The 7 Major Schools of Thought in Psychology

• This school of psychology is based on the idea that we experience things as unified wholes.
• The approach started in the late 19th century in response to the molecular approach of structuralism.
• Instead of breaking down thoughts and behaviour to their smallest parts, the gestalt psychologists believed you should view the whole of experience.

• Behaviourism suggests that all behaviours can be explained by environmental causes. It includes classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
• This school of thought became dominant in the 1950s and had a significant influence on the course of psychology.
• It is still widely used today, such as behavioural training, token economies, aversion therapy, and behaviour modification programs.
• Prominent thinkers are John B. Watson, Ivan Pavlov, and B.F. Skinner.

Psychoanalysis emphasises the influence of the unconscious mind on behaviour.
Sigmund Freud found this school of thought. He believed that the mind was composed of three elements that interacted to create complex human behaviours:

• Id consists of primal urges.
• Ego is the part of personality that deals with reality.
• Superego is the component that holds all of the ideals and values we internalise from our parents and culture.

Major thinkers include Anna Freud, Carl Jung, and Erik Erickson.

• Humanistic psychology is a response to psychoanalysis and behaviourism and focuses on individual free will, personal growth, and self-actualisation.
• This school of thought is focused on helping people achieve and fulfil their potential. It had a huge influence on positive psychology that centres on helping people live happier and more fulfilling lives.
• Major humanist thinkers include Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.

• Cognitive psychology studies mental processes, including how people think, perceive, remember, and learn. It is related to other disciplines such as neuroscience, philosophy, and linguistics.
• This branch of psychology emerged during the 1950s as a response to behaviourism that failed to account for how internal processes impacted behaviour. Research topics include information processing, language, memory, and perception.
• Jean Piaget proposed the stages of cognitive development theory.