Limits and Constraints

Before structuralism, the prevailing viewpoint was science. Everyone believed patterns and common behaviors they observed in nature, human behavior or history could be attributed to science. They believed it could be understood and interpreted simply through the scientific method, and most respected science as the last word on all subjects. When structuralism came along, it was criticised as a viewpoint too based on hypotheticals and vague principles. For example, one of the main principles of structuralism is that “structural laws deal with coexistence, not change.” It was based rather on individual perception, interpretation, and opinion. Structuralism was even criticised for being contrary to known historical facts and ideas.

Primarily, structuralism’s limits lie in it’s inability to be used as a source of solid and dependable information. You can’t look at a work of literature and use structuralism to understand the language or the historical context. Rather, you can just use it as another, different way to interpret what the text says. It actually seems to make many interpretations more complicated and difficult to comprehend. It takes a homogenous approach in that it reads what it wants to read. The history and context are not taken into account, which limits the interpretation. It does not read the text around the text.

When structuralism is applied to psychology, it clearly makes analysis harder and more complicated. In psychology, structuralism is used to redefine elements of the human experience, and understand how they fit together to form patterns that make up a larger structure. This takes focus away from each individual case, and puts less demand on diagnosis and curing. It puts attention instead on the bigger picture and pattern concerning every person and their brain, instead of particular ones.

In anthropology, structuralism is used to examine the underlying structures of different cultures and time periods. It is effective in showing the basic similarities between different types of societies across time, but not at showing any differences, which would be more useful. The basic consensus of structural anthropology is that all cultures are equatable. This in an interesting thesis, but it is useless in finding explanations for historical differences between cultures and time periods.