Psychology Essay: Famous Psychologists

Psychology Essay: Famous Psychologists

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind – William James

Sigmund Freud: Sigmund Freud was a physician in Vienna, Austria, born in 1856, during the Victorian era. He is credited as the father of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytical theories continue to be taught, but have largely been abandoned in practice. One of his renown concepts revolved around the three aspects of the human mind, namely the Id, Ego and Superego. Many of the other postulates concentrated on gender differences and natural instincts. His theories have often been criticized for being overly sexualized. For example, some of the most prominent psychoanalytical postulates centre on vagina dentate, castration anxiety, Oedipus complex, Electra’s complex and other unresolved conflicts.

Surveys and interviews are some of the ways psychologists get experimental data. Image: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Brenda Miller: Brenda Miller is most famous for her work with patient HM. Patient HM is perhaps the best known case to date in the study of memory. A real life individual, the person in question had anterograde (versus retrograde) amnesia. Thus, he was incapable of forming new memories, but continued to be able to learn new skills (without subsequent recollection how) and remembered everything that predated the trauma. Among other things, Brenda Miller wrote extensively on the subject. For example, when patient HM, mistakenly known as the Hippocampus Man because of the relationship of the hippocampus to memory, met with a person, he did not remembered it the next day and the meeting felt novel to him. Alternatively, he could learn to draw shapes (implicit memory) but did not remember why.

Elizabeth Loftus: Elizabeth Loftus was the first to show how unreliable memories can be. In her classic experiments, she demonstrated that people would remember different scenarios, depending on how these events were primed. In other words, leading questions resulted in dissimilar recollections, accordingly. Nowadays, professional survey writers are aware that the way a question is phrased may influence the response. For example, in one study she conducted cars were shown in a video as having a collision. Later, researchers asked participants how fast the cars were going and whether there was broken glass at the scene. Depending on which words the experimenters used to describe the cars speed, such as “smashed into each other”, the subjects’ answers differed.

Because psychology is a social science, a psychology lab looks much different than a biology lab. Image: photo: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Mary Ainsworth: Mary Ainsworth contributed an important theory to social psychology and interpersonal relations. With the strange situation assessment, she developed the theory of attachment. Thus, attachment could vary from secure to insecure, and insecure attachment styles would likewise subdivide into categories. Although these tests centered on the primary caregivers, the style itself would permeate all later relationships, an idea echoed by Erick Erickson. Erick Erickson described development in psychosocial stages. At each stage, he outlined a conflict, the resolution of which led to the better outcome in the duality.