A Brief Overview of the History of Psychology
Lyrics written by: Amy Brausch & Alesia Hawkins
Performed by: Amy Brausch, Alesia Hawkins, Scott Pickett, Marilyn Garcia, Mandy Rabenhorst, Adeya Richmond, and Madhavi Reddy
(to hear the song click here)
Aristotle, ancient Greece, Plato's forms, Socrates
Fire, water, Earth, air, the souls equal mind
Heraclitis, river flows, Pythagorean's gold ratio
Empiricits, ontology, thinkers of the time
Middle Ages, thought stalls, Augustine, Latin's law
Burton, Aquinas writes, and the witch craze is a fright
Charlemagne, man's free, Rome has got a new king
Scholasticists, monotheists, dark magic rules the night
`
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
Thought we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it
Francis Bacon, Newton's law, science can explain it all
Rene Descartes, nativist, "I think therefore I am."
Leibniz, logic rules, monad theory, taught school
Kant writes three books, knowledge in our hands
Berkley, Locke's impression, knowledge is from our perception
Primary qualities, knowledge from experience key
Leibniz, new position, activity, apperception
David Hume, repetition, laws of association
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
Thought we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it
Franz Gall, phrenology, bigger brain, smart you'll be
Broca, damaged brain, people thought to be insane
Studies of hearing, vision, sensation to perception
Helmholtz's color theory, colors combine more than three
Unconscious inference, perceptions, experiments
Astigmatism, retina, distortions, fovea
Fechner, sunlight, stared too long, lost his sight
Weber's law, JND, psychophysics came to be
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
Thought we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it
Wilhem Wundt, Germany, father of psychology
System, Titchener, labs across the country
Information processing, founded Volkpsychologie
Charles Darwin, Fitzroy, evolution, oh boy!
Harvey Carr, adaptive set, learning's there when needs are met
Stanley Hall, first in all, genius did on him befall!
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
Thought we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it
America, function's prime, mind's purpose, James' time
Habits formed, good, bad, self, "will" yourself to better health
Will takes effort, elementary, achievement when it's voluntary
Lange theory of emotion, change behavior, that's the notion
Watson, little Al, Skinner's box, pigeon's pal
Freud's theory, mind addressed, Oedipus, thoughts repressed
Electra, Freud's couch, childhood conflict, dreams have clout
Superego, ego, id, Psychology is back again!
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
Thought we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it
Aristotle
was a philosopher during the Ancient Greek times. He was a student of Plato,
but later rejected Plato’s theory of the forms because he felt that they did not
explain anything. He instead believed that all living things have a purpose,
and each has a material, efficient, formal, and final cause. Aristotle also
spoke of the hierarchy of souls, including the nutritive soul, the sensitive
soul, and the rational soul. He is credited with developing laws of
association, such as similarity, contiguity, and contrasts.
Back to top
Plato
was also a philosopher during the Ancient Greek times and taught many students,
including Aristotle. Plato developed his theory of the forms, which stated that
all matter is made up of certain three-dimensional shapes. For example, fire
was thought to be made up of triangles because Plato believed that the pain felt
from touching fire was similar to touching the points of triangles. He also
believed water particles were made up of icosahedrons, which resemble spheres.
Plato’s forms were thought to be the blueprint for all matter.
Heraclitis was
an Ancient Greek philosopher and an early empiricist. He believed that
everything is constantly changing as it flows through time. He is known to have
quipped, " A person can not descend to the same river twice."
Back to top
Pythagorus
was the first Ancient Greek to describe himself as a philosopher and led a group
of "Pythagoreans" in almost cult-like fashion. The Pythagoreans were strict
vegetarians and believed in harmony in the world. Pythagorus did much work in
numbers and mathematics and thought some numbers to be sacred. He is well-known
for developing the Pythagorean Theorem, which states that the squared sums of
the two sides of a right triangle equal the length of the hypotenuse squared.
This is also known as phi, or the Golden Ratio.
St.
Augustine lived from 354-430 AD. He wrote the autobiography titled
"Confessions," which included his thoughts on emotions, memory, and dreams.This
has come to be known as folk psychology pr "common sense" psychology. St.
Augustine worked diligently to reconcile faith and reason, and wrote extensively
on the similarities between the truth of the forms and religious beliefs.
Thomas
Aquinas was a writer during the Middle Ages and part of the scholasticist
movement. Aquinas was a Dominican priest and did much writing to try to
reconcile religious thought with the writings of Aristotle. This was important
work during a time when there was little scientific thinking occurring in the
world and the West was skeptical of Plato’s teachings.
Charlemagne was crowned the Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope during the Middle Ages. This move was very symbolic because it united the crown with the church. Charlemagne declared that the official language of the church and state would be Latin. He is also credited with forming and establishing the first universities. Between 1125-1200, a second translation movement occurred and the writings of eastern philosophers were translated into Latin.
Dark magic and
the witch craze lasted for about 300 years during the Middle Ages or "Dark
Ages." During this time, over 30,000 people were tried and executed as
witches. The accusers acted on the theory that everyone has free will, so
witches must have invited Satan into their lives to receive supernatural
powers. Witches were thought to have made a "pactum implicitum" or pact with
the devil. Those who were accused of being witches were most likely tortured
for a confession and were not permitted to face their accuser in court.
Francis Bacon
was an Englishman who lived from 1561-1626. He was elected to Parliament, but
was impeached for accepting bribes. He was known to be very articulate, an
excellent writer, and has been hypothesized to be the true author of
Shakespeare’s work. Bacon developed the Novum Orgonum, which was a new method
to follow as scientists. He also emphasized experimentation and distinguished
between light-shedding experiments and fruit-bearing experiments. The former
were meant to establish connections between two things, while the latter were
meant to test hypotheses. Bacon advocated that scientists could conduct
experiments on anything and they were an excellent means of fact-gathering.
Isaac Newton
was a scientist who lived between 1642-1727. His name is equated with the
Scientific Revolution, which was a time when science was rejuvenated after
coming out of the Middle Ages. Newton employed the new Baconian methodology and
was known as a mathematical genius. He had a mechanistic view of the world, and
served on the Royal Society of London as both a member and its president until
his death. Newton is, of course, famous for his pioneer work in the field of
physics and developing Newton’s Law, his theory about gravity.
Rene Descartes was a French philosopher who lived between 1596-1650. He was a rationalist, a nativist, and is known for his quote, "I think, therefore, I am." Some might call Descartes a skeptic, because he argued that knowledge could be gained through doubting everything and accepting only what proved to be indubitable. Descartes also wrote about his ideas about how the human body functioned. His theories are known as mechanistic physiology, because he hypothesized that the nerves are hollow tubes through which animal spirits flow to trigger movements in the body. Descartes also believed in the soul, but retained only the rational soul from Aristotle’s hierarchy. Overall, Descartes emphasized that one can deduce knowledge from other pieces of knowledge.
While serving in the army of the Emperor of Germany, René Descartes spent one day in a stove-heated room mediating on his own thoughts and formulated the basic principles of his philosophy. He decided to doubt everything until he found something so self-evidently true that it could not be doubted. He found that he could not doubt his own existence as a self-conscious, thinking being. The belief that doubting is an act of thinking led to the famous motto: “Cogito, ergo sum” translated as “I think therefore I am”.
Immanuel Kant
was a German philosopher who lived between 1724-1804. He described himself as
being awakened from "my dogmatic slumbers" in the middle of his life after
reading work by David Hume. Kant inferred that actions are connected by cause
and effect and went on to write three books. The books are: The Critique of
Pure Reason, The Critique of Practical Reason, and The Critique of Judgment.
His books dealt with a critical examination of reason and posed the question,
how do we know things? He also wrote about time, and noted that events in the
external world need to be distinguishable in time and space. Kant argued that
time is not empirical in the same sense that objects are, and that one must have
a sense of time and space to make pure intuitions. However, Kant believed that
psychology must remain a philosophical discipline rather than a scientific one.
)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
conceived of the universe as composed of an infinity of geometrical-point
entities called monads, each of which is to some extent living and possessing
some degree of consciousness. Both humans and animals contained monads.
Leibniz argues that God created the universe such that there was preestablished
harmony between monads. Leibniz later argued that the universe is governed by
efficient causes. He distinguished perception from sensation to understand the
world. Leibniz argued that perception was a raw confused idea, not really
conscious, which animals, as well as humans can possess. He differentiated
between petite perception and perception using a metaphor: one
does not hear the sound of a single drop of water hitting the beach; this is a
petite perception. Yet a wave crashing on the beach is but thousands of drops
hitting the beach, and this we do hear. Thus, our perception is made up of many
petite perceptions each too small to be heard but together making a conscious
experience (possible implications for the existence of the unconscious!!).
Leibniz argued that apperception was a process that occurs allowing a person to
refine and sharpen their perceptions, and become reflectively aware of them in
conscious. Leibniz went on to state that perception then becomes sensation.
George Berkeley agreed with Locke’s view that knowledge is about ideas ultimately rooted in sensation. Locke believed that the existence of “real” objects exist beyond our perception and have unobservable properties. Berkeley argued that Locke’s belief in matter as something apart from perception was open to skepticism. Berkeley’s famous motto: “Esse est percipi” translated as “To exist, is to be perceived. Locke’s view that all we know are our ideas, Berkeley added that there is no permanent material of reality apart from our perception.
David Hume believed that complex experiences were simple ideas (derived from impressions) united by the principle of association. For Hume, association was considered a kind of attraction which in the mental world would be found to have extraordinary effects just as in the natural world. He believed cause and effect was the most important law underlying most everyday reason. Contrary to Berkeley, Hume asserted that a material world exists and one assumes the world acts on the senses so as to cause one to perceive it. Hume argued that beliefs in causes are learned (primarily through association) through experience, and our ability to generalize from our experiences is not based on reason. Also, Hume employed the principle of habit. He argued that repetition of an act or operation leads us to renew the act or operation without being driven by any reasoning or process of understanding.
Franz Gall is regarded as the founder of neurophysiology because he was the first to take seriously the idea that the brain was the specific organ of mental activity. He argued that studying human nature should begin with studying the function of the brain. Gall believed that well-developed faculties (e.g., attention, memory, and imagination) were related to well-developed parts of the brain. Gall observed individual behavior and correlated their behavior to specific skull shapes and regions of the brain. Gall soon had a long list of faculties like destructiveness, friendship, and language that were located in different parts of the brain.
For more information on phrenology, click here.
A
breakthrough in the study of the functions of the brain suggested that Gall was
at least correct in his view that different parts of the brain have specific
behavioral functions! Pierre Paul Broca observed that patients with speech
disorders showed (during autopsy), damage to the same area of the left frontal
lobe of the brain. In contrast to Gall’s view, each part of the brain was
assigned a discrete sensory or behavioral function resulting from an extension
of the sensorimotor nerve distinction to the cerebellum. Controversy still
exists today among neurophysiologists regarding whether or not the brain acts as
a unit and information in one part of the brain is possibly present in other
parts of the brain.
)
Hermann Helmholtz proposed the Trichromatic theory. He suggested that the
retina contains three different kinds of receptor cell, each one responding most
strongly to light waves of one of the three primary colors (red, green, and
blue-violet), and with diminishing strength to light waves increasingly
different from it. His theory added to energy theory proposed by Muller, that
individual nerves transmit sensory messages not only of a specific kind (i.e.,
visual, auditory, tactile) but also of a specific quality (i.e., color).
Helmholtz’s theory of unconscious inferences suggests that we make calculations or inferences that are unconscious and unconsciously learned, similar to how language is learned spontaneously and without instruction. Helmholtz reasoned that just as children learn language, they spontaneously and unconsciously learn the meaning of ideals.
Ernst Heinrich Weber is known for
coining the phrase, just noticeable difference (JND) that refers to the
smallest perceptible difference between two sensations. Weber collected data in
support of the general principle that a JND in the intensity of a
sensation is a function of the change in the magnitude of a stimulus by a
constant factor of its original magnitude. In articulating the relationship
which Fechner later termed "Weber's Law," Weber provided an existence proof for
the possibility of establishing quantitative relationships between variations in
physical and mental events. By linking these relationships to the nervous
system, he helped establish the epistemological function of the nervous system
in mediating the relationship between mind and the physical environment.
Wilhem Wundt
was a German physiologist who lived between 1832-1920. Wundt is known as the
father of experimental psychology. Contrary to Kant’s beliefs, Wundt discovered
that there were several different methods available for conducting scientific
experiments on internal mental processes or physiological processes. Wundt is
credited for developing the first system of psychology and establishing the
first institute for studying psychology. In 1879, Wundt opened the fully
functioning psychology laboratory. By the end of his life, Wundt had trained
over 24,000 students and directed over 200 dissertations. Students were able to
train with psychologists instead of physicists, philosophers, and biologists.
Wundt himself studied immediate experience, information processing, and the
social construction of knowledge. He also founded what’s known as "Volkpsychologie,"
or folk psychology, which studies language, myths, and culture outside the realm
of scientific capabilities.
Back to top
Edward
Titchener was an Englishman and student of Wundt’s who lived between 1867-1927.
Over time, he came to disagree with some of Wundt’s teachings, most notably
Wundt’s idea that introspection had serious limitations. Titchener then
developed his school of atomism which had the goal to conduct atomistic analyses
of the elements of consciousness. Titchener worked at Cornell University in New
York where he was known to conduct his lab with an "iron hand" and lecture in
his academic robes. He was a large advocate of structuralism, which was an
introspective approach to psychology. He was also known to have strong
visualizing tendencies, and often described abstract words such as "meaning" in
concrete terms. He believed that all conscious experience could be accessed
through introspection if one knew how to do it properly. Needless to say,
Titchener’s work in the United States was confused with Wundt’s work and
resulted in Wundt’s work being misunderstood by many Americans.
Back to top
Charles Darwin
was an Englishman who lived between 1809-1882. A young Darwin interviewed with
Captain Fitzroy for the position of naturalist aboard The Beagle. Although
Darwin did not think the interview went well, and Fitzroy was skeptical about
Darwin because of the shape of his nose, Darwin was offered the position and
embarked on a most important journey. The Beagle’s journey spanned 5 years and
traversed the globe. Darwin was able to gather and observe many species of
plants and animals, which ultimately led to his theory of natural selection and
the evolution of species. Darwin ruminated for 20 years about his theory before
he published his book, The Origin of the Species. He was worried that his book
would be controversial, and with good reason. The spirit of the times did not
look positively to his theory that seemed to contradict the creation story from
the Bible. Nevertheless, evolutionary psychology is still an important, though
sometimes controversial, area of the field.
Back to top
Harvey Carr
worked at the University of Chicago and lived between 1873-1954. Carr was a
functionalist, and focused his research on learning and the "adaptive set." The
adaptive set includes a motive that serves as a stimulus, an environment, and a
response that satisfies the motive. He argues that learning can occur when
needs are met and that the environment is important for responses. Another
interest of Carr’s was space perception.
Back to top
G. Stanley Hall was born in the
United States and lived between 1844-1924. Hall spent some time in seminary,
but chose to study psychology after being shunned for his Darwinian interests.
He finally settled in at Harvard University and received the first American
Ph.D. in experimental psychology under William James’ direction. Hall then
accepted the first professorship of psychology at the new John Hopkins
University. There he created the first working American laboratory in
psychology. Hall also established the first American journal dedicated to
psychology. Hall founded the American Psychological Association and served as
its first president. Hall’s interests included evolutionary psychology,
recapitulation theory, and studies on adolescence and transitional periods.
William
James is known as America’s Psychologist. His philosophy was incorporated into
the book Principles of Psychology. Similar to Darwin’s view, James
believed that understanding the function of consciousness was more important
than understanding the content. He asserted that the primary function of
consciousness is to choose. James was
also one of the first writers to use the term self-esteem, which he
described as a self-feeling, that depends on what one decides to be and to
accomplish. James argued that self-esteem may be raised, either by succeeding
in our endeavors or in the face of constant disappointments, by lowering our
sights and surrendering or giving up certain actions. James' belief in God
permeates his psychology and plays an important role in his understanding of
self. For example, his discussion of the soul as a combining medium of thought
or consciousness is filled with references to a spiritual being and the role
that such a being may play in understanding an individual's self.
For for more information on William James, visit this site: james.htm.
William James defined an act of will as one accompanied by some subjective sense of mental or attentional effort. Acting voluntarily and effortful was of primary importance. James was deeply committed to free will from experience, believing that he pulled himself out of a deep depression by “willing” himself to live again. Regarding psychology, James was conflicted because he accepted determinism as the only scientifically acceptable view of behavior. Although James changed his focus to looking at emotion and cognition, the conflict remained and has lead American psychologists to shift away from consciousness and towards behavior.
William James’ famous theory of emotions, James-Lange theory, suggested that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change. James believed that emotion is actually the consequence rather than the cause of bodily changes associated with the emotional expression. This explained the notion that emotions represent the perception of bodily reaction. Since Carl Lange, a Danish physiologist, published a similar view of emotion, the theory was named James-Lange theory to honor both men.
B.F. Skinner is famous for the Skinner’s Box.
This allowed Skinner to study behavior in a more
controlled way than
previously studied. Specifically, this enabled him to study actively
acquired learning even more systematically. He established Shaping as a
part of operant conditioning. He believed that complex behaviors could be
thought of as chains of simple ones and he developed ways to build up complex
sequences of simple responses in animals. Skinner used pigeons to study
this area and illustrated how pigeons could be trained to perform behaviors like
rolling a ball back and forth to each other similar to a game of ping pong.
In Skinner’s paper, A Critique of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories, Skinner critiqued Freud asserting that Freud’s great discovery was that much human behavior has unconscious causes. However, to Skinner, Freud’s great mistake was in inventing the id, ego, and supergo – and it’s mental processes to explain human behavior. For Skinner, the lesson gained from the unconscious is that mental states are irrelevant to behavior.
Psychoanalysis was different from the psychology of consciousness. Before Freud, the field of psychology had been largely defined by sensation and perception, and normal, human mind understood through introspection, attempting to make an experimental science out of past philosopher’s questions and theories. Freud focused on abnormal minds and unconsciousness. Freud investigated the mind by probing for human conduct in the unconscious, reaching back to ones’ childhood as explanation for pathology. This was very different from other German founders of psychology like Wundt and Gestalt psychologists. Unconscious causes of Hysterical symptoms made their first analytic appearance in Studies in Hysteria. In Studies in Hysteria, Freud moved away from a purely medical-physiological view of Hysteria towards a psychological view involving unconscious processes. Freud is known for his three masterpieces – The Interpretation of Dreams, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, and Civilization and It’s Discontent.
In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud introduced the concept: Oedipus complex. Oedipus complex (named after the mythical Greek king who kills his father and married his mother) was described by Freud as a typical dream which expresses infantile wishes regarding one’s parents. These wishes are repressed and persist in unconscious to later provide the latent content for dreams. Specifically, these wishes are made up of a child’s sexual desire for the opposite gender parent (e.g., son’s sexual desire for his mother) and a child’s desire of killing the same sex parent because that parent is seen as his/her rival.
Suggested Readings:
Fancher, R. E. (1996). Pioneers of Psychology (3rd ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Leahey, T. A. (1992). History of Psychology: Main Currents in Psychological Thought (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Rudnytsky, P. L. (1987). Freud and Oedipus. New York: Columbia University Press.
For more information on the History of Psychology, click here.