Seven Major Perspectives in Psychology The early years of psychology were marked by the domination of a succession of different schools of thought. If you have ever taken a psychology course in school, you probably remember learning about these different schools which included structuralism, functionalism, psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and humanism. As psychology has grown, so has the number and variety of topics that psychologists investigate. Since the early 1960s, the field of psychology has flourished and continued to grow at a rapid pace, and so has the depth and breadth of subjects studied by psychologists. Today, few psychologists identify their outlook according to a particular school of thought. While you may still find some pure behaviorists or psychoanalysts, the majority of psychologists instead categorize their work according to their specialty area and perspective. Every topic in psychology can be looked at in a number of different ways. For exa...