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Psychoanalysis is a school of psychology founded by Sigmund Freud. This school of thought emphasized the influence of the unconscious mind on behavior.

Freud believed that the human mind was composed of three elements: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id consists of primal urges while the ego is the component of personality charged with dealing with reality. The superego is the part of personality that holds all of the ideals and values we internalize from our parents and culture.

Freud believed that the interaction of these three elements was what led to all of the complex human behaviors.

Freud's school of thought was enormously influential, but also generated considerable debate. This controversy existed not only in his time, but also in modern discussions of Freud's theories. Other major psychoanalytic thinkers include:

Anna Freud

Carl Jung

Erik Erikson

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Humanistic psychology developed as a response to psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Humanistic psychology instead focused on individual free will, personal growth and the concept of self-actualization. While early schools of thought were primarily centered on abnormal human behavior, humanistic psychology differed considerably in its emphasis on helping people achieve and fulfill their potential.

Major humanist thinkers include:

Abraham Maslow

Carl Rogers

Humanistic psychology remains quite popular today and has had a significant influence on other areas of psychology including positive psychology. This particular branch of psychology is centered on helping people living happier, more fulfilling lives.

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Gestalt psychology is a school of psychology based upon the idea that we experience things as unified wholes.

This approach to psychology began in Germany and Austria during the late 19th century in response to the molecular approach of structuralism.

Instead of breaking down thoughts and behavior to their smallest elements, the gestalt psychologists believed that you must look at the whole of experience. According to the Gestalt thinkers, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

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Cognitive psychology is the school of psychology that studies mental processes including how people think, perceive, remember and learn. As part of the larger field of cognitive science, this branch of psychology is related to other disciplines including neuroscience, philosophy, and linguistics.

Cognitive psychology began to emerge during the 1950s, partly as a response to behaviorism. Critics of behaviorism noted that it failed to account for how internal processes impacted behavior. This period is sometimes referred to as the "cognitive revolution" as a wealth of research on topics such as information processing, language, memory, and perception began to emerge.

One of the most influential theories of this school of thought was the stages of cognitive development theory proposed by Jean Piaget.

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Despite their differences, structuralism, functionalism and psychoanalysis all shared an emphasis on mental processes – events that are unseen to the naked eye. John B. Watson, a staunch supporter of behaviorism, strongly objected to this approach and prompted a revolution in psychology.

Watson was an advocate of scientific scrutiny but for him, covert behavior, including mental processes, could not be studied scientifically. The emphasis, from his perspective, should only be on overt or observable behavior.

Behaviorists believed that human behavior can be understood by examining the relationship between stimuli (events in the environment) and responses (observable behavior). They saw no need to employ subjective techniques such as introspection to infer mental processes over which even trained subjects and researchers could not agree. What was once the study of the mind thus became the study of observable behavior.

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Functionalism formed as a reaction to the theories of the structuralist school of thought and was heavily influenced by the work of William James and clearly influenced by the teachings of Charles Darwin and the principle of natural selection (survival of the fittest), James believed that mental processes serve vital functions that enable us to adapt, survive and flourish in a changing world.

Thus, Instead of focusing on the mental and behavioral processes themselves, functionalist thinkers were instead interested in the role that these processes played (how they functioned), while the structuralists asked “what happens” when we engage in mental activity, the functionalists were more concerned with “how it happens” and “why.”

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Structuralism is widely regarded as the first school of thought in psychology. This outlook focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components. Major thinkers associated with structuralism include Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener.
The focus of structuralism was on reducing mental processes down into their most basic elements. The structuralists used techniques such as introspection to analyze the inner processes and reveal the structure of the human mind.