... of various schools of thoughts in their theories of behaviour. The rise and decline of these various schools of thought indicate the progress of psychology as a scientific discipline. A succinct look at the history of psychology shows the spawn of different approaches, starting with structuralism. Structuralism started to look at 'what the mind is rather what it is for'. This involved using a somewhat inaccurate method called introspection or self-observation. Next came functionalism, which was viewed as an alternative, which was concerned with looking at what the mind was for, rather than what it is. This was followed with such areas as Gestalt psychology, Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud), Behaviourism with Pavlov (e.g. Pavlov's dogs) and his conditioned reaction experiments and information processing. Many ideas from these approaches are now scarcely considered but they all provided direction and a way forward and were all based on experimentation. The main research strategies ...

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