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History
and Systems of Psychology
PSY502
VU
Lesson
12
RUSSIAN
CONTRIBUTIONS
Ivan
Pavlov (1849-1936)
Ivan
Pavlov
Ivan
Pavlov is one of the greatest
psychologists of the 20th century whose ideas
left a long lasting
impact
on the field. The importance of Pavlov's
discoveries can be gauged
from the fact that his
theories, as
they
emerged from his
experiments, are today applicable to a
very large area of psychology,
including:
Animal/comparative
psychology
o
Child
psychology
o
Educational
psychology
o
Organizational
psychology
o
Industrial
psychology
o
Sport
psychology
o
Psychology
of advertising
o
Clinical/Abnormal
psychology
o
Psychotherapy
o
That
is the magnanimity of the impact of Pavlov's
discoveries on modern psychology.
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History
and Systems of Psychology
PSY502
VU
Vladimir
Bekhterev (1857-1927)
Vladimir
Bekhterev
Another
contributor from Russia
whose name deserves to be mentioned is
Vladimir Bekhterev. He
was
born in 1857 and died in
1927. He studied under Wilhelm
Wundt, the psychologist who
established the
first
psychological laboratory at Leipzig,
Germany.
One
of the major contributions of Bekhterev is his
experiments on animals and
humans using mild
electric
shocks. In other words, Bekhterev
used electric shocks of low
voltage which were not
harmful, for
humans
and animals. He then noted
the response of the organisms to the
shocks. The idea behind
this
experiment
was to trace the effect on learning. Bekhterev
noted that shocks are
associated with
withdrawal
reaction.
Withdrawal reaction means that humans
and animals tend to move away
from the source of the
stimulus.
In other words, the action of the
organism is to avoid the stimulus
which was felt harmful by
the
body.
It therefore moved away. This response
was called Associative
reflex by Bekhterev. He stated
that
associative
reflex was learning which
was similar to learning by conditioning
as given by Pavlov.
Another
contribution of Bekhterev is that he gave
the idea of physical energy to explain
the
phenomenon
of consciousness. He proposed that
consciousness is a form of physical
energy. The energy
resulted
in the person being aware of himself and
his surroundings. He further
stated that all
higher
psychological
functions such as thinking
and generation of ideas are the forms of
expression of physical
energy
which represented the
consciousness.
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