The application of psychology: conceptual and socio-political underpinnings

- Wundt (1832-1920) took psychology from a mixture of philosophy and biology and made it a unique field of study

- Used the scientific method to study mind and behaviour

- Basis research should precede applied research/applications

Functionalism e.g. William James

Mind is for adaptation to the environment - psychology as pragmatic; contrast with goals of structuralism

Essentialism

Analysis of behaviour/performance in a setting/task into essential underlying mental capacties (allied to structualism)

Pragmatism

Analysis of mental processes involved in the given setting/task itself (allied to functionalism)

Context: German ideology - american society characterised by lack of respect for authority - offered german culture and new sicence of psychology - psychology in place of a monarchy

father of forensic psychology

- argued against reliance of eye witness testimony - staged demonstrations of assualts during classes - warned against the blind confidence in the observations of the average man

contributions to psychotherapy

mental illness: saw patients, wrote book: psychotherapy (1909): to dispel myths about mental illness/ to challenge psychoanalyis

pioneer of human factors

psychology and industrial efficiency (1913) - telephone switchboard operators - analytic approach - boston street railway motormen - synthetic approach

the capacity to sustain attention - decrement in the ability to detect rare signals over time

vigilance in radar operators

- radar operators: targets difficult to discrimnate from background noise, very few targets - long periods of isolated work in darkened rooms - efficiency could drop 80% over a 40min watch

- the clock test: monitor for rare double jumps of a rotating black pointer

differnet measures of vigilance performance

- early studies focued on detection rate

vigilance research and signal detection theory (SDT) two scores could now be derieved: d- reflecting a person's sensitivity to a signal, B(beta) reflecting the level of evidence at which the observer is willing to report a signal (reflects person's confidence/conservatism)

Performance of skilled pilots in a simulator for >2 hours:

- control of aircraft deteriorated 50% over the 2 hours

-deterioration in the timing and sequence of actions

-decrease in aspirations

-marked attentional lapses for peripheral activities relying on working memory

- loss of task integration

- impairment of skills occured in the reverse order to that in which they were learned

- subjective changes

theoretical and conceptual:

- practical utility of SDT

- insight into nature of sustained, selective and divided attention, working memory

- pre-empted cognitive psychology

impact on the real world

- air traffic control

- aviation

- transport

- medicine

- 25% of members of teh APA served in WW1

- 12 committees of APA dedicated to helping the war effort e.g.

a) evaluation of perception in prospective air servicemen mental states under low oxygen pressure

b) personnal selection: intelligence and aptitude testing

c) diagnosis and treatment of war psychoses/shellshock

- sudden need for more clincial psychologists

- new fighting techniques of WW1 put immense mental strain on soldiers

- the impact of shellshock

- US joins - offers intensice course in treatment of mental disorders to all medical officers; clincial psychologists also recruited

Beginning of client-centered psychology

- rising demand for psychological help due to WW2 catalysed new therapies

- psychoanalysis - required many sessions; effectiveness unclear

- client led searching for solutions by talking through problems with a sympathetic, supportive therapist

- 1942: carl rogers publishes counselling and psychotherapy

Three key developments after WW2 that faciliated the rise of clincial psychology

- antipsychiatry:60s-70s cultural movement - psychiatry began to be criticised as a thief of individual expression; to be demeaning and dangerous, invasive - some of the reasons for antipsychiatry; lobotomy - severing of nerve fibres connecting the frontal and pre-frontal cortex to the rest of the brain / ice-pick lobotomy: ice pick inserted after local anaesthetic, no need for hospitalisation, production line/ electroshocks (ECT): 100 volts through electrodes placed bilaterally or unilaterally, 3x a week for 2-7 weeks, muscle relaxants now used to prevent physical injury still used for depression today - exposed through literature - political tool -more respect for rights of patients

- input from scientific research into psychotherapy: empirical evaluation of efficiency of therapies: 1952 wake up call, Eysenck's review of efficacy of talking cures not encouraging, gave rise to more efficacy research

- development of psychoactive drugs: psychiatiests lowered their resistance to non-psychiatiests treating patients through pyschotherapy, why? psychology pressure groups, psychiatists increasingly turned to medicines to treat mental disorders

since 16th century authorities increasingly replacing family for the control of socail deviants or those not able to maintain themselves

20th century:  the welfare state - taxed-based state services

reliance on mental health services grew because

- people wanted professional help

- social mobility led to social relationships being limited to workplaces and hence non-confiding

- growing individualism

late 20th to present day: knowledge of clinical psychology pervasive in society

integrated into mainsream professinal training

becoming part of common knowledge via popular media and manifest in day-to-day language: extrovert, neurotic, depressed, paranoid, addicted, deluded, stressed, traumatised