History Of Psychology/Philosophy

Psychology as a Field
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Chapter 13: Religion vs. Natural Science on Mental Health; Schizophrenia: A Disorder of Self?1.What are the tensions between the religious vs. natural science interpretation of mental illness; the Hippocratic system and the system of modern Western medicine; the biological versus psychological interpretation; and/or the psychoanalytic versus behaviorist interpretations?
Religion has been in place ever since the primitive years of mankind. It is deeply hinged on one’s belief. Natural science, on the other hand, applies scientific reasoning that use evidence to explain why things are the way they are. In matters concerning mental illness, natural science tends to rebut some religious beliefs to be stereotyped. According to Hippocratic systems, refutes claims that mental illness is the work of gods that can get treated by charms and prayers. It explains that they are a biological imbalance of body humor (Chung, M., & Hyland, M. 2012). An example of the treatment is the use of Chinese treatment called bleeding. Modern western medicine also uses the same principle of diagnosis rather than the blanket view of assuming it’s an act of gods. One treatment it puts across is the use of evacuation of the mentally ill as a means of treatment (McLeod, 2008). The psychoanalytic view explains that the mental illness is heredity and that therapy is one method of mental illness alleviation. Behaviorist interpretation, on the other hand, tends to believe mental illness is as a result of acquiring conditionings from an individual’s environment.

2.What happens to the self in Schizophrenia? Is the psychopathological core of schizophrenia a disorder of self?
A schizophrenic patient believes in the doctrine of solipsism. Their whole world believes in revolve around their self. The self in schizophrenia is regarded as the reality while the rest of the world is conceptualized as an external object. It is actually true schizophrenia has its psychopathological core on self. It is a view of seeing the disorder as the true reality. It a schizophrenic has to be understood from his/her point of view in order to get help. Therapy therefore plays a big role in reaching out to schizophrenic patients.
Chapter 16: Ideographic vs. Nomothetic; Systems Approach to Psychology1.What are merits and weaknesses of qualitative (ideographic) and quantitative (nomothetic) approaches to study the person?
The ideographic study approach of a person focusses on the individual. It looks at every individual as a unique entity that needs to be studied individually. The study is done through quantitatively collecting data of the individual through unstructured interviews, the use of autobiographies and self-reports (Pargament et al., 2013). The advantages of ideographic study are that it provides a complete understanding of the individual. It gives a substantive data for description which is key for understanding. The limitation of the ideographic study is that it cannot be empirically tested. It is also not easy to generalize the complete knowledge of a person.
The nomothetic study approach focuses on establishing general laws for all. The study aims at getting a statistically significant result that represents the behavior of the group under study. The advantage of the study is that the study is considered scientific as it contains precise measurement and control of behaviors (Chung, M., & Hyland, M. 2012). The study also covers a large group of people. The limitation is that the study loses sight of the ‘whole person’ as a result of using people’s averages yet everyone is unique. Another limitation is that people in the study group might exude the same response but for different reasons (McLeod, 2008). The final limitation is that predictions can only be made for a group and not an individual.
2.Discuss the “Systems approach to Psychology as a Field” (Taylor, 2003). Can psychology ever be a unified science? If so, what kind of science should that ultimately be?
Psychology can get viewed as a science due to the fact that it can get empirically corrected. All the knowledge in psychology is gotten through senses and not inherited. Psychology, however, is a multi-faceted discipline that includes, Clinical Psychology, Cognitive and Perceptual Psychology, Counseling Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Educational Psychology, Engineering Psychology among others (McLeod, 2008). The unifying factor of all the different disciplines of psychology, however, is that they all involve an empirical scientific study of the human behavior. Psychology, therefore, could be unified as a physical science because of the method of collecting the study. (Done physically)

References
Chung, M., & Hyland, M. (2012). History and philosophy of psychology.
McLeod, S. (2008). Psychology as a Science. Simply Psychology.
Pargament, K., & Lomax, J. (2013). Understanding and addressing religion among people with
mental illness. World Psychiatry, 12(1), 26-32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/wps.20005