History of Psychology

HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology is related to several other disciplines, including sociology, philosophy, anthropology, physiology, and neuroscience. Psychology was originally studied as a branch of philosophy and has been studied on some levels in ancient cultures, including the Egyptians.

Modern psychology was first thought of as an independent scientific field in Germany in the 1970s. It was originally studied in a research format by Wilhelm Wundt, who created the first psychological laboratory. Early researchers were William James, who first studied pragmatism, Hermann Ebbinghaus, who first studied memory, and Ivan Pavlov, who worked with dogs in the development of classical conditioning.

Borne out of experimental psychology were different kinds of applied psychology. Psychology was applied to many different fields, including the legal system and industry. The first psychology clinic was established by Lightner Witmer in the 1890s. Mental testing was also first established in the 1890s. It was also at this time that Sigmund Freud developed his theory and practice of psychoanalysis.

The early Twentieth Century brought about John B Watson and BF Skinner, who first studied issues related to behaviorism. This became popular because of the fact that behavior could be easily examined and quantified. These early behaviorists didn t concern themselves with the mind because it was considered to be too vague a topic to actually study.

The latter half of the Twentieth Century was when cognitive psychology was developed. The mind was increasingly studied in order to apply the findings to different aspects of applied psychology, including the field of artificial intelligence, which continues to be a popular psychological field of research.

The first uses of the term psychology” predates the practice of psychology. It was a branch of philosophy developed in the late 1500s. It was later popularized in the early 1700s by a German philosopher named Christian Wolff. It was originally thought of as the study of the soul. Rene Descartes looked at psychology as a part of his philosophy in

the early 1600s. Some of his works were not originally published because of possible criticism by the Catholic Church.

Early study that predated the transition to modern psychology included the study of mesmerism, which was considered a precursor to modern-day hypnosis, and phrenology, which was the study of the meaning of bumps on the skull. France Mesmer first brought about mesmerism in the late 1700s in Austria. It was used to cure different physical and mental illnesses. Mesmerism in its pure form was eventually discounted. Later, several physicians remade mesmerism into what is now referred to as hypnotism.

Immanuel Kant, in the late 1700s, first addressed the issue of whether or not psychology was an independent science apart from philosophy but he thought it could not be because it involved things that could not actually be quantified. Johann Herbart opposed this idea of Kant s, attempting to come up with mathematical models that could explain psychological phenomena. This led to researchers like Gustav Fechner, who first coined the term psychophysics, which looked at quantifying aspects of psychology.

The related subjects of neuropsychology and psychology came together in the mid1800s, when Charles Bell and Francois Magendie were able to distinguish between motor and sensory nerves. The electrical basis of muscle cell contraction was discovered and both Pierre Broca and Carl Wernicke uncovered the parts of the brain responsible for speech and language. The speed of nerve transmission was discovered by Hermann Helmholtz, as was the nature of our understanding of color vision and sound.

It was Wilhelm Wundt who first published a book on the study of psychological psychology, which led to his opening of the first experimental facility for the study of psychology. He gathered students from all parts of the world who studied under him in what was considered a widely expanding scientific field.

It is commonly known that the Austrian physician Sigmund Freud is considered the father of modern psychoanalysis. He also pioneered hypnosis, the concepts of free association, and dream interpretation—each used to identify unconscious beliefs that led to the phenomenon of hysteria. The emphasis was on sexual development as the source of a great many psychological disorders. He and Karl Jung identified

compartmentalized thinking, in which certain thoughts and behaviors are lost to the conscious self.

Both physicians agreed on the concept of ego but disagreed on the influence that sexuality had on the development of mental illnesses. Jung identified four different aspects of mental functioning that help to define a person s ego, which is the conscious self. These include:

• The ability to sense things in the outside world, called sensations.

• Feelings, which help to motivate our responses to sensations.

• Intellect, which compares a sensation to past sensations so as to understand its meaning.

• Intuition, which can help predict unexpected consequences.

Sigmund Freud s ideas were both influential and controversial. Few psychologists doubt that early childhood experiences shape the rest of the person s life. Freud changed his ideas from his early days to his later days and there is more criticism about his earlier works. Most of the criticism comes from his earlier works. Less controversial are his ideas on the importance of the relationship between the therapist and the client.

The first American to study psychology was William James, who was a psychologist who opened a psychology laboratory in the 1870s. He lectured on the senses and their relationship to thought. He published a book called The Principles of Psychology” in the late 1800s.

Another early American who studied psychology was Charles Peirce. He studied color vision as one of the major senses. He was joined by G. Stanley Hall, who studied experimental psychology in the 1880s. Hall was the founder of the American Journal of Psychology, where his work was first published. About 40 years later, Princeton University opened the first Department of Psychology. G. Stanley Hall was one of the founding members of the American Psychological Association. Over time, there was controversy that led to structuralism and functionalism in psychology, which will be discussed in a minute.

It can be said that Wilhelm Wundt was the first psychologist. He studied the conscious experience and undertook study of the different components of consciousness. He felt that the human mind was unique in that it was capable of introspection or internal perception”, which was the examination of one s own conscious experience. He made use of experienced observers who could report specific reactions to repeatable stimuli.

Wundt made major contributions to structuralism, which was the attempt to find structure out of the characteristics of the mind. He studied reaction times to various stimuli down to one-thousandth of a second in some cases. Structuralism was far less popular later on because it was not possible to train people consistently in the process of objective introspection.

William James had a different perspective on psychology. He studied Darwinian evolution and believed that people were the product of natural selection. He was the founder of functionalism, which was the study of how mental functions helped the individual fit into their environment. The interest was in the way the whole mind operated, rather than the parts of the mind.

Gestalt psychology was developed by several German psychologists who escaped Nazi Germany and came to the US. Gestalt basically means whole” and talks about the fact that, despite the separate parts of the sensory experience, these parts are related to one another in order to create a whole, which was a contradiction to structuralism developed by Wundt. Gestalt psychology didn t take hold in the US as much as it had in Germany.

There were several other researchers in the world who pioneered the ideas related to behaviorism. Ivan Pavlov in Russia studied reflexes elicited as a result of different stimuli. Pavlov worked on salivation in dogs both with and without the presence of actual food. The pairing of food with an alternate stimulus created a response to the alternate or learned stimulus. This was classical conditioning.

John B Watson was an American psychologist who believed it was impossible to analyze the mind objectively. He focused instead on observable behaviors. He was influential in shifting the focus of psychology from the mind to that of behavior. He and other behaviorists attempted to translate animal behavioral findings to human behavior. Behaviors and behavioral modification are used in many psychological settings.

BF Skinner was another American behaviorist who utilized aspects of reinforcement and punishment in order to drive behavior. He pioneered operant conditioning and made use of what s referred to as the Skinner box to study animal behaviors. The Skinner box used learning in rats to reinforce behaviors that would increase the chances of a reward or a punishment.

The two dominating features of American psychology in the Twentieth Century were psychoanalysis and behaviorism. There were, however, some psychologists who were not satisfied with these limitations. They formed the concepts that emphasized a predisposition for good as being important for human self-concept and behavior. They believed that the potential for good exists in all humans. This was the foundation for humanism, which was proposed by Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.

Maslow was a Twentieth century humanist who proposed Maslow s hierarchy of needs that help to motivate human behavior. If the needs lower down in the hierarchy are met, then some of the higher needs, such as social needs, will begin to motivate human behavior. Full potential is achieved when a person reaches self-actualization. Out of Maslow s work came research on meditation, happiness, and self-concept. Figure 1 shows Maslow s hierarchy of human needs:

Figure 1.