Psychoanalysis, behaviorism and humanistic psychology have the greatest influence and are called the three main forces of psychology.
Freud of psychoanalysis (and later Jung)
Psychoanalysis was initiated by Freud and has been revised and developed since then. Its influence goes far beyond psychology, so its readership is correspondingly wider.
If you want to have a clear understanding of Freud's thoughts, you can also read some books introducing his thoughts. Charles brenner's Introduction to Psychoanalysis (Beijing Publishing House, 2000) summarizes Freud's basic ideas and the main contents of psychoanalysis, which is extremely rare in similar books. Freud and Marx (Renmin University of China Press, 2004) expounds the relationship between psychoanalysis and Marxism. Although this book was written in the 1930s, it still has its value.
Viewpoint: Psychoanalysis school was gradually formed by Freud's numerous summaries and years of accumulation of human morbid psychology in his lifelong psychiatric practice. It mainly focuses on psychoanalysis and treatment, and thus puts forward a new and unique explanation of human psychology and personality. The biggest feature of Freud's psychoanalytic theory is to emphasize the instinctive, erotic and natural side of human beings. It expounds the role of unconsciousness for the first time, affirms the role of irrational factors in behavior, and opens up a new field of subconscious research. It attaches importance to the study of personality and psychological application.
The representative figures of behaviorism are Watson and Skinner.
The theoretical system of behavioral psychology founded by Watson was very popular in the 1920s, which deeply influenced the process of psychology. Since then, behaviorism has continued to develop, and Skinner has the greatest influence.
Behaviorism is one of the main schools of modern American psychology, and it also has the greatest influence on western psychology. Behaviorism can be divided into old behaviorism and new behaviorism. The representative of the old behaviorism is headed by Watson. The main representatives of new behaviorism are Skinner and others.
Watson believes that human behavior is acquired, and the environment determines a person's behavior pattern. Normal behavior and pathological behavior are obtained through learning, and can also be changed, increased or eliminated through learning. He believes that if we find out the regular relationship between environmental stimulus and behavioral response, we can predict the response according to the stimulus, or infer the stimulus according to the response, so as to predict and control the behavior of animals and people. In his view, behavior is a combination of various physical reactions used by organisms to adapt to environmental stimuli. Some of these reactions are manifested externally and some are hidden internally. In his eyes, there is no difference between humans and animals, and they all follow the same rules.
Skinner believes that psychology is concerned with observable external behavior, not the internal mechanism of behavior. He believes that science must be studied within the scope of natural science, and its task is to determine the functional relationship between the stimulus controlled by the experimenter and the response of the organism. Of course, he not only considered the relationship between stimulus and response, but also considered the conditions to change the relationship between stimulus and response. His formula is: R=f(SoA).
Philosophical background: At the beginning of the 20th century, the thoughts of mechanical materialism (including Descartes' mechanistic thoughts on human body mechanism and La Mei Lite's viewpoint that man is a machine) and the new realism that erased the boundary between subjective and objective with empirical facts had a great influence on Watson.
Viewpoint: The main viewpoint of behaviorism is that psychology should not study consciousness, but only behavior, and completely oppose behavior and consciousness. In terms of research methods, behaviorism advocates the use of objective experimental methods rather than introspection.
Representative figures of humanism: Maslow and Rogers
Maslow's self-realization theory Maslow believes that the psychological driving force of human behavior is not sexual instinct, but human needs. He divided it into two categories and seven levels, just like a pyramid. From bottom to top, there are physiological needs, security needs, belonging and love needs, respect needs, cognitive needs, aesthetic needs and self-realization needs.
Rogers makes people know their own nature, no longer rely on external values, make people trust and rely on the evaluation process of the body to deal with experience, eliminate the values imposed on him by the external environment through internalization, make people freely express their thoughts and feelings, decide their own behavior with their own will, control their own destiny, repair the destroyed self-realization potential, and promote the healthy development of personality.
Viewpoint: Humanism opposes the tendency to vulgarize and animalize people's psychology, the psychoanalysis school that only takes sick people as research objects and regards people as instinctive victims, and the behaviorism school that regards people as materialized objects. It advocates studying issues that are meaningful to human progress and caring about human values and dignity.