History of Psychology

PSYCHOLOGY:

History

The term psychology comes from the Greek roots psyche meaning soul or mind and logos meaning word or study

What is Psychology?

PSYCHOLOGY= Science of behavior and

mental processesBehavior:

*Overt can be directly observed

*Covert cannot be directly observed

Mental Processes: Internal experiences such as sensations, dreams, thoughts, and feelings.

TO DESCRIBE (What is Happening?) -Observing a behavior and taking note of everything that is happening.

TO EXPLAIN (Why is it happening?) -Behavior is being understood by explaining it.

TO PREDICT (Will it happen again?) -Determining what will happen in the future TO CONTROL (How can it be changed?) -To change a behavior from an undesirable one to a desirable one.

Four Goals of Psychology

THEORIES: General explanation of a set of observations or facts

387 B.C. Plato believed in innate ideas, suggest that the brain is the seat of mental processes.

335 B.C. Aristotle argued that the heart is the seat of mental processes.

430 B.C. Hippocrates believed that mental illness is caused by the four major bodily liquids.

Black bileYellow bile

PhlegmBlood

(1649) Rene Descartes- pineal gland as a seat of the soul.

John Locke- “Mind at birth is a blank slate”

Franz Gall- Phrenology-shape of a person’s skull reveals mental faculties and traits

1848 Phineas Gage suffers from brain damage that alter his personality.

1859Charles Darwin- On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection

1869Francis Galton-Hereditary Genius

Structuralism -EDWARD TITCHENER

It is focus on studying the building blocks/structureof the mind.

Introspection - careful, systematic observations of one’s own conscious experience

Wilhelm Wundt (1879)First Experimental Psych Lab in Leipzig Germany

Functionalism (1890)-William JamesClaimed that searching for building blocks was a waste of time because brain and mind are constantly changing.

Focus on looking more at what was going on in the person’s interaction with the outside world.

Psychoanalytic Approach (1900)

This school of thought emphasized the influence of the unconscious mind and childhood experiences on behavior.

Psychoanalysis: Freud’s method for treating people with emotional problems (free association).

Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud

 Jack’s mother left his family when he was a child. Ever since then, he has had a very difficult time trusting people because he is afraid they will abandon him.

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING (1905)

Ivan Pavlov used conditioning of dogs to show that behavior is learned.

The dogs were conditioned to salivate when a tone was sounded.

“The whole is different from the sum of its parts”.

These theory attempt to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes when certain principles are applied

Gestalt Psychology (1912)

The fifteen figures above form a unified whole (the shape of a tree)

Can you read this?

This is bcuseae the huammn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Amzanig,

huh?

Behaviorism (1913)

It is focused on observable behavior

Behaviorist’s believe people are controlled by their environment.

John B. Watson

“I can take a child and make him into anything, a beggar, a doctor, a thief.”

Case of Little Albert

Abraham Maslow and Carl RogersHuman Potential: Everyone striving

to reach their highest potential.

HUMANISTIC APPROACH

Client centered approach

(1952)APA: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

(1963)Albert Bandura’s bobo doll study was conducted.