Brief History Of Psychology

History of psychology

 History Of Psychology

If we go for historical roots of psychology, We will find Psychology is relatively new field. The formal beginning of modern psychology dates back to 1879. Psychology as a modern discipline, which is influenced to a large extent by Western developments, has a short history.

It grew out of ancient philosophy concerned with questions of psychological significance. The term ‘Psychology’ is derived from two Greek words; Psyche means “soul or breath” and Logos means “knowledge or study” (study or investigation of something).

Psychology is a relatively young science with its experimental roots in the 19th century, compared, for example, to human physiology, which dates much earlier. As mentioned, anyone interested in exploring issues related to the mind generally did so in a philosophical context prior to the 19th century. Two men, working in the 19th century, are generally credited as being the founders of psychology as a science and academic discipline that was distinct from philosophy. Their names were Wilhelm Wundt and William James. This section will provide an overview of the shifts in paradigms that have influenced psychology from Wundt and James through today.

Psychology emerged as an independent academic discipline in 1879, when a German Professor Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig, Germany. In this Laboratory students were taught to study the Structure of mind.

Wundt was interested in the study of conscious experience and wanted to analyse
the constituents or the building blocks of the mind. Psychologists during Wundt’s time
analysed the structure of the mind throughintrospection and therefore were called
structuralists. Introspection was a procedure in which individuals or subjects in psychological experiments were asked to describe in detail, their own mental processes
or experiences.

Prior to Wundt, it was not possible to major in psychology, because there were no official psychologists or psychology departments. Wundt started studying the structure of mind which referred the immediate (conscious) experience, the contents and processes of subjective experience such as sensations, thoughts, feelings and emotions.The intellectual roots of psychology lie at the union of philosophy & physiology. Wundt is traditionally recognised as the founder, or father of the modern psychology. The year of 1879 is seen as a remarkable year when psychology finally emerged as a unique field.

Thus, formally, psychology was recognized as an independent science in 1879.

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.

In the early 20th century, a new perspective called Gestalt psychology emerged in Germany as a reaction to the structuralism of Wundt. It focused on the organisation of perceptual experiences. Instead of looking at the components of the mind, the Gestalt psychologists argued that when we look at the world our perceptual experience is more than the sum of the components of the perception.

Example, light from a series of flashing bulbs falls on our retina, we actually experience movement of light.

Yet another reaction to structuralism came in the form of Behaviorism. Around 1910, John Watson rejected the ideas of mind and consciousness as subject matters of psychology.

Watson was greatly influenced by the work of physiologists like Ivan Pavlov on classical conditioning. For Watson, mind is not observable and introspection is subjective because it cannot be verified by another observer.

According to him, scientific psychology must focus on what is observable and verifiable. He defined psychology as a study of behaviour or responses (to stimuli) which can be measured and studied objectively. Skinner applied and  popularized the approach.

Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis as a system to understand and cure psychological disorders.  He viewed human behaviour as a dynamic manifestation of unconscious desires and conflicts. While Freudian psychoanalysis viewed human beings as motivated by unconscious desire for gratification of pleasure seeking (and often, sexual) desires.

The humanistic perspective in psychology took a more positive view of human nature. Humanists, such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, emphasised the free will of human beings and their natural striving to grow and unfold their inner potential.

Humanists argued that behaviourism with its emphasis on behaviour as determined by environmental conditions undermines human freedom and dignity and takes a mechanistic view of human nature.

These different approaches filled the history of modern psychology and provided multiple perspectives to its development.