Pavlov accidentally discovered that animals can be conditioned to respond, at the physiological level, to stimuli that ordinarily one would not expect them to do so. For example, one would expect actual food to make animals intestines release digestive juices but a bell associated with food could make animals release such digestive juices. MEN OF IDEAS #15 THE BEHAVIORISTS (Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, B. F. Skinner) Ozodi Thomas Osuji Since the inception of psychology there have been two trends in it: looking inside people to understand why they do what they do and looking outside people to understand them. Looking…

Wilhelm Reich posited what he called orgone energy that pervades the universe and saw it as the source of life, particularly as the source of sexual energy and tried to optimize it in people. MEN OF IDEAS # 14 OTHER NOTABLE PSYCHOANALYSTS (Wilhelm Reich, Fritz Perls, Karen Horney) Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) was an Austrian turned American psychoanalyst. He trained under Freud and worked within the umbrella of Freud’s sexual madness until he decided to take it one step further. He came up with a weird idea that there is an energy called orgone that suffices the universe and that this…

Allport delineated character traits and suggested that individuals tend to have certain traits dominant in their personality structures. Allport contributed to classification of personality types. His most important contribution to psychological discourse is his writings on prejudice. MEN OF IDEAS # 13 GORDON ALLPORT Ozodi Thomas Osuji Gordon Willard Allport (1897-1967) was an American academic psychologist. He pretty much spent his professional career at Harvard University as a professor of psychology. Like many academic psychologists, he really was a cataloguer of knowledge rather than generator of knowledge. (Is it possible to generate revolutionary ideas while in the academe? Peer pressure…

Sullivan believed that interpersonal issues contribute to the etiology of psychosis. Psychotics, as he say them, are the products of families who did not know how to relate to their children in such a manner that they felt accepted and loved, and a society that does not do the same. He, therefore, concentrated on improving peoples interpersonal skills, so as to get them to relate to each other in a manner that all felt related to hence whole and healthy. MEN OF IDEAS # 12 HARRY STACK SULLIVAN Ozodi Thomas Osuji Herbert Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) was an American psychoanalyst and…

Otto Rank was a writer and artist; he tried to use psychoanalytic categories to understand the creative process. Later, he wrote that traumatic experiences in childhood contributed to the etiology of neurosis. His Will Therapy, however, concentrated in the here and now issues that contribute to the genesis of neurosis and how to deal with them realistically without wasting time talking about what is in the individual’s unconscious mind. MEN OF IDEAS #11 OTTO RANK Ozodi Thomas Osuji Otto Rank (1884-1939) was a very influential psychoanalyst. Initially, he was interested in art and artists and the process of creativity. What…

Abraham Maslow contributed one seminal idea to psychological discourse, the idea that there is a hierarchy of needs that folk must meet if they are to be productive persons. MEN OF IDEAS # 10   ABRAHAM MASLOW Ozodi Thomas Osuji Abraham Harold Maslow (1908-1970) was an American psychologist noted for one seminal contribution to psychology: the hierarchy of needs schema. Maslow believed that people have certain basic needs that they must meet for them to live well. Those needs are physiological (food, sex etc), safety (security), psychological (self esteem, confidence in ones self, respect of other people), social (need for belonging,…

Kelly contributed one salient idea to psychology, the idea that personality is a personal construct, that the individual, acting as a creative agent, utilized his inherited biological constitution and social experiences to construct his self concept and self image. MEN OF IDEAS #9 GEORGE KELLY Ozodi Thomas Osuji George Kelly (1905-1967) was an American psychologist. He is known for one idea and one idea only, his contention that it is the individual who, behaving like an engineer (Kelly was trained as a physicist and engineer before becoming a psychologist), takes strands from his biological make up and social experience to…

Carl Rogers preached a sermon of unconditional positive self acceptance. As he saw it, neurosis and even psychosis is caused by our efforts to become idealized self concepts and defending those false selves with the various ego defenses. If folk lighten up and just be themselves they would live more peaceful, happy and productive lives. Rogers influenced the clinical practice of psychotherapy. I doubt that there is a clinician out there who does not practice an aspect of Rogers ’client centered, or as he later called it, person centered, therapy. He is considered one of the top ten psychologists of…

R. D. Laing wrote in the 1960s when it seemed rational to reduce all that is wrong with human beings to social causation. He appeared to suggest that family communications (filled with lies and double binds) set some children up to be confused hence become psychotic. Although he denied doing so, the logical conclusion of his hypothesis is that parents caused their children’s mental illness. Laing did not believe that biology had anything to-do with psychosis. Mental illness is a product of bad communication between parents and their children so talk to the mentally ill differently and you heal them.…