William James. American psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

William James. American psychology - Essay Example By profession he was a doctor, but his greatest contributions came in the field of psychology and philosophy. He wrote several books on science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religion and mysticism. Moreover he was also an advocate of pragmatic philosophy and wrote many books on pragmatism. His brothers and sisters were also famous in America as literature writers. Even though the contributions of William James are multifaceted, this paper focuses mainly on his contributions to psychology in general and to the development of theory of functionalism relating to the history of psych systems, in particular. Theory of functionalism, developed by William James, caused major changes in the history of American psychology. Theory of functionalism is derived from Darwin’s evolutionary theory. It focuses mainly on the examination of the function and purpose of mind and behavior. â€Å"Rather than the structures of the mind, functionalism was interested in mental p rocesses and their relation to behavior†(Functionalism). ... In Principles of Psychology he presented illuminating ideas concerning consciousness, attention, memory, habits, and emotions† (William James and Functionalism). William James was more interested in studying how mind functions and he used the method of introspection for that. He argued that different people may behave differently to a particular stimulus because of individual differences. In other words, the mental processes are different for different people and hence the human behavior may also vary with respect to a particular stimulus. For example, two persons may have different perceptions when they see a girl dating with a boy. The first person may take it lightly whereas the second person may take it seriously. This is because of the different perceptions or consciousness of the people. The first person could be more liberal in his approach and attitude whereas the second person could be more traditional or fundamental in his approaches. These differences in perceptions or consciousness forced these two people to respond differently to a particular incident. Here the structure of the mind has nothing to do with the behavior of these people. Functionalist opposes the search for the elements of consciousness as futile. They believed that the mind has the function of helping us to adapt to the environment. They want to understand the function of the mind, the way it helps us to adapt. They want psychology to be practical, not pure science. They believed that the needs and motivations of the organism should be understood if someone wants to understand behavior. Functionalist are more interested in what makes people different from each other than in what makes them similar (Magazine) William James was more