Essay on The History of Psychology

Psychology is a scientific application of behaviourism. It evolved from three key areas of research, philosophy, biology and physics. In 1879 a man named Wilhelm Wundt created the first laboratory with the sole

Psychology viewed as an old discipline. Psychology can trace its roots to the 5 century BC to the Greek philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, because we grapple with the same questions they attempted to answer. On the other hand, we could view psychology as emerging when philosophy and physiology merged to include experimentation and empirical methods to answer those questions about 200 years ago. Thus, it also viewed as a new discipline in 1879, which the approach taken to study make psychology became a science and distinguish from the older discipline philosophy and form modem

Psychology started in 1879, the word psychology derives from Latin, meaning 'the study of the soul'. Now with accordance to the oxford dictionary (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/psychology- Accessed 14/10/2017) : Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context. In this essay I will be outlining and evaluating the five major perspectives of Psychology, and their case studies.

As far back as the time when man first discovered ways to communicate with one another he has attempted to understand and explain the course of historical events. In considering the historical development of scientific psychology two main views of the historical progress the field of science have emerged: personalistic theory and naturalistic theory.

Fernando Vidal’s The Sciences of the Soul: The Early Modern Origins of Psychology ventures into the history of psychology as an academic and attempts to explore its roots from a new perspective. Vidal deviates from the standard presumption that psychology began during the age of reason as a discipline created by William Wundt; contrary to the beliefs of many scholars who consider the enlightenment as the foreground for psychology and its development. Instead, Vidal advocates that psychology as a discipline first appeared in the sixteenth century, initially as a neologism referred to as psychologia which circulated in various university philosophy textbooks used by Protestant scholastics. Vidal goes on to further illustrate how during the sixteenth

Deborah J. Coon’s article give the history of psychology. The article did a great job explaining how psychology as we know it today came to be. She did this by examining the standardization of introspection. In order for the shift of psychology as field to a modern techno scientific era from the medieval era to occur, it was essential that the experimental psychologists study the mind than the philosophers. The problem the psychologists faced here was how to make introspection for scientific so the field of psychology can be different from that of philosophy. When methods to standardize introspection failed, the field of psychology abandoned introspection. Then came the rise of behaviorism, intelligent testing and industrial psychology.

One of the next major fields of psychology was introduced by American psychologist, William James. William James wrote the first American introductory psychology textbook, Principles of Psychology, in 1890 (Locurto, 2013). William James, influenced by Charles Darwin’s biological principles, defined the study of psychology as the study of mental life, but it was the function of mental life that was central-consciousness must have survival value- to his definition. It is in James’ work that the transition from dualism, a term coined by French philosopher Rene Descartes stating that the body exerts a greater influence on the mind than previously believed in history, to a more monistic functionalism where the brain and the mind are the same (Locurto, 2013). Moreover his believed in the free will, according to his auto-motor theory of behavior

When psychology first began to become a science in 1860, it was more of a field of philosophy than an actual medical study. It dealt with a more abstract concept than other medical fields; the human body is something concrete that you can physically look at and study whereas, at the time, you could not physically see the mind.

“The roots of psychology can be traced back through centuries. Cave men and cave women probably wondered why each behaved as they did. Since at least the time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece, psychological topics have inspired lively curiosity” (Bernstein, 6). In 1879, founded by Wilhelm Wundt the science of psychology was born. Since then psychology has been and always will be an ever-growing scientific field.

In order to better understand psychology and psychotherapy is it crucial to understand those who helped to build it up to what it is today. Who they are, what they did and why they did it. What makes their contributions crucial? The need to recognize their impact during their time and how that impact continues to influence psychology in today’s age. The subject today is on Gestalt psychology and progenitor Dr. Fritz Perls.

E.B. Titchener, a disciple of Wundt’s, changed the premise of the discipline when he brought it to America (Schultz, 2012, p.88). In 1896 Titchener published Outline of Psychology, which established Structuralism ("The History of Psychology"). Structuralism would become popular and endure for twenty years, ending with Titchener death (Schultz, 2012, p.88).Structuralism dealt with the “study of the structure of conscious experience. The goal was to find the 'atoms ' of conscious

The science of psychology evolved for a mix between biology and philosophy. Discussions about these two fields of study date back as far as the Greek time period of Aristotle and Socrates. The word Psychology is derived from the

Introduction: There are three well-known influential thinkers who are considered to be pioneers in the field of psychology. It could be argued that without …., the emergence of psychology as we know it might not have ever happened, at least in its present form. Freud is considered by his modern-day counterparts to be the founding father of analytic psychology, as he is the first to have come up with an albeit rudimentary, but nevertheless valuable model of the human psyche. Prior to his groundbreaking work, the nature of human consciousness was largely debated and theorized by medical doctors and theologians.

When psychology was first established as a science it separated from biology and philosophy, the debate over how to describe and explain the human mind and behavior began. The first school of thought, structuralism, was advocated by the founder of the first psychology lab, Wilhelm Wundt. Almost immediately, other theories began to emerge and vie for dominance in psychology. The following are some of the major thought that have influenced our knowledge and understanding of psychology: Structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism:

Gary Hatfield in his article “Psychology, Philosophy and Cognitive Science: Reflections on The History and Philosophy of Experimental Psychology ’’ published in journal of Mind and Language on 3rd June 2002 volume number 17 by Blackwell Publishers focuses on critically examining the views that psychology came into existence in 1879 and how finally it became scientific through the influence of logical empiricism. The article puts forward evidence to justify that there was a conspiracy among the early psychologists where few thought that psychology became scientific by freeing itself from philosophy when the laboratory was setup by Wundt and some regard the emergence of behaviorism and positivism to call psychology as a science. The author considers some milestones and key themes in the history and philosophy of the experimental psychology and of perception and