Two First Schools of Psychology

Structuralsim vs. Functionalism

The structuralist/functionalist debate in the field of psychology focuses on the framework that psychological approaches should take. In the pioneer days of psychology, scholars argued whether one should take a structuralist or a functionalist approach to interpreting how the mind works. The essence of structuralism was promoted by Wilhelm Wundt in Germany and his pupil, Edward Titchener, is the man who gave the approach its name when he brought its school to America. In competition with Titchener's "structuralism," however, was "functionalism," which grew out of the American response to the German ideas. Functionalism was rooted in the ideas of Darwin and William James, the American philosopher.

The debates between the two schools were heated in spite of calls for a reconciliation between the two, as some saw them as both dealing primarily with the same problem: the conscious self (Chalkins, 1906). The advocates of the two schools, however, dismissed one another: Wundt decried functionalism as "beautiful literature" (Fancher, 1996), and James decried structuralism as "plenty of school, but no thought" (James, 1904). Neither felt the other adequately dealt in a scientific way with the mysteries of the mind.

The two psychology schools were similar and different, in actuality. Structuralism was concerned with the structure of the mind, and what its supporters identified as the basic building blocks of the thought process. Functionalism was also concerned with the mind's thought process, but it approached the subject by emphasizing the purpose of the human mind and used a systematic method for disclosing this information. Structuralists wanted to identify the framework, the architecture, the support beams, etc. Functionalists were concerned with the plumbing, how and why it worked.

Structuralism was a very subjective approach because it relied heavily on what Wundt called introspection -- that is the effort of the patient to unfold the mystery of the mind. Introspection reveled a lot about an individual, but it was not a reliable method for uncovering systematic data that could be used categorically to define and understand the conception of the mind overall. Also, the emphasis on the internal workings of the mind, which were based solely on introspection, could not be externally verified: one simply had to take the patient's word for it. Nonetheless, although structuralism did not have a lasting legacy in its own right, it did play a role in the development of experimental psychology. Thus, while much of psychology today relates to the behaviorism that grew out of the functionalist school, some areas of psychology still carry on the main principle of structuralism, in that they focus on the mental rather than the behavioral aspects of the individual in attempts to unravel the "set-up" of the mind.

Functionalism offered a much more objective approach in the sense that it could test responses and variables and develop a more universal, systematic understanding of the reasons for human behavior. Admittedly, it focused more on developing a theory of human behavior rather than a visual representation of the structure of the mind. It was, after all, a more pragmatic school of thought than structuralism, which was more influenced by German abstraction. In a sense, one could say that structuralism was more spiritual in many dimensions while functionalism was more industrial. Functionalism influenced behaviorism and the work of psychologists like B.F. Skinner, who focused on the theory of operant conditioning to show how subjects could be conditioned over time to respond to situations.

The debate between the two schools is still alive in psychology today especially as experimental psychology branches out. The school of behaviorism has not settled any questions about what makes man tick, while experimental psychology does attempt to answer that question by probing the elements of consciousness that remain a mystery for modern scientists. In fact, some psychologists have begun to address the spiritual element of the mind, especially in the field of schizophrenia, as Kyziridis (2005) has shown. Also, prayer is becoming a trending treatment in some psychology schools, for a variety of reasons, but all of which indicate that for some patients there is a connection that can be made between the mind and a spiritual reality.