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Freud's clinical and subliminal focus on human nature created a fork in the disciple of psychology

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psychology had been developing as a scientific discipline which studied the conscious mind

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Freud shaped it toward the study of pathology, of mental disorders with an emphasis on the subconscious mind

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later Freud's theories developed more into theories on human behavior, but there was a backlash from psychologists who felt that Freud's theories couldn't be tested

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how did psychologists react to Freud

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there were many followers of Freud

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however, other science-focused psychologists felt they had to be more disciplined and became more scientific

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led to behaviorism, or SR psychology: Stimuli/Responses, things we can manipulate and things we can measure precisely

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what happens in between is not important

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example

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Albert experiment (1920): proved that you could condition a child to fear another distinctive stimulus which normally would not be feared by a child, i.e. if baby approaches furry animal, scientists would bang on metal, eventually the baby was afraid of furry animals

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baby also reacted in fear to things that were furry

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conclusion was: through arbitrary association, a human can learn to become scared of things that he ordinarily would not be scared of

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Split in psychology

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clinical psychology

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about treatment of mental disorders

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experimental psychology

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generally inquisitive about human nature

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problem with this behaviorist approach was that it was restrictive

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the way out: computers being developed and becoming more and more accessible in the 1950s and 1960s

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what computers did was analogous to what humans did: took input, processed it, and produced output

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if you were an engineer, you could change how input turned into output

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whereas memory was a very abstract notion before, computers now gave us a concrete example of how a type of memory in a type of thinking machine could work

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computer made talking about behaviorism much less theoretical

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if learning leaves a measurable trace, we can talk about it scientifically

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cognitive psychology

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interested in the average individual, general human abilities

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social psychology

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these developments came at a time of civil unrest: the Vietnam War, racism, hippies, the communist threat

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the influence of others, the influence of society

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how groups work

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still focused on the average human in terms of a social group

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individual psychology

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studied intelligence, why and how to influence it

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personality comparisons

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how stable are our personalities

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cross-cultural psychology

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takes the culture in which people live into account

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there isn't a human behavior but a culturally-bound behavior

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perhaps there is a way that culture determines how people think

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positive psychology

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a kind of clinical psychology but moved away from Freud

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proposed by psychologists looking at Freud's theories based on sexuality and aggression and wanting not to concentrate only on the negative and dark sides of the human condition

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studied empathy, creativity, and altruism

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a clinical approach not focused on disorders but on helping individuals reach their maximum potential

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a positive psychologist doesn't talk about the people he sees as patients but clients, and they think of themselves more in the sense of a financial planner but instead of helping you build a strong financial strategy, helps you lead a mental healthy, productive and creative mental life.

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Biological psychology

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with new devices we can now watch the brain in action