Mentalism (psychology)

In psychology, mentalism is an umbrella term that refers to those branches of study that concentrate on perception and thought processes: for example, mental imagery, consciousness and cognition, as in cognitive psychology. The term mentalism has been used primarily by behaviorists who believe that scientific psychology should focus on the structure of causal relationships to conditioned responses, or on the functions of behavior.

Neither mentalism nor behaviorism are mutually exclusive fields; elements of one can be seen in the other, perhaps more so in modern times compared to the advent of psychology over a century ago.

Psychologist Allan Paivio used the term classical mentalism to refer to the introspective psychologies of Edward Titchener and William James. Despite Titchener being concerned with structure and James with function, both agreed that consciousness was the subject matter of psychology, making psychology an inherently subjective field.

Concurrently thriving alongside mentalism since the inception of psychology was the functional perspective of behaviorism. However, it was not until 1913, when psychologist John B. Watson published his article "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" that behaviorism began have a dominant influence. Watson's ideas sparked what some have called a paradigm shift in American psychology, leading to the objective and experimental study of human behavior, rather than subjective, introspective study of human consciousness. Behaviorists considered that the study of consciousness was impossible to do, and that the focus on it to that point had only been a hindrance to the field reaching its full potential. For a time, behaviorism would go on to be the dominant force driving psychological thought, advanced by the work of other luminaries such as Ivan Pavlov, Edward Thorndike, and B.F. Skinner.

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