psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

, mentalism refers to those branches of study that concentrate on perception and thought processes, for example: mental imagery,

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...

and

cognition Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

, as in

cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, whi ...

. The term ''mentalism'' has been used primarily by behaviorists who believe that scientific psychology should focus on the structure of causal relationships to

reflexes In biology, a reflex, or reflex action, is an involuntary, unplanned sequence or action and nearly instantaneous response to a Stimulus (physiology), stimulus. Reflexes are found with varying levels of complexity in organisms with a nervous s ...

and operant responses or on the functions of behavior. Neither mentalism nor behaviorism are mutually exclusive fields; elements of one can be seen in the other, perhaps more so in modern times compared to the advent of psychology over a century ago.

Classical mentalism

Psychologist Allan Paivio used the term ''classical mentalism'' to refer to the introspective psychologies of Edward Titchener and

William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th c ...

. Despite Titchener being concerned with

structure A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

and James with function, both agreed that consciousness was the subject matter of psychology, making psychology an inherently subjective field.

The rise of behaviorism

Concurrently thriving alongside mentalism since the inception of psychology was the functional perspective of behaviorism. However, it was not until 1913, when psychologist John B. Watson published his article "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" that behaviorism began to have a dominant influence. Watson's ideas sparked what some have called a paradigm shift in American psychology, emphasizing the objective and experimental study of human behavior, rather than subjective, introspective study of human consciousness. Behaviorists considered that the study of consciousness was impossible to do, or unnecessary, and that the focus on it to that point had only been a hindrance to the field reaching its full potential. For a time, behaviorism would go on to be a dominant force driving psychological research, advanced by the work of scholars including Ivan Pavlov,

Edward Thorndike Edward Lee Thorndike ( – ) was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. His work on comparative psychology and the learning process led to his " theory of connectionism" and helped ...

, Watson, and especially B.F. Skinner.

The new mentalism

Critical to the successful revival of the mind or consciousness as a primary focus of study in psychology (and in related fields such as cognitive neuroscience) were technological and methodological advances, which eventually allowed for brain mapping, among other new techniques. These advances provided an experimental way to begin to study perception and consciousness. However, the cognitive revolution did not kill behaviorism as a research program; in fact, research on

operant conditioning Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process in which voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition (or removal) of reward or aversive stimuli. The frequency or duration of the behavior ma ...

actually grew at a rapid pace during the cognitive revolution. In 1994, scholar Terry L. Smith surveyed the history of

radical behaviorism Radical behaviorism is a "philosophy of the science of behavior" developed by B. F. Skinner. It refers to the philosophy behind behavior analysis, and is to be distinguished from methodological behaviorism—which has an intense emphasis ...

and concluded that "even though radical behaviorism may have been a failure, the operant program of research has been a success. Furthermore, operant psychology and cognitive psychology complement one another, each having its own domain within which it contributes something valuable to, but beyond the reach of, the other."

Classical mentalism

The rise of behaviorism

The new mentalism

See also

References

Further reading