“The Best of Century”
The major changes in psychotherapy this century are the change of people’s view on the therapy and the attitudes of psychologists towards the methods of therapy.
In the 19th century, psychotherapy was not a common term used frequently among the average people. Psychotherapy was a word of either men of some serious wealth or real mental patients. In the 20th century however, the perception of the word totally changed. Millions of people get psychotherapy, involved in seminars, use self-help books and so on. Psychologists have changed as well. Many of them hold public demonstrations to help people get more familiar with the therapy. In use of the therapies, psychologists of the 19th century tended to use a method of only school of thought but the psychologists of the 20th century mix other methods with their major therapy to maximize its effect.
5 Most Important Breakthroughs:
Jean Piaget, with a developmental perspective, came up with a theory that states, “human intelligence develops in stages.” We have common senses and those look so obvious it is just a waste of time to ask anything about those, such as milk poured into a difference shaped cup. It is common sense that the amount of the milk hasn’t changed but Piaget found out that this might not be the case to the young children. They would think that the amount of the milk has changed. This is an important breakthrough because this might help to answer one of the classic questions of the psychology: are we born with innate knowledge or are we born as a “white paper.”
You can live longer just by thinking. Sounds nonsense but Ellen Langer’s, with cognitive perspective, states it. In his investigations, he found out that less elderly people died when they actually had something to worry about or think about. As science continues its flight in developments, extension of life expectancy is an expected fact with the aid medical science. However, it is very interesting psychology also helped in finding the way to lengthened life expectancy and the classic image of wise old man is scientifically true.
Robert Epstein, with cognitive perspective, explains the creation of creativity. I have always had a great interest in creativity since I do not have much of it, and in a society where so many people are highly educated, I think the creativity is the key to the success. However, creativity always seemed like the talent from the God to me but according to Epstein, it wasn’t. In his research, Epstein found out that creativity could actually stir up your creativity by surrounding yourself with various mental stimuli and even more if you differentiate them regularly. Since I think the creativity is one of the keys to the success in career and academic life, this breakthrough is very important to me.
A saying goes “the position makes the person,” Zimbardo, with behavioral perspective, assigned his students a role, a guard or a prisoner, and observed the change in their behavior. Although the students were completely aware that the situation was just a role-play, the students behavior became so dangerous that he had to stop the experiment. We all belongs a society, school, country, and so on, and we are assigned a position within the society and act according to the position. Such research that signifies the role of the position in a person’s behavior is important because it applies to all of us.
Stress. This is the probably the word that dominated my mind for last half a month. When I read the breakthrough by Hana Selye, with social cultural perspective, it was quite a surprise to me because I never really had the common negative impression on the word and that was another reason for others to call me “weirdo.” Selye’s view on the stress kind of pulled my idea about stress out of the chaos and organized it. Besides that stress is one of the biggest problems people of the modern societies consider their number one enemy. This new(?), 28-year-old, view on stress of Selye should gain more popularity among people.
