STRUCTURALISM (PSYCHOLOGY): THEORY AND CONCEPTS - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

The structuralism, also called structural psychology, is a theory of knowledge developed in the twentieth century by Maximilian Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Bradford Titchener. Wundt is generally known as the father of structuralism.

Structuralism tries to analyze the sum total of experience from birth to adult life. In that experience are the simple components that are related to each other to form more complex experiences. It also studies the correlation of these with the environment.

Structuralism tries to analyze the adult mind (the sum total of experience from birth to the present) in terms of the components defined by the simplest and find how these fit together to form more complex experiences, as well as the correlation with physical events.

For this, psychologists use introspection through self-reports and inquiring into feelings, sensations, emotions, among other things that provide internal information about the person.

Definition of structural psychology

Structuralism can be defined in psychology as the study of the elements of consciousness. The idea is that conscious experience can be divided into basic conscious elements.

This can be considered a physical phenomenon that consists of chemical structures that can in turn be divided into basic elements. In fact, much of the research carried out in Wundt's laboratory consisted of cataloging these basic conscious elements.

To reduce a normal conscious experience into basic elements, structuralism was based on introspection (observation of oneself, of conscience and of one's own feelings).

To further understand the concept of introspection, we will use the following example that was given in Wundt's laboratory.

The German psychologist described an apple in terms of the basic characteristics it has, that is, for example saying that it is cold, crunchy and sweet.

An important principle of introspection is that any given conscious experience must be described in its most basic terms.

Thus, a researcher could not describe some experiences or objects by themselves, such as describing the apple simply as an apple. Such an error is known as the "stimulus error."

Through introspection experiments, Wundt began to catalog a large number of basic conscious elements, which could hypothetically be combined to describe all human experiences.

Wundt and structuralism

Wundt

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was born on August 16, 1832 in Baden (Germany) and died on August 31, 1920 in Leipzig, also a city in the same country.

Wundt was considered a celebrated physiologist, philosopher and psychologist and is widely known for having developed the first experimental laboratory in the city of Leipzig. In the university of this same city he was instructor of Titchener, the founder of structuralism.

Titchener declared what is known as the "science of immediate experience", or what is the same, that complex perceptions can be obtained through basic sensory information.

Wundt is often associated in ancient literature with structuralism and the use of methods similar to introspective ones.

The author makes a clear distinction between pure introspection, which is the relatively unstructured self-observation used by earlier philosophers, and experimental introspection. According to him, for introspection or experience to be valid they must occur under experimentally controlled conditions.

Titchener brought his own theory and that of Wundt to North America, and in translating the latter's works I misunderstand their meaning. He did not present him as a voluntaristic psychologist (a doctrine that organizes the content of mental will power into higher-level thought processes), which is what he really was, but rather presented him as an introspectionist.

Titchener thus used this mistranslation to say that Wundt's works supported his own.

Titchener and structuralism

Edward B. Titchener was born in Chichester, United Kingdom on January 11, 1867 and died in the United States, specifically in Ithaca on August 3, 1927. Despite being a British psychologist, he later settled in the United States and adopted this nationality.

He is considered the founder of structuralism and the promoter of the experimental method in American psychology. Titchener is an introspectionist, and when he imported Wundt's work into the United States, he mistranslated them, presenting him as an introspectionist as well.

The error lies in the fact that in North America what was consciousness was not differentiated from the unconscious, but in Germany it did.

In reality for Wundt introspection was not a valid method because according to his theories it did not reach the unconscious. Wundt understands introspection as a description of conscious experience divided into basic sensory components that have no external referents.

Instead, for Titchener, consciousness was the sum of a person's experiences at a given moment, understanding those as feelings, ideas, and impulses experienced throughout life.

Edward B. Titchener was a student of Wundt at the University of Leipzig, and one of his leading students.

For this reason his ideas of how the mind works were strongly influenced by Wundt's theory of voluntarism and his ideas of association and apperception (the combinations of elements of active and passive consciousness respectively).

Titchener tried to classify the structures of the mind and pointed out that only observable events constitute science and that any speculation regarding unobservable events has no place in society.

In his book "Systematic Psychology," Titchener wrote: "It is true, however, that observation is the only patented method of science, and that experiment, regarded as the scientific method, is nothing but protected and assisted observation. "

How to analyze the mind and consciousness

Titchener took into account the accumulated experience of a lifetime. She believed that she could understand the structure of the mind and its reasoning if she could define and categorize the basic components of the mind and the rules by which the components interact.

Introspection

The main tool Titchener used to try to determine the different components of consciousness was introspection.

He himself writes in his systematic psychology: "The state of consciousness that should be the subject of psychology… can become an object of immediate knowledge only by way of introspection or self-awareness."

And in his book An Outline of Psychology; an introduction to psychology; writes: "… within the sphere of psychology, introspection is the last and only court of appeal, that psychological evidence cannot be other than introspective evidence."

Unlike Wundt's method of introspection, Titchener had very strict guidelines for presenting an introspective analysis.

In his case, the subject would present himself with an object, such as a pencil, and then report the characteristics of that pencil (color, length, etc.).

Said subject would be instructed not to report the name of the object, in this case pencil, because that does not describe the basic data of what the subject was experiencing. Titchener referred to this as a "stimulus error."

In Titchener's translation of Wundt's work, he illustrates his instructor as a supporter of introspection as a method by which to observe consciousness.

However, introspection only fits Wundt's theories if the term is taken to refer to psychophysical methods.

Elements of the mind

The first question that Titchener posed in his theory was the following: What is each element of the mind?

The British psychologist came to the conclusion that in his research there were three types of mental elements that constitute conscious experience. On the one hand the sensations (elements of perception), on the other the images (elements of ideas) and finally the affects (elements of emotions).

In addition, these elements could be divided into their respective properties, which were: quality, intensity, duration, clarity and extension.

Sensations and images contain all these qualities; however, they lack affection in clarity and length. On the other hand, images and affects could be broken down into groups of sensations.

In this way, following this chain, all thoughts were images, which are constructed from elemental sensations.

That means that all reasoning and complex thinking could finally be divided into sensations, which could be reached through introspection. Only well-trained observers could scientifically perform introspection.

Interaction of elements

The second question Titchener posed in the theory of structuralism was how mental elements combine and interact with each other to form conscious experience.

His conclusions were based largely on the ideas of associationism, particularly on the law of contiguity. He also rejected the notions of apperception and creative synthesis; basis of Wundt's voluntarism.

Physical and mental relationships

Once Titchener identifies the elements of the mind and their interaction, he wonders why the elements interact the way they do. In particular, Titchener was interested in the relationship between conscious experience and physical processes.

The British psychologist believed that physiological processes provide a continuous substrate that gives continuity to psychological processes, which otherwise would not have.

Therefore, the nervous system does not cause conscious experience, but it can be used to explain some characteristics of mental events.

Dialectical confrontation of modern psychology

William James

An alternative theory to structuralism was functionalism (functional psychology).

Functionalism was developed by William James, who in contrast to structuralism emphasized the importance of empirical-rational thought, thought about an experimental-empirical philosophy.

James included introspection in his theory (eg, the study of the psychologist's own mental states), but he also included things like analysis (eg, precursor logical criticism and contemporary views of the mind), experiment (eg, in hypnosis or neurology), and comparison (eg, using the statistic means distinguishing norms of abnormalities).

Functionalism also differed by focusing on how useful certain processes located in the brain were for the environment and not on the processes themselves, as is the case in structuralism.

Functionalist psychology had a strong influence on American psychology, being a more ambitious system than structuralism and it served to open new areas within scientific psychology

You criticize structuralism

Among the large number of criticisms received, the main one comes from functionalism, a school that later developed in the psychology of pragmatism. He criticized his focus on introspection as a method of understanding conscious experience.

They argue that self-analysis was not feasible, since introspective students cannot appreciate the processes or mechanisms of their own mental processes.

Introspection, therefore, led to different results depending on who was using it and what they were looking for. Some critics also pointed out that introspective techniques were actually a retrospective examination, as it was rather the memory of a sensation than the sensation itself.

The behaviorists totally rejected the idea of ​​conscious experience as a worthy matter in psychology, since they believed that the subject matter of scientific psychology should be strictly operational in an objective and measurable way.

As the notion of a mind objectively could not be measured, this was not worth questioning.

Structuralism also believes that the mind could be divided into its individual parts, which form conscious experience. This approach was criticized by the Gestalt school of psychology, which argues that the mind cannot be conceived in individual elements.

In addition to theoretical attacks, he was also criticized for excluding and ignoring important events that were not part of his theory. For example, structuralism was not concerned with the study of animal behavior and personality.

Titchener himself was criticized for not using his psychology to help answer practical problems. Instead, Titchener was interested in the search for pure knowledge that was more important to him than other more banal subjects.

Contemporary structuralism

Today, structuralist theory is not widely used. Researchers are still working to offer experimental approaches to achieve the measurement of conscious experience, particularly in the field of cognitive psychology. You are working on the same kinds of issues such as sensations and perceptions.

At present, any introspective methodology is carried out in highly controlled situations and is understood as subjective and retrospective.

References

1. Caws, P. 1997. Structuralism: A Philosophy for the Human Sciences New York: Humanity Books
2. Hergenhahn, BR An Introduction to the History of Psychology. 6th Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2009
3. Titchener, EB, 1899, "Structural and Functional Psychology", Philosophical Review, 8 (3): 290–9. doi: 10.2307 / 2176244
4. Ashland, OH, US: Hogrefe & Huber Publishers The structuralist program in psychology: Foundations and applications. (1992). x 292 pp.