual connections, a model of universal narrative structure or a system of recurrent pattern or motive. Each text has a structure in it. So everything written has certain rules that govern the structure. In short a structuralist is to find out the fundamental units on which the text is constituted and the rules that govern these units. Structuralism originated with a heavy dependence on Aristotelian science and 19th century science which tried to find out the building blocks of science by dividing atoms into subatomic patterns that is by going deep into its structures. Like that the structuralist also tried to understand the building blocks of language and found that phoneme and sememe are the foundations of language.

       Although structuralism represented the emergence of psychology as a field separate from philosophy, the structural school lost considerable influence when Titchener died. The movement led, however, to the development of several counter movement’s (i.e., functionalism, behaviourism, and Gestalt psychology) that tended to react strongly to European trends in the field of experimental psychology. Behaviour and personality were beyond the scope considered by structuralism. In separating meaning from the facts of experience, structuralism opposed the phenomenological tradition of Franz Brentano’s act psychology and Gestalt psychology, as well as the functionalist school and John B. Watson’s behaviourism. Serving as a catalyst to functionalism, structuralism was always a minority school of psychology in America.

       Structuralism was one of the earliest schools of psychology. Customarily, it is traced back to the year 1879 when Wilhem Wundt at the University of Leipzig in Germany established the first psychological laboratory and made  psychology as independent systematic science to study psychological process.

Wundt and his colleague Edward Titchner were interested in analysing human consciousness and identifying its basic elements. They emphasized on mental structures. Structuralist defined psychology as a science that studies about the conscious experience and used  introspection as the method of study.

       Wundt also introduced tridimensional theory to expalin the feeling element of  experience. Structuralists also dealt with the phenomenon of apperception as cognition which is a mental activity. As for the mind-body problem, structuralists favour parallelism and discard the nation of interactionism.

       Structuralist conducted experimental studies on various psychological aspects that included (i) sensation and perception; (ii) reaction time experiments; (iii) association experiments; (iv) attention; and (v) feeling aspects. Experimental waves on all these aspects could reveal many new things of psychological significance.

As for conscious experiences, structuralists hold the view that human consciousness consist of three basic elements, namely sensation, images and affective States (feeling aspects). Therefore, concious experiences could be understood as combination of all these three elements.

       However, structuralist's view have met with certain severe criticism. The critics hold the view that structuralisam as a system is mentalist because it relies excessively on inner processes of mind which are neither observable nore veritable. Hence, far from scientific system of exploration.

WILHEM WUNDT -  (BORN:1832 DIED:1920)

       Wilhem Wundt, the son of a Lutheran clergyman, was born in 1832 in a small German village called Nekarau. He was a solitary child who shunned the games of children in favour of books and study. At 19 Wundut decided to study medicine. mostlikely as a means of entering a scientific career. His attention shifted to physiology, the field in which he lectured widely and published a number of articles during the years following his graduation. Psychology was just beginning to emerge as a distinct science, and much of Wundt's work anticipated the value of psychological methodology in dealing with psychological problmes. In 1879, at the University of Leipzig, Wundt established the first psychology laboratory. Here, he concentrated almost exclusively on psychological research, particularly on the study of a systematic methodological approach in tackling psychological problems was a landmark in establishing psychology as a science. Wundt pursued his work with the boundless energy and enthusiasm up until the time of his death near Leipzig, two weeks after his 88th birthday in 1920.

EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER – (BORN:1866 DIED:1927)

       He was an English psychologist who was a student of Wilhem Wundt who studied under for several years. Titchner is best known for creating his version of psychology that described the structure of mind. He was born in Chichester in England in 1867. Titchner's ideas on how the mind worked were heavily influenced by Wundt's theory of voluntarism and his ideas of association and apperception. Titchner attempts to classify the structures of the mind in the way a chemist breaks down chemicals into their component parts. Titchner belived that if the basic components of the mind could be defined and categorised that the structure of mental processes and higher thinking could be determined.

CONCLUSION

       Structuralism in psychology is considered as a theory of consciousness which was suggested by Wilhem Wundt and developed by his student Edward Titchner. The theory came to be in the 20th century: where its reliability was debated and challenged by the growing scientific community at that time. Structuralism is also considered as a school of psychology which seek to Analyse the components of an adult mind. It seeks to analyse the simplest thoughts of a mind that bring about the more complex experience that we go through in our day to day life.

REFERENCES

• Essays, UK. (November 2018). Structuralism in psychology. Retrieved from            https://www.ukessays.com/essays/psychology/structuralism-
  

• “Structuralism”. A dictionary of architecture and landscape architecture. Retrieved September 2019 from encyclopaedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/structuralism