Reflection and Link: Week of 2/16

This week I would like to focus on women in psychology. Enjoy the following link; it is called the Society for the Psychology of Women. The link is www. psych.yorku.ca/femhop- it is a site that documents the role of women in the history of psychology. It has sources that may be relevant to the topics some of you have for the final project.

Chapter 5 dealt with Titchener who was a student of Wundt, but didn't agree with most of his teachings and took his ideas of structuralism and made that the focus of his 'science.' He believed that the mind and consciousness were not one in the same. The mind is the sum-total of mental processes occurring in the life time of an individual and consciousness is the sum-total of mental processes occurring now. He used introspection as his chief method for investigation. Titchener's methods and ideas were refuted by functionalist. I found structuralism as a random science that should not have been considered a science. Those who were structuralist and used introspection found that among themselves they could not always come to the same conclusions. Titchener believed his ideas and for that I commend him for that. 

I also commend him for taking female students into his doctoral program. Margaret Floy Washburn. She was Titchener's first graduate at Cornell. She went on to do a lot more than her teacher. She was the 2nd woman to hold the position of president of the APA. While she was limited in where she could teach, she was a pioneer for women in the field of psychology.

The reading then took a look at functionalism which was a broad and had diverse methods, and covered everything from animal behavior to clinical psychology. One big functionalist was Angell. He identified the 3 conceptions of functionalism. While both sides eventually died out, functionalism was more widely accepted because it lent itself to new studies of psychology.