What is STRUCTURALISM in Psychology: Characteristics, History and Authors

Psychology, despite being a relatively new science, has undergone a great deal of change and modification. To try to explain it, a multitude of schools and currents have existed and coexisted. Some of them have been supported by thousands of psychologists, however, others have not had as much impact on society, but even so, each and every one has contributed new concepts and discoveries.

In this article we present a school which was not very successful at the time, however, in Psychology-Online we cannot obviate that structuralism gave way to new experimental methods and promoted, unfortunately, the development of currents that they would unseat. Discover what is structuralism in psychology, its characteristics, history and authors.

Index

1. What is structuralism in psychology
2. Characteristics of structuralism in psychology
3. History of structuralism in psychology
4. Authors of structuralism in psychology

This psychological current born at the beginning of the 20th century has as its main objective describe the structure of the mind. To do this, the search for a table of elements that make up the mind was proposed, just as chemists did with periodic elements. With this table, it was intended to determine those laws that explained what, through the combination of mental elements, these could converge in more complex experiences.

This current of psychology proposes the understanding of mental processes from the definition and subsequent categorization of those elements that make up the psyche of people. That is to say, the authors of the present current considered that all conscious experience could be divided into basic conscious elements.

Titchener considered all experience to be immediate, that is, experience per se. Hence, he indicated that psychology had to study this immediate experience itself.

As a result of this statement, structuralism has as its main intention to determine three specific points of mental life:

• The fact that: catalog the mental elements considered necessary for any conscious experience. To do this, they used the method of introspection, a process where the subject analyzes everything that passes through his mind (observation of himself, his consciousness and his feelings), without any stimulation interference.
• The how: answer the question of how mental elements combine.
• The why: conduct a search for neurological correlations of mental events.

Through introspection, structuralism concluded that the elemental processes of consciousness are composed of sensations, images, and affections. From this, it was determined that an element could be known only by listing its attributes. These attributes were:

• For the images: quality, intensity, duration, clarity and length.
• For the sensations: quality, intensity, duration, clarity and length. These, in turn, vary within the dimension of pleasant-unpleasant.
• For conditions: quality, intensity and duration.

The existence of some 4,000 sensations could be identified, most related to the sense of vision, followed by hearing and finally the rest of the senses.

Example of the theory of structuralism

Here is an example based on the theory of structuralism:

There is a subject who is visually shown a flower. This object, as a whole, forms a series of sensory qualities, since it is composed of a color, a shape, a size, a texture, a smell, etc. The subject could not say the word flower, since by doing so he was abstracting from his own experience when observing the concept. What he had to say when observing the object were the sensations that it created in them and in this way see how the person became aware of the object that was presented to him.

Principles of structuralism

Structuralism presents a series of basic postulates:

• Sensations are elementary mental processes.
• There are two determining factors in every physical element, quality and intensity.
• Knowledge must always be empirical.
• The mind and consciousness were the field of study of psychology.
• Introspection was a valid method.
• The mind and body were parallel systems.

Structuralism is born with Titchener and his idea that psychology was fundamentally experimentalTherefore, all those concepts not based on experimentation could not be called psychology.

In this school, only the description of the mental experience was sought. And in turn, any type of speculation regarding unobservable events was denied, since for them psychology was a science, and all science seeks the purest knowledge.

It must be borne in mind that, although Wundt's and Titchener's theories resemble each other, the former did not consider the introspection as a valid method. However, Titchener took advantage of the fact that in North America there was still no differentiation between consciousness and the unconscious, to argue that Wundt was also a structuralist.

Over the years, structuralism changed the object of its introspective analyzes, from the elements themselves to its attributes, since as we have said before, they saw that only one element could be known through its attributes.

Structuralism was confronted against the functionalism of William James, which caused this current to be separated from psychology. At present we do not find evidence of Titchener's ideas in psychology, however, the introspective method is still used. This current is considered to have "died" with Titchener's passing.

The most relevant authors of this current are:

• Wilhelm Wundt: he was the initiator of this trend due to his desire to develop experimental psychology, as well as being the creator of the first experimental psychology laboratory.
• Edward Titchener: he is considered the true founder of said school. He was a student of Wundt and even became a member of the APA.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to What is structuralism in psychology: characteristics, history and authors, we recommend that you enter our category of Experimental psychology.

• Arroyo, J. L. P., & Ypiens, J. L. M. (2002). Fundamentals of psychology. Ramón Areces University Publishing House.
• Ilizaliturri, J. (2012). Chapter 4. Structuralism.
• Sos, R. (2015). History of Psychology. Jaume I. University
• Rico Ortega, A. (1996). Structuralism.