PSYCHOLOGY AS A DISCIPLINE
Psychologists have come up with different theories working towards the human brain and their behavior in relation to various things including their everyday living in relation to the environment. Different ideas/efforts worked at different times in different situations as opposed to the way they were set up. Among a number of theorists and psychologists, Sigmund Freud worked on a theory basing his research on psychoanalytic perspectives, unconscious motives, wishes and urge, the five stages psychosocial development childhood experiences and dream analysis. Another was Ivan Pavlov working on the idea of classical conditioning, associative learning and stimulus – stimulus. He also researched on digestion. Being in the same category of psychologists and theorists, B.F Skinner was a behaviorist famously known for behavioral therapies use the principles of operant conditioning, behavior modification and token economies. Finally, Harry Harlow described the wire mother monkey research and contact comfort
He worked on the theory often referred to as the mysteries of love. He explained that the relation between the mother and the infant is mostly connected through their daily interactions living. When a mother feeds a baby, the care is not only offered to baby but to the other members of the family through extension. In his research, he concluded that rhesus monkeys are more mature to birth than humans are. However, like the human race, they showed emotions, being desperate to be nursed, and the need to be taken care of. The baby monkey was being fed using a wire model outfitted with a bottle, but did not take them long to get the necessary food in the wired-bottle model. Later, in another study, Harlow found that those young monkeys reared together with their mothers and young ones of their age, became more social active with the others compared to the cloth monkeys that were slower by about a year. Baby monkeys brought up by real mothers but without playmates grew up being socially inactive and very aggressive.
Baby monkeys that grew without real mothers or playmates became socially inactive and could not cope with the environment and the society. When they grew older, they were not successful in mating. Females that were not social and did not have babies became neglectful of them. At last, Harlow concluded that sex alone could not balance the social relations of individuals. The sex life and parental behavior was because of the people they related with, grew up with and their family early life progressing.
IVAN PAVLOV
Pavlov started his research on the laws of formation, preservation and extinction of reflexes thus strength, balance and agility. It led to a study on digestion and blood circulation. He focused on digestion in animals especially the dogs. He looked on the relation between salivation and its connectivity to the action of the stomach. He discovered that they were closely linked to reflexes in the nervous system. With the absence of salivation, the stomach did not react to the message of the starting digestion. Using the environment, he wanted to see if the external stimuli could affect the digestion process. He presented a metronome each time he gave the experimental dogs food. He made it a routine, to introduce the metronome before the dog saw the food. Each time the dogs heard the metronome sound, they salivated even if there was no food presented. He found out that the conditioned reflex, thus the metronome sound, would be ignored or discarded if the stimulus often proved wrong, thus when no food appears. This would result to the dogs not salivating at the metronome sound.
SIGMUND FREUD
Freud a psychoanalyst was interested in the idea of practicing medicine. During his training, he often discussed medical cases with Breuer, a friend. Auna O., a young German woman, suffered from hysteria, as it was termed then. She could not speak native German but could make a way in French and English. In addition, she could not drink water even when thirsty. She suffered from temporary paralysis. Later, Breuer hypnotized her and now she would talk of things she could not remember in her consciousness. Later she got well of her sickness. Breuer called the theory “the talking cure”. Later after his study from Vienna in 1886, he started a private study and specialized in the nervous system and brain disorder. Using his practice, he tried hypnotism with his hysteric patients but he gradually discarded it. By putting his patients at a relaxed point, he got them talking and persuaded and encouraged them to talk what is present in their heads. From what the patients would say or express, he analyzed what they had in memory and therefore, was enabled to determine the kind of traumatic events that led the patients to their states. After the experience with several patients, he presented the public to the awareness of the unconscious mind and published the interpretation of dreams. In 1901, came up with the theory stating that forgetfulness did not just happen but was the inactive mind or memory giving out meaningful information though hidden.
B.F SKINNER
B.F Skinner a theorist wrote on the behavior of organisms and based his work on the operant conditioning. He used organisms and their environment living in and around a particular area. In its living and exploring the environment, it was introduced to a stimulus; the reinforcing stimulus/enforcer. The operant conditioning, because of the enforcer, is encountered by the positive response that makes the behavior recurrent in the future. He came with the experiment of the rat in a box. The box had a bar pedal which when the rat pressed, it resulted to the food pellets dropping in the box cage. The rat learnt that every time it pressed the pedal, it got piles of pellets. The operant is its prior behavior of pressing the pedal and the reinforce is the food pellets. Therefore, a behavior followed by a reinforce increases the probability of the behavior being repeated.
WORKS CITED
Skinner B.F., “Superstitions in the Pigeon,” journal of Experimental Psychology 38, 1948:168-172.
