Discuss the different approaches to psychology for the development of modern psychology. Modern psychology today plays a significant role in a vast number of fields such as health, education, sports and industry. Psychology can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, where doctors and philosophers studied and formed theories about the mind and behavior of human beings. However, it was not until the late 17th century that psychology was considered an independent field of study, made possible by the scientific methods used to study behavior and mental processes. “Only when researchers began to rely on carefully controlled observations and experiments to study the human mind did psychology begin to achieve an identity separate from its philosophical roots” (Shultz and Shultz 2011: 3) Throughout the history of psychology there they were developments of many schools of thought that contributed to the advancement of psychology into the complex and popular field that it is today. These schools of thought, also known as psychological approaches, had different ideas about how human behavior and mental processes work, what aspects to study, and the methodologies used to study them. Overall, all approaches form a comprehensive understanding of human behavior and allow modern psychologists to look at cases from different perspectives and understand them better. The very first school of thought called structuralism, was introduced by Wilhelm Wundt, known as "the 'Father of Modern Psychology'. Structuralism focused on the basic elements of the mind and emphasized sensation and perception. Wundt's greatest contribution was introspection which explored conscious mental processes through loo...... middle of paper ...... and was greatly influenced by it. A modern approach is the psychodynamic approach which focuses on the unconscious rather than the conscious mind. It completely ignored free will as it believed that behavior was motivated by unconscious internal forces over which the individual had little control and contrasted with behavioral, cognitive, and biological approaches. He introduced the idea that the unconscious is significant in human behavior, the importance of early childhood experiences, and the use of therapy to improve human life (Stangor n.d.: 32). Psychodynamics was able to explain the irrationality of human actions that could not be explained by other approaches since they focused only on the conscious mind. According to Schottenbauer et. al., psychodynamics plays an important role in clinical psychology in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder and trauma.