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Concept
Structuralism (psychology)
Summary
Structuralism in psychology (also structural psychology) is a theory of consciousness developed by Wilhelm Wundt and his student Edward Bradford Titchener. This theory was challenged in the 20th century.
Structuralism as a school of psychology seeks to analyze the adult mind (the total sum of experience from birth to the present) in terms of the simplest definable components and then to find how these components fit together to form more complex experiences as well as how they correlate to physical events. To do this, psychologists employ introspection, self-reports of sensations, views, feelings, and emotions.
Edward B. Titchener, along with Wilhelm Wundt, is credited for the theory of structuralism. It is considered to be the first "school" of psychology. Because he was a student of Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig, Titchener's ideas on how the mind worked were heavily influenced by Wundt's theory of voluntarism and his ideas of association and apperception (the passive and active combinations of elements of consciousness respectively). Titchener attempted to classify the structures of the mind, like chemists classify the elements of nature, into the nature.
Titchener said that only observable events constituted that science and that any speculation concerning unobservable events has no place in society (this view was similar to the one expressed by Ernst Mach). In his book, Systematic Psychology, Titchener wrote:
It is true, nevertheless, that observation is the single and proprietary method of science, and that experiment, regarded as a scientific method, is nothing else than observation safeguarded and assisted.
Titchener believed the mind was the accumulated experience of a lifetime. He believed that he could understand reasoning and the structure of the mind if he could define and categorize the basic components of mind and the rules by which the components interacted.
The main tool Titchener used to try to determine the different components of consciousness was introspection.
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