Question

Structuralism: what was this philosophy and what inspired it?

Reasons for the fall of behaviorism: findings from ethology, Chomsky’s new ideas about language. How did these go against the basic ideas of behaviorism?

Answer 1

STRUCTURALISM

Structuralism is considered the first school of psychology. The beginning of this school can be traced back
to the work of Wilhelm Wundt in Germany. As Wundt set up the first experimental laboratory for psychology at Leipzig, in 1879 he is known as the father of experimental psychology. Wundt saw psychology to be the scientific study of the elements or structures of the consciousness. In doing so defined the goals for psychology as: (a) discovering the elements of the consciousness (b) discovering the laws by which they combine into more complex mental experiences. Wundt believed that the task of psychology was to study immediate experience in contrast to mediate experience which was the subject matter of the other sciences. By mediate experience, Wundt meant experience that is used as a means to know about something other than the experience itself. For e.g., if one is having a toothache, the sense of the pain is immediate experience. But if we use the pain to know the location of the tooth ache or a dentist uses it to identify the damaged nerve, then it’s a mediate experience. Wundt felt that the task of understanding the elements of the mind would be best understood through the method of introspectioni.e., self–observation. Wundt used the German word Selbstbeobachtung to refer to introspection. Unlike the arm chair introspection being practised by philosophers, Wundt wanted introspection to be done in a scientific manner. He saw the method asthe controlled observation of the contents of the consciousness under experimental conditions.