Historical foundation

of psychology
Psychology Then: The History of Psychology
In The Beginning: Wundt, Introspection, And The Laboratory

• Psychology is a relatively new field in the realm of the sciences, only about 130 years old.
• It’s not that no one thought about why people and animals do the things they do before then; on
the contrary, there were philosophers, medical doctors, and physiologists who thought about little
else—particularly with regard to people.
• Aristotle: wrote about the relationship of the soul to the body (with the two being aspects of the
same underlying structure) in De Anima as well as other works
• Plato: Concept of Dualism
• Rene Descartes: believed that the pineal gland (a small organ at the base of the brain involved in
sleep) was the seat of the soul
• Socrates: Method of Introspection.

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STRUCTURALISM
• Formal beginning of modern psychology is traced back to 1879 when the first experimental
laboratory was established in Leipzig, Germany by Wilhelm Wundt.

• Wundt and his students (esp. Edward Titchener) founded the school of psychology Called
structuralism.

• Wundt believed that the mind was made up of thoughts, experiences, emotions, and other
basic elements. In order to inspect these nonphysical elements, students had to learn to
think objectively about their own thoughts—after all, they could hardly read someone
else’s mind.

• Wundt called this process objective introspection, the process of objectively examining
and measuring one’s own thoughts and mental activities.

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• Structuralism attempted to break conscious experience down into objective
sensations, such as sight or taste, and Subjective feelings, such as emotional
responses, and mental images such as memories or dreams. Structuralists believed
that the mind functions by combining objective and subjective elements of
experience

• Titchener, a student of Wundt, brought psychology in the form of structuralism to

America. Structuralism died out in the early twentieth century. Margaret F.
Washburn, Titchener’s student, was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in
psychology in 1894 and published The Animal Mind.

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FUNCTIONALISM
• An American psychologist, William James, who had set up a psychological
laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts soon after the setting up of the Leipzig
laboratory, developed what was called a functionalist approach to the study of the
human mind.
• William James believed that instead of focusing on the structure of the mind,
psychology should instead study what the mind does and how behaviour functions
in making people deal with their environment.
• William James was a founder of the school of functionalism, which focused on
behavior as well as the mind or consciousness. Functionalists looked at how our
experience helps us function more adaptively in our environments—for example,
how habits help us cope with common situations. (When eating with a spoon, we
do not create an individual plan to bring each morsel of food to our mouths.)

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• Many of psychology’s early pioneers were minorities such as the African
Americans who, despite prejudice and racism, made important contributions to the
study of human and animal behavior.

• Functionalism influenced the modern fields of educational psychology,

evolutionary psychology, and industrial/organizational psychology.

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GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY: THE WHOLE IS
GREATER
THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS

• In the 1920s, another school of psychology—Gestalt psychology—was prominent in

Germany.
• Gestalt” means whole, configuration, pattern, and Gestalt psychologists illustrated
how we tend to perceive separate pieces of information as integrated wholes,
referred to the approach taken by Max Wertheimer and his colleagues Kurt Koffka
and Wolfgang Köhler, all of whom eventually emigrated to the United States.
• Gestalt psychologists focused on perception and how perception influences thinking
and problem solving.
• In contrast to behaviorists, Gestalt psychologists argued that we cannot hope to
understand human nature by focusing only on overt behavior.
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• In contrast to structuralists, they claimed that
we cannot explain human perceptions,
emotions, or thought processes in terms of basic
units. Perceptions are more than the sums of
their parts: Gestalt psychologists saw our
perceptions as wholes that give meaning to
parts. Gestalt psychologists showed that we tend
to perceive separate pieces of information as
integrated wholes depending on the contexts in
which they occur

• Gestalt psychologists believed that learning

could be active and purposeful, not merely
responsive and mechanical as in Watson’s and
Skinner’s experiments

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SIGMUND FREUD’S THEORY OF
PSYCHOANALYSIS
• Psychoanalysis is both a theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy developed
by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) around the turn of the twentieth century.

THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

Freud believed that the mind was divided into three parts: the preconscious, conscious, and
unconscious minds

Unconscious mind- level of the mind in which thoughts, feelings, memories, and other
information are kept that are not easily or voluntarily brought into consciousness.

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Figure:
This iceberg represents the three levels
of the mind. The part of the iceberg
visible above the surface is the
conscious mind. Just below the surface
is the preconscious mind, everything that
is not yet part of the conscious mind.
Hidden deep below the surface is the
unconscious mind, feelings, memories,
thoughts, and urges that cannot be easily
brought into consciousness. While two
of the three parts of the personality (ego
and superego) exist at all three levels of
awareness, the id is completely in the
unconscious mind.

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FREUD’S DIVISIONS OF THE PERSONALITY- could be divided into three parts, each
existing at one or more levels of conscious awareness.

1. ID: If It Feels Good, Do It: First and most

primitive part of the personality, present in the
infant, is the id. Id is a Latin word that means
“it.” The id is a completely unconscious,
pleasure-seeking, amoral part of the
personality that exists at birth, containing all of
the basic biological drives: hunger, thirst,
self-preservation, and sex.
It demands immediate gratification of needs
with no regard for consequences.

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2. EGO: The Executive Director: To deal with reality, a second part of the personality develops
called the ego. The ego, from the Latin word for “I,” is mostly conscious and is far more
rational, logical, and cunning than the id.
The ego works on the reality principle, which is the need to satisfy the demands of the id only
in ways that will not lead to negative consequences. This means that sometimes the ego decides
to deny the id its desires because the consequences would be painful or too unpleasant.
2. SUPEREGO: The Moral Watchdog: third and final part of the personality, the moral center
of personality, the superego. The superego (also Latin, meaning “over the self ”) develops as a
preschool-aged child learns the rules, customs, and expectations of society.
The super ego contains the conscience, the part of the personality that makes people feel guilt,
or moral anxiety, when they do the wrong thing. It is not until the conscience develops that
children have a sense of right and wrong.

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BEHAVIORISM
• By the early 1900s, psychologist John B.Watson had tired of the arguing among the
structuralists; he challenged the functionalist viewpoint, as well as psychoanalysis, with
his own “science of behavior,” or Behaviorism- school of psychology that focuses on
learning observable behavior.

• Watson wanted to bring psychology back to a focus on scientific inquiry, and he felt that
the only way to do that was to ignore the whole consciousness issue and focus only on
observable behavior— something that could be directly seen and measured. He had read
of Pavlov’s work and thought that conditioning could form the basis of his new
perspective of behaviorism

• Watson’s Experiment with Little Albert and the white rats (happy 9 month old
conditioned to be afraid of white rats).

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• B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) also contributed to behaviorism. He believed that organisms learn
to behave in certain ways because they have been reinforced for doing so—that is, their
behavior has a positive outcome. He demonstrated that laboratory animals can be trained to
carry out behaviors through strategic use of reinforcers, such as food.

• Watson, and others ascribing to behaviorism, argued that nearly all behavior is a result of
conditioning and the environment shapes behavior by reinforcing specific habits

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Contemporary
Perspectives in
Psychology
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PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE

• Focus may still include the unconscious mind and its

influence over conscious behavior and on early
childhood experiences, but with less of an emphasis on
sex and sexual motivations and more emphasis on the
development of a sense of self, social and interpersonal
relationships, and the discovery of other motivations
behind a person’s behavior

• The psychodynamic approach includes all theories that

were based on his ideas, e.g., Carl Jung, Melanie Klein,
Alfred Adler, Anna Freud, and Erik Erikson.

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BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE

• Behaviorism is still also very influential

• B. F. Skinner became the new leader of the field
• Skinner developed a theory called operant conditioning, to
explain how voluntary behavior is learned (Skinner, 1938).
• In this theory, behavioral responses that are followed by
pleasurable consequences are strengthened, or reinforced.

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HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE

• Often called the “third force” in psychology

• Focus on people’s ability to direct their own lives.
• optimistic view of human nature (human nature is innately good)
• Is a perspective that emphasizes looking at the whole person, and the uniqueness of
each individual.
• Humanists held the view that people have free will, the freedom to choose their own
destiny, and strive for self-actualization, the achievement of one’s full potential.
• Two of the earliest and most famous founders of this view were Abraham Maslow
(1908–1970) and Carl Rogers (1902–1987).

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• Abraham Maslow proposed that an individual is motivated by a hierarchy of
needs. Basic needs must be met before higher ones can be satisfied. Arranged in order
from lowest to highest (in a hierarchy)- from the lowest level of physiological needs to
the highest level of self-actualization need.
• Carl Rogers, assumed that within each individual there is a biological drive toward
growth of self‐concept, which can ultimately lead to self‐actualization- the striving to
fulfill one’s innate capacities and capabilities.
• Developed a therapeutic approach called client‐centered therapy, in which the therapist
offers the client unconditional positive regard- positive regard that is given without
conditions or strings attached.

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COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
• Cognitive psychology, which focuses on how people think, remember, store, and use
information,
• The development of computers, the work of Piaget with children, Chomsky’s analysis of
Skinner’s views of language, and discoveries in biological psychology all stimulated an
interest in studying the processes of thought.
• The cognitive perspective with its focus on memory, intelligence, perception, thought
processes, problem solving, language, and learning has become a major force in
psychology
• It assumes that: (1) only by studying mental processes can we fully understand what
organisms do, and (2) we can study mental processes in an objective fashion by focusing
on specific behaviors (just as behaviorists do) but interpreting them in terms of underlying
mental processes. In making these interpretations,
• cognitive psychologists have often relied on an analogy between the mind and a
computer. Incoming information is processed in various ways: It is selected, compared,
and combined with other information already in memory, transformed, rearranged, and so
on. 25
SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

• This perspective actually combines two areas of study: social psychology, which is the
study of groups, social roles, and rules of social actions and relationships; and cultural
psychology, which is the study of cultural norms,* values, and expectations.
• These two areas are related in a way that, they are both talk about the effect that people
have on one another, either individually or in a larger group such as a culture
• The sociocultural perspective is important because it reminds people that the way they
and others behave (or even think) is influenced not only by whether they are alone, with
friends, in a crowd, or part of a group but also by the social norms, fads, class differences,
and ethnic identity concerns of the particular culture in which they live.
• Cross-cultural research also fits within this perspective. In cross-cultural research, the
contrasts and comparisons of a behavior or issue are studied in at least two or more
cultures.

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BIOPSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

• Perspective that attributes human and animal behavior to biological events occurring in
the body, such as genetic influences, hormones, and the activity of the nervous system.
• Focus: How our biological structures and substances underlie a given behavior, thought,
or emotion
• views behavior from the perspective of the brain, the nervous system, and other biological
functions
• Behavior is explained by brain chemistry, genetics, glands, etc.
• Some of the topics researched by biopsychologists include sleep, emotions, aggression,
sexual behavior, and learning and memory—as well as disorders. While disorders may
have multiple causes (family issues, stress, or trauma, for example), research in
biopsychology points clearly to biological factors as one of those causes.

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EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
• Perspective that focuses on the biological bases of universal mental characteristics that all
humans share.
• It seeks to explain general mental strategies and traits, such as why we lie, how
attractiveness influences mate selection, why fear of snakes is so common, or why people
universally like music and dancing
• Combines aspects of biological, psychological, and social perspectives
• Influenced by Darwin and the emphasis on innate, adaptive behavior patterns
• Behavior is explained by how the behavior may have helped our ancestors survive long
enough to reproduce successfully.
• Examines behavioral processes in terms of their adaptive value for members of a species
over the course of many generations.

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Major Milestones In The Development Of Psychology

https://prezi.com/ptlo194gsq08/psychology-perspectives-timeline/ 31