Psychology from the Psychodynamic Perspective

Paper Summary:

This paper explores how several key individuals contributed to psychology's first main perspective and formed the basis for psychology today. Individuals discussed include Freud, Jung, Horney, Adler, Darwin, Erikson, Wundt, among others. It focuses on the psychodynamic perspective of psychology and shows how psychodynamic psychologists incorporated the ideas of functionalism and structuralism into their work.

From the Paper:

"The psychodynamic perspective had a wide range of influences leading to its founding in the early 1900's. Aristotle first proposed the idea of learning by association and explored how people formed connections between ideas and events. Functionalism was pioneered by William James and emphasized the analysis of the processes by which the mind works. Structuralism was developed by Wilhelm Wundt and used the introspectionist method to analyze the contents of the mind. Through his work on animals concerning evolution, Darwin introduced the theory of biological continuity across species during the late 1800s. Darwin's ideas would eventually convince many prominent psychodynamic psychologists that human motivation for behavior is biologically based. This notion would effect the work of Freud, Adler, and Erikson. The development of the psychodynamic perspective took place during the Victorian age. This was a time when women were heavily repressed and sexist attitudes were widespread. These factors, along with the beginnings of the feminist movement, influenced the theories proposed by Freud and Horney. Several important events and individuals helped to shape the psychodynamic perspective."

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