Otto Rank
Another student of Freud, Otto Rank, introduced a new theory of neurosis, attributing all neurotic disturbances to the primary trauma of birth. In his later writings he described individual development as a progression from complete dependence on the mother and family, to a physical independence coupled with intellectual dependence on society, and finally to complete intellectual and psychological emancipation. Rank also laid great importance on the will, defined as “a positive guiding organization and integration of self, which utilizes creatively as well as inhibits and controls the instinctual drives.”
Other Psychoanalytic Schools
Later noteworthy modifications of psychoanalytic theory include those of
the American psychoanalysts Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack
Sullivan. The theories of Fromm lay particular emphasis on the concept that
society and the individual are not separate and opposing forces, that the
nature of society is determined by its historic background, and that the
needs and desires of individuals are largely formed by their society. As a
result, Fromm believed, the fundamental problem of psychoanalysis and
psychology is not to resolve conflicts between fixed and unchanging
instinctive drives in the individual and the fixed demands and laws of
society, but to bring about harmony and an understanding of the
relationship between the individual and society. Fromm also stressed the
importance to the individual of developing the ability to fully use his or
her mental, emotional, and sensory powers.
Horney worked primarily in the field of therapy and the nature of neuroses, which she defined as of two types: situation neuroses and character neuroses. Situation neuroses arise from the anxiety attendant on a single conflict, such as being faced with a difficult decision. Although they may paralyze the individual temporarily, making it impossible to think or act efficiently, such neuroses are not deeply rooted. Character neuroses are characterized by a basic anxiety and a basic hostility resulting from a lack of love and affection in childhood.
Sullivan believed that all development can be described exclusively in terms of interpersonal relations. Character types as well as neurotic symptoms are explained as results of the struggle against anxiety arising from the individual’s relations with others and are a security system, maintained for the purpose of allaying anxiety.
Melanie Klein
An important school of thought is based on the teachings of the British
psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Because most of Klein’s followers worked with
her in England, this has come to be known as the English school. Its
influence, nevertheless, is very strong throughout the European continent
and in South America. Its principal theories were derived from observations
made in the psychoanalysis of children. Klein posited the existence of
complex unconscious fantasies in children under the age of six months. The
principal source of anxiety arises from the threat to existence posed by
the death instinct. Depending on how concrete representations of the
destructive forces are dealt with in the unconscious fantasy life of the
child, two basic early mental attitudes result that Klein characterized as
a “depressive position” and a “paranoid position.” In the paranoid
position, the ego’s defense consists of projecting the dangerous internal
object onto some external representative, which is treated as a genuine
threat emanating from the external world. In the depressive position, the
threatening object is introjected and treated in fantasy as concretely
retained within the person. Depressive and hypochondriacal symptoms result.
Although considerable doubt exists that such complex unconscious fantasies
operate in the minds of infants, these observations have been of the utmost
importance to the psychology of unconscious fantasies, paranoid delusions,
and theory concerning early object relations.
4. Behaviriourism
The literature of this school of psychology is still awaiting its bibliographer. Though this interpretation of human actions and reactions has been strongly criticized by other psychologists, the leading figures - B.F.Skinner, J.B.Watson and E.C.Tolman - have also been recognized and respected as great scholars. Skenner`s own summary
About behaviorism, 1974, contained numerous bibliographic references to this important interpretation of man’s relationship to the world around him. Strange compilation of references designed to show the errors of this school of psychology was published by A.A.Roback in 1923 as part of his critical discussion entitled Behaviorism and Psychology; it is now only of historical interest.
We have already referred to Robert 1 Watson`s The history of psychology and behavioral sciences: a bibliographic guide, 1978. in our discussion of the general background guides to psychology. It suffices to note, here, that this work, though by one of the leading scholars of the behaviorist school, is not, and does not pretend to be, a bibliography of Behaviourism. In some respects the same can be said of
C.Heidenreich`s Dictionary of personality: behavior and adjustment terms, which appeared in 1968. Both these books have been compiled by leading members of this behaviorist school and unquestionably representative of the views of that school. We have mentioned these works here for that reason, but stress that these are scholarly and unbiased reference works which do not include or misrepresent references to other interpretations of human behavior.
5. Gestalt psychology
Gestalt Psychology, school of psychology that deals mainly with the processes of perception. According to Gestalt psychology, images are perceived as a pattern or a whole rather than merely as a sum of distinct component parts. The context of an image plays a key role. For instance, in the context of a city silhouette the shape of a spire is perceived as a church steeple. Gestalt psychology tries to formulate the laws governing such perceptual processes.
Gestalt psychology began as a protest. At the beginning of the 20th century, associationism dominated psychology. The associationist view that stimuli are perceived as parts and then built into images excluded as much as it sought to explain; for instance, it allowed little room for such human concepts as meaning and value. About 1910, German researchers Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kцhler, and Kurt Koffka rejected the prevailing order of scientific analysis in psychology. They did not, however, reject science; rather they sought a scientific approach more nearly related to the subject matter of psychology. They adopted that of field theory, newly developed in physics. This model permitted them to look at perception in terms other than the mechanistic atomism of the associationists.
Gestalt psychologists found perception to be heavily influenced by the context or configuration of the perceived elements. The word Gestalt can be translated from the German approximately as “configuration.” The parts often derive their nature and purpose from the whole and cannot be understood apart from it. Moreover, a straightforward summation process of individual elements cannot account for the whole. Activities within the total field of the whole govern the perceptual processes.
The approach of Gestalt psychology has been extended to research in areas as diverse as thinking, memory, and the nature of aesthetics.
Topics in social psychology have also been studied from the structuralist Gestalt viewpoint, as in Kurt Lewin’s work on group dynamics. It is in the area of perception, however, that Gestalt psychology has had its greatest influence.
In addition, several contemporary psychotherapies are termed Gestalt.
These are constructed along lines similar to Gestalt psychology’s approach to perception. Human beings respond holistically to experience; according to Gestalt therapists, any separation of mind and body is artificial. Accurate perception of one’s own needs and of the world is vital in order to balance one’s experience and achieve “good
Gestalten.” Movement away from awareness breaks the holistic response, or Gestalt. Gestalt therapists attempt to restore an individual’s natural, harmonic balance by heightening awareness. The emphasis is on present experience, rather than on recollections of infancy and early childhood as in psychoanalysis. Direct confrontation with one’s fears is encouraged.
6. Cognition psychology
Cognition, act or process of knowing. Cognition includes attention,
perception, memory, reasoning, judgment, imagining, thinking, and speech.
Attempts to explain the way in which cognition works are as old as
philosophy itself; the term, in fact, comes from the writings of Plato and
Aristotle. With the advent of psychology as a discipline separate from
philosophy, cognition has been investigated from several viewpoints.
An entire field—cognitive psychology—has arisen since the 1950s. It studies cognition mainly from the standpoint of information handling. Parallels are stressed between the functions of the human brain and the computer concepts such as the coding, storing, retrieving, and buffering of information. The actual physiology of cognition is of little interest to cognitive psychologists, but their theoretical models of cognition have deepened understanding of memory, psycholinguistics, and the development of intelligence.
Social psychologists since the mid-1960s have written extensively on the topic of cognitive consistency—that is, the tendency of a person’s beliefs and actions to be logically consistent with one another. When cognitive dissonance, or the lack of such consistency, arises, the person unconsciously seeks to restore consistency by changing his or her behavior, beliefs, or perceptions. The manner in which a particular individual classifies cognitions in order to impose order has been termed cognitive style.
7. Tests and Measurements
Many fields of psychology use tests and measurement devices. The best- known psychological tool is intelligence testing. Since the early 1900s psychologists have been measuring intelligence—or, more accurately, the ability to succeed in schoolwork. Such tests have proved useful in classifying students, assigning people to training programs, and predicting success in many kinds of schooling. Special tests have been developed to predict success in different occupations and to assess how much knowledge people have about different kinds of specialties. In addition, psychologists have constructed tests for measuring aspects of personality, interests, and attitudes. Thousands of tests have been devised for measuring different human traits.
A key problem in test construction, however, is the development of a criterion—that is, some standard to which the test is to be related.
For intelligence tests, for example, the usual criterion has been success in school, but intelligence tests have frequently been attacked on the basis of cultural bias (that is, the test results may reflect a child’s background as much as it does learning ability). For vocational- interest tests, the standard generally has been persistence in an occupation. One general difficulty with personality tests is the lack of agreement among psychologists as to what standards should be used.
Many criteria have been proposed, but most are only indirectly related to the aspect of personality that is being measured.
Very sophisticated statistical models have been developed for tests, and a detailed technology underlies most successful testing. Many psychologists have become adept at constructing testing devices for special purposes and at devising measurements, once agreement is reached as to what should be measured.
Types of Tests
Currently, a wide range of testing procedures is used in the U.S. and elsewhere. Each type of procedure is designed to carry out specific functions.
Achievement Tests . These tests are designed to assess current performance in an academic area. Because achievement is viewed as an indicator of previous learning, it is often used to predict future academic success. An achievement test administered in a public school setting would typically include separate measures of vocabulary, language skills and reading comprehension, arithmetic computation and problem solving, science, and social studies. Individual achievement is determined by comparison of results with average scores derived from large representative national or local samples. Scores may be expressed in terms of “grade-level equivalents”; for example, an advanced third-grade pupil may be reading on a level equivalent to that of the average fourth-grade student.
Aptitude Tests. These tests predict future performance in an area in which
the individual is not currently trained. Schools, businesses, and
government agencies often use aptitude tests when assigning individuals to
specific positions. Vocational guidance counseling may involve aptitude
testing to help clarify individual career goals. If a person’s score is
similar to scores of others already working in a given occupation,
likelihood of success in that field is predicted. Some aptitude tests cover
a broad range of skills pertinent to many different occupations. The
General Aptitude Test Battery, for example, not only measures general
reasoning ability but also includes form perception, clerical perception,
motor coordination, and finger and manual dexterity. Other tests may focus
on a single area, such as art, engineering, or modern languages.
Intelligence Tests. In contrast to tests of specific proficiencies or aptitudes, intelligence tests measure the global capacity of an individual to cope with the environment. Test scores are generally known as intelligence quotients, or IQs, although the various tests are constructed quite differently. The Stanford-Binet is heavily weighted with items involving verbal abilities; the Wechsler scales consist of two separate verbal and performance subscales, each with its own IQ. There are also specialized infant intelligence tests, tests that do not require the use of language, and tests that are designed for group administration.
The early intelligence scales yielded a mental-age score, expressing the child’s ability to do as well as average children who were older, younger, or equivalent in chronological age. The deviation IQ used today expresses the individual’s position in comparison to a representative group of people of the same age. The average IQ is set at 100; about half of those who take the test achieve scores between 90 and 110. IQ scores may vary according to testing conditions, and, thus, it is advisable to understand results of the tests as falling within a certain range, such as average or superior.
Interest Inventories. Self-report questionnaires on which the subject indicates personal preferences among activities are called interest inventories. Because interests may predict satisfaction with some area of employment or education, these inventories are used primarily in guidance counseling. They are not intended to predict success, but only to offer a framework for narrowing career possibilities. For example, one frequently used interest inventory, the Kudor Preference Record, includes ten clusters of occupational interests: outdoors, mechanical, computational, scientific, persuasive, artistic, literary, musical, social service, and clerical. For each item, the subject indicates which of three activities is best or least liked. The total score indicates the occupational clusters that include preferred activities.
Objective Personality Tests. These tests measure social and emotional
adjustment and are used to identify the need for psychological counseling.
Items that briefly describe feelings, attitudes, and behaviors are grouped
into subscales, each representing a separate personality or style, such as
social extroversion or depression. Taken together, the subscales provide a
profile of the personality as a whole. One of the most popular
psychological tests is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI), constructed to aid in diagnosing psychiatric patients. Research has
shown that the MMPI may also be used to describe differences among normal
personality types.
Projective Techniques. Some personality tests are based on the phenomenon of projection, a mental process described by Sigmund Freud as the tendency to attribute to others personal feelings or characteristics that are too painful to acknowledge. Because projective techniques are relatively unstructured and offer minimal cues to aid in defining responses, they tend to elicit concerns that are highly personal and significant. The best-known projective tests are the Rorschach test, popularly known as the inkblot test, and the Thematic Apperception Test; others include word-association techniques, sentence-completion tests, and various drawing procedures. The psychologist’s past experience provides the framework for evaluating individual responses. Although the subjective nature of interpretation makes these tests particularly vulnerable to criticism, in clinical settings they are part of the standard battery of psychological tests.
Interpretation of Results
The most important aspect of psychological testing involves the interpretation of test results.
Scoring. The raw score is the simple numerical count of responses, such as the number of correct answers on an intelligence test. The usefulness of the raw score is limited, however, because it does not convey how well someone does in comparison with others taking the same test. Percentile scores, standard scores, and norms are all devices for making this comparison.
Percentile scoring expresses the rank order of the scores in percentages.
The percentile level of a person’s score indicates the proportion of the
group that scored above and below that individual. When a score falls at
the 50th percentile, for example, half of the group scored higher and half
scored lower; a score at the 80th percentile indicates that 20 percent
scored higher and 80 percent scored lower than the person being evaluated.
Standard scores are derived from a comparison of the individual raw score with the mean and standard deviation of the group scores. The mean, or arithmetic average, is determined by adding the scores and dividing by the total number of scores obtained. The standard deviation measures the variation of the scores around the mean. Standard scores are obtained by subtracting the mean from the raw score and then dividing by the standard deviation.
Tables of norms are included in test manuals to indicate the expected range
of raw scores. Normative data are derived from studies in which the test
has been administered to a large, representative group of people. The test
manual should include a description of the sample of people used to
establish norms, including age, sex, geographical location, and occupation.
Norms based on a group of people whose major characteristics are markedly
dissimilar from those of the person being tested do not provide a fair
standard of comparison.
