The Historical Background Of Psychology 622n5p

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF PSYCHOLOGY We can actually trace the historical background of psychology along the two ways- the traditional and the scientific. A. Traditionally, psychology is said to have begun with man’s earliest speculations regarding human nature. Since the dawn of recorded thought, man has had a curiosity about his own behavior and its relationship to casual events. The earliest attempts were essentially animistic wherein the gods or the spirits were attributed the power to direct or cause such events and activities of men.

B. The Greek Influence Democritus (c. 460-c. 370BC) believed that the human mind is composed of atoms which could calculate freely and which enable it to penetrate the whole body. According to him, atoms from our environment enter through our sense organs enabling us to perceive the world around us. According to Plato (c 427-347BC) the mind or soul are distinct in its own right and it’s God-given. It enters the body with its reflected perfection of God and rules the body which it inhabits knower, thinker and determiner of action. The soul is composed of three parts- that which exerts reason (in the head); that which responsible for our noble impulses (in the heart); and the basest part, the seat of our ions (in the diaphragm). Aristotle (c 384-322BC), a student of Plato, distinguished three function of the soul-the vegetative, concerned with basic maintenance of life; the appetitive, concerned with motives and desires; and the rational, the governing function located in the heart. The brain merely performs minor mechanical processes as a gland. Our perception of the external world is the result of two processes, according to Aristotle. (1) The use of a medium (the air which fills space) and which affects our sense organs and (2) the ability of the form of the object to leave its substance and to directly to the perceiver. Aristotle also conceived of “common sense”, one of the mental functions which ties perception and sensation together.

Galen (AD c 130-200) contributed his theory of the dependence of human temperament on physiological factors. Differences in behavior are attributable to the “humors” or vital juices of the body: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. Hence, he correspondingly named temperaments sanguine (cheerful), phlegmatic (sluggish), melancholic (sad) and choleric (irascible). For about fifteen centuries the philosophy and science of the Greeks held sway and dominated psychological thinking. C. The Medieval Period St. Agustine (354-430) combined Platonic psychology with Christian thinking. He introduced and used the method of introspection (the description of one’s own conscious processes) and manifested his interest in distinguishing several faculties of the soul as will, memory, imagination and others, producing the first definite development of what later was called faculty psychology. About nine century later, St. Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) combined “Aristotelian notion (the mind is the form of living matter) to the theologically imperative idea of immortality.” D. Pre-Modern Period The philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) formulated a theory of mind-body interaction: John Locke (1632-1704) in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding introduced the idea as the unit into which all experiences may be analyzed: George Berkeley (1685-1753) in his theory of knowledge (solipsistic philosophy) said that ideas (which in their own sum constitute mind) become the one reality. David Hume (1711-1776) like Berkeley, wrestled with the problem between impression and ideas, between image and direct sensations. Thus, British empiricism, which grappled with questions concerning sensory stimulation and the association of these ideas with one another to for memory, recall and product consequences of thinking-grew out of philosophy and made imprints in psychological thought.

Three influences in the general trend of knowledge at this time become evident-associationism, faculty psychology, and Darwinism. According to Associationism, ideas come to the mind by the way of the senses and were associated according to the principles of continuity, similarity and contrast. It means that ideas present at nearly the same time were more likely to be associated than those occurring at different times; similar ideas were more readily associated than unrelated ones. Faculty psychology, on the other hand, the precursor of phrenology, held that differences in mental structure, directly related to the size of the certain parts of the head were the determining factors of human behavior. Thus, by measuring and cataloguing the bumps upon a person’s head, the faculties of the mind would be determined. Darwinism assumed the gradual development of man’s structure giving rise to the notions of species evolution and natural selection. E. Scientific Psychology Scientific psychology cannot be said to have begun until the second half of the nineteenth century. Hence, compared to other sciences, psychology is said to be very young. It was in 1879 when Wilhelm Wundt, a German psychologist, founded his Psychology Laboratory at Leipzig, which earned for Wundt the title of Father of Scientific Psychology. He first undertook through the experimental approach, a systematic, scientific body of knowledge about man’s interaction with his environment. 1. Psychology in America Many Americans pioneers like G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924) and James KcKeen Cattell (1860-1944) studied with at Wundt at Leipzig. William James, an eminent philosopher, psychologist and physiologist conducted experiment at Harvard as early as 1875 and published in 1890 his Principles of Psychology. Granville Stanley Hall worked with James in 1881, established the first psychological research laboratory at John Hopkins University, a

leading center of psychological research. Hall pioneered in child study and wrote on child, adolescent and senescent psychology. He founded the first psychological journal The American Journal of Psychology in 1887. He was the first president of the American Psychological Association in 1892. E.B. Titchener, an Englishman who studied with Wundt at Leipsig moved to Cornel University in 1892 and directed for 35 years its newlyestablished psychological laboratory. James McKeen Cattell founded psychological laboratory at University of Pennsylvania in 1888 before going to Columbia University in 1891. He started the mental testing movement and the study of differential psychology in America. Other American pioneers include John Dewey, philosopher and educator, who worked with Hall at John Hopkins, G.T Ladd, J.M Baldwin, Joseph Jastrow, E.C. Sanford, James Rowland Angell and Harvey A. Carr.

2. Psychology in Philippe Pinel and others began as early in the nineteenth century the enlightened psychological interpretation of insanity. Anton Mesmer in 1779 developed hypnosis or “animal magnetism”. Seguin (1848) made use of testing in the teaching of mentally-retarted children. Alfred Binet (1857-1911) the father of intelligence test, started the first intelligence test. 3. Psychology in England Charles Darwin published Origin of the Species in 1859. Sir Francis Galton studied individual differences and evolved his ingenious technique of measurement. Other leaders include Karl Pearson (18571936) and Spearman (1863-1945), giving England a leadership in the development of Statistics methods

4. Psychology in E.H Weber’s work in 1830on sensation and stimulation was modified by Fechner (1860) into the Weber-Fechner Law. Helmholtz developed the theory of color vision in 1852 and audition in 1863. Brentano’s book Psychology from an Empirical Point of View contributed to later schools of thought like Functionalism, Behaviorism and Gestalt psychology. Max Wertheimer in 1912 worked on the organization of mental processes. A new psychology by the name of Gestalt came to be identified with Wertheimer (1880-1943), Wolfgang Kohler (1887- ), and Kurt Koffka (1886-1941). Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) introduced his field theory which laid emphasis on motivation and social psychology.