What aspects of consciousness did the functionalists deal with?
Wundt and Titchener dealt with the elements of the mind. Wundt majored in experimental psychology, while Titchener majored in structural psychology. The new psychologists were not interested in this ideology. They wanted to know the function of processes in the mind and their application in the real world.
Functionalist wanted to study the mind from a point where its functions can be studied. They were not interested in the composition or the mental elements that made up the mind. They wanted to explore the accumulation of the simple mental processes and their functions.
The functionalists were interested in the accomplishment of the mental processes. This new school of thought wanted to know what the mind could do. The functionalist was keen to understand the application of psychology. Functional psychology was growing at a rapid rate in U.S.A (United States of America).
The functional psychology had its roots from the work of Darwin and Galton. Work related to animal psychology, functions of consciousness, and individual human behavior were being studied.
This was going on even during Wundt’s and Titchener’s era, but they chose to ignore it. When psychology was brought to America only the laboratory rats and individual differences got prominence.