Unit 5 Conceptual Approaches to Psychology

Цель – формирование представлений студентов о концептуальных подходах к изучению психологии, использование знания иностранного языка в профессиональной деятельности и профессиональной коммуникации.

Key words

concern	иметь отношение
be concerned with	интересоваться чем-либо
in terms of	в терминах, на языке
muscle	мышца, мускул
stimulus (pi. stimuli)	стимул, раздражитель
approach	подход
specify	определять, обусловливать
sole	единственный
environment	окружающая среда
bring up	воспитывать
psychoanalysis	психоанализ
conclude	делать вывод
unconscious	подсознательный, бессознательный
hide	прятать
creativity	творчество
self-actualization	самоактуализация
assert	утверждать
reflection	отражение
refute	опровергать

Text

Psychologists are concerned with a wide variety of problems. Basically, we are interested in finding out "Why people act as they do?" Any action a person takes can be explained from several different points of view.

Suppose, for example, you walk across the street. This act can be described in terms of the firing of the nerves that activate the muscles that more the legs that transport you across the street. It can also be described without reference to anything within body; the green light is a stimulus to which you respond by crossing the street. Or your action might be explained in terms of its ultimate purpose; you plan to visit a friend and crossing the street is one of many acts involved in carrying out the plan.

Just as there are different ways of describing any act of behaviour, there are also different approaches to psychology.

One approach attempts to relate the actions of human beings to events taking place inside the body, particularly within the brain and nervous system. This approach specifies the neurobiological processes that underlie behaviour and mental events.

The view that behaviour is the sole subject matter of psychology was first advanced by the American psychologist John B. Watson in the early 1900s. He believed that, although man may be at times an active agent in his own development and behaviour, he is still basically what his environment makes him. Therefore, the basic problem is to find out how man behaves or responds as a result of changes or improvements in the environment or stimuli. Perhaps the spirit of behaviorism is best seen in Watson's belief that he could take any healthy infant at random and, given his own specified world to bring him up in, bring him up to be anything he wished - doctor, prince, lawyer, criminal, and so forth.

Another approach to the study of man is psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud. Freud concluded that personality and our degrees of mental health depend on the actions of three major forces: the id - our unconscious instincts, the ego - our conscious self or intellect - and superego, the conditional reflexes of social rules and internalized values. For Freudists what is hidden is more important and real than what we feel and do.

The humanistic view school is that man becomes what he makes of himself by his own actions and thoughts. It is concerned with topics having little place

in existing theories and systems: e.g. love, creativity, self-actualization, humour, affection and so on. Humanists believe that man is born basically good, and that conscious forces are more important than unconscious forces.

Soviet psychology was inseparably linked with the development of research into psycho-physiology in the works of I. Pavlov, V. Bekhterev, L. Orbeli and others. In refuting the idealistic and mechanistic influences, Soviet scientists asserted in psychology the marxist teaching on activity and its socio-historical foundation, the ideas of Lenin's theory of reflection.

Present-day psychology in our country is a complex and differentiated research system extending throughout general and social psychology, genetic and child psychology, psychosomatic disorders, medical and engineering psychology.

EXERCISES