• B E S T of the Century •

It has been almost a century that psychotherapy has benefit millions and millions of people around the world. Those who have joined the seminars, group therapy, workshops, and individual sessions were proven to be really ‘helped’ by the therapy. But how was a subject in which we called ‘a new science’ accepted and grew worldwide in such a short period? Here are the examples of the major changes that occurred during the 1900’s that have turned psychology to a global and modern interest of the population.

Since the dawn of the new century, psychologists around the world learned to cope with their patients and the diversities among them. In other words, they learned how to deal with different people from different background to extend border of psychology and making it applicable to everybody regardless of gender or ethnicity. In addition, the psychologists now are more open-minded, meaning that they now accept other approaches that are different from their own and apply it with their patients, while the psychologists in the beginning were opt to be loyal to their perspectives. Besides how psychologists approach their clients, other reasons that would justify its phenomenon growth would be how the subject is applicable to many of the fields whether it is business, industry, education, labor, or even religion. Finally, the developments in neuroscience and medical treatment have provided psychotherapy with many new options for the therapy, including improved medical and treatments, making it more effective and less time consuming.

Not only how psychology have transcends the borders of beliefs and logics that made it one of the most popular subjects nowadays, but there are many great discoveries during the 1900’s that have ensured the credibility of the subject. In my opinion, the five most significant discoveries during the nineteenth century are:

1) The experiment on gender roles conducted by Matina Homer in November 1969. In the experiment, Matina arranged a question for both her subjects, which were a man and a women, and by studying how both of the volunteers answered the question, Matina concluded that female are more likely to avoid success compared to male. Then she asked both of the subjects to take an achievement test in two separated rooms, the results came out that her female subject scored higher. After that, she asked her subjects to do the test again, but now in the same room. Though scored higher on her first test, the female volunteer seemed nervous and stressed out, and she scored lower than the male volunteer. The result in this experiment explained how women react differently to success and stressed their motive to avoid success. I believe that this experiment is approached by the socio-cultural perspective stressing how our behaviors and attitudes are influenced by our gender background and stereotypes, and that it is important to know how different people react to a situation and how female workers should be encourage in their field of profession in order to be more efficient and productive since they are wiser than a lot of male workers.

2) Development of operant conditioning by B.F skinner- he believed that our behaviors are influenced by the reinforcements or the consequences of the behavior whether it is reward or punishment. For example, a baby would not do anything that would make its mother upset since she scolded or punished it last time. B.F. Skinner was probably one of the most influential psychologists in the history and what among the first who believe in Behavioral Psychology, an approach to an explanation of human behaviors.

3) Philip G. Zimbardo took a socio-cultural approach to explain the cause of our behavior in his famous Stanford Prison experiment in August 1980. He put several students in the roles of prison guards and prisoners for a period of time. However, he had to cancel this experiment since the students were becoming more and more hostile. Though the experiment was called off, it is a solid prove of how our behaviors are shaped by our roles in society.

4) Introduction of ‘learned helplessness’ and ‘depression’ by Martin Seligman in June, 1973. Seligman suggested how ‘helplessness’ in adults can lead to depression, a state of mind which every one of us has faced during our lifetime. Seligman made an important discovery about learning and how important it is to be given roles and responsibility since young age in order to prevent depression when faced with miseries during adulthood. In his theory, Seligman took a cognitive perspective in identifying how depression occurs in adult.

5) Hans Selye and his discovery of ‘stress’ in March, 1978. Selye applied a theory from physics to human to see how human body reacts to threatening situations and found out the roles of stress in illness, mood, and performance. In my opinion, this is the most important discovery made in the century since people nowadays have to deal with stress almost every waking moment in their lives, and that Selye’s neuroscience perspective on stress helped us learn to cope with stress and other threats in our lives.