Functional psychology

Functional psychology or functionalism refers to a “general psychological philosophy that considers mental life and behavior in terms of active adaptation to the person's environment.” It provides the wide-ranging foundation for increasing psychological theories not readily testable by controlled experiments and for applied psychology.

Functionalism was a philosophy contrasting the existing structuralism of psychology of the late 19th century. Edward Titchener, the chief structuralist, gave psychology its first definition as “a science as the study of mental experience, of consciousness, to be studied by trained introspection.”

A variety of schools of functional psychology emerged in Europe; some of them are: T. Ribot in France, N. N. Lange in Russia, and E. Claparède in Switzerland considered psychological functions from the point of view of the natural sciences, while C. Stumpf and the adherents of the Würzburg School in Germany represented the idealist approach.

Psychology was regarded as the study of the functions, or “operations,” of awareness in the organism’s adaptation to a varying natural and social environment. In accumulation to consciousness, the field of psychological inquiry was inflated to take account of the behavior (adaptive action), behavioral motivation, and learning mechanisms.

At the same time as the advocates of this approach made a noteworthy contribution to experimental psychology, their views sooner or later became less powerful; what led to the defeat of scientific standing of this approach was its dualistic perception of the relationship stuck between bodily and psychic functions as well as its teleological view of consciousness functioning as a goal-directed entity. American functional psychology was replaced by behaviorism in the 1920’s.

Behaviorists also discarded the method of introspection but criticized functionalism for the reason that it was not based on restricted experiments and its theories provided diminutive predictive ability. B. F. Skinner was a developer of behaviorism. He did not imagine that bearing in mind how the mind affects behavior was worth while, for he well thought-out that behavior was simply as a learned response to an external stimulus. The functionalists retained an emphasis on conscious experience.

Questions:

• What is the importance of functional psychology?
• Explain the concept given by William James regarding functional psychology.