Dave Farina 00:00:06
We actually need to study a little bit of history before we can learn psychology. You might be asking yourself why a psychology series would begin with a history lesson. It turns out that what we now perceive to be psychology differs greatly from what was once thought to be psychology. In this series, we'll mostly be concentrating on modern psychology, but understanding psychology's historical development will help us better comprehend the factors that moulded psychology into the discipline it is today. Additionally, it will help us understand how modern and historical psychologists have conceptualized the mind and its processes. Knowing the origins of psychology will help us
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We'll start by going way in the past. The mind has been a topic of discussion for thousands of years. Many cultures have speculated on the nature of the mind and soul throughout history. Greek philosophers like Plato and his pupil Aristotle are the most recognized names in ancient psychology. To explain how the mind functions and what drives human behavior, they developed theories. For instance, according to Plato, the psyche, or soul, is divided into three parts: the logical or logistikon, the emotional or thumoeides, and the epithumetikon, which is concerned with wants and desires. All three would be in harmony in a healthy psyche. Building on Plato's theories on the mind, Aristotle emphasized reason and observation as
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Through the Renaissance, psychology continued to advance and was greatly impacted by the writings of 17th-century philosopher René Descartes. Descartes held that the body and the mind are two distinct entities. The term "Cartesian dualism" or "mind-body dualism" refers to this philosophy. According to dualism, whereas the body is a physical thing, the mind is an immaterial substance that is the source of your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Thus, the core tenet of dualism is that the material body and the immaterial mind are two separate entities that interact to produce behavior. However, how can an ethereal object communicate with a material object? Descartes proposed that the pineal gland, a region of the brain we learned about, is where the immaterial soul resides and governs the body.
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The term "philosopher" has been used in place of "psychologist" when discussing early psychology, as you may have noticed. Philosophers debated how to quantify intangibles like thoughts and feelings when discussing the mind. Early psychology was not thought of as a science but as a branch of philosophy because we could not measure anything. We couldn't begin using the scientific method to study the mind until we understood how the brain actually functions. When German professor Wilhelm Wundt established the first experimental psychology lab at the University of Leipzig in 1879, he formally distinguished psychology from philosophy. This was the beginning of what we now know as psychology. In actuality, Wundt was the first individual to ever refer to himself as a psychologist.
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Following Wundt, psychology expanded into a variety of subfields and schools of thought. The first school of thought, known as structuralism, was started by Wundt student Edward Titchener. According to structuralists, all psychological processes are composed of fundamental components or structures. By asking research participants to describe their precise experiences as they work on mental tasks, a procedure known as introspection, they were able to identify these components. For instance, a reader of a book might claim to be observing some black lines on white paper. But structuralism had some drawbacks. Participants frequently struggled to describe their mental processes. When you read, you see black lines on the page, but how do you interpret those lines as information? How would you sum up the
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The structuralists understood that the mind processed information without our conscious awareness as a result of these questions. This introduces us to functionalism, another school of thought. The functionalists held that consciousness could not be divided into components, in contrast to the structuralists. They thought it was a dynamic, ongoing mental process. The functionalists and structuralists each posed a different question in light of this viewpoint. Functionalists sought to understand why the mind behaves in a particular way rather than trying to comprehend how it operates. Why do we feel things? Why do relationships develop? How do human actions assist us in surviving in our surroundings? By directly observing the human mind and behavior, functionalists attempted to provide direct answers to these questions.
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In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the neurologist Sigmund Freud developed his own theory of psychology. He is the father of psychoanalysis, which emphasizes the importance of memories, feelings, and unconscious thoughts in understanding behavior. According to Freud, one's unconscious thoughts and long-forgotten memories dictate practically everything they do. According to Freudian psychology, the psyche is divided into three parts, which is similar to what Plato postulated in classical Greece. The id, or instincts, the ego, or reality, and the superego, or morality, were these three components in Freud's view. The superego is the psyche's moral conscience, whereas the id is the part of the psyche that is filled with primal desires, sexual and aggressive drives, as well as hidden memories.
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Freud's theory is more philosophical than psychological because the id, ego, and superego are not observable and cannot be tested scientifically. Freud was incredibly influential in the development of psychoanalysis as well as the field of psychology itself, but very few modern psychologists today fully subscribe to his principles, particularly his theory regarding psychosexual stages. We will return to Freud's work later in the series to delve deeper. He was the catalyst for psychologists to start exploring the unconscious mind and how fundamental drives can affect behavior. One of the first to recognize the significance of early development in determining an adult's behavior and personality, Freud was also one of the few individuals in his era to voluntarily
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At the start of the 20th century, behaviorism, another school of thought, emerged. Behaviorism sought to improve psychology's scientific standing by limiting its study to observable behavior, in contrast to other schools of thought that concentrated on the conscious and unconscious mind. Ivan Pavlov, a physiologist who researched classical conditioning in dogs, was one of the first behaviorists. In the biopsychology series, we discussed this topic in relation to learning and memory. He conducted research on dogs that eventually began to salivate at the mere sound of a bell in anticipation of the associated meal after they repeatedly learned to associate a ringing bell with mealtime. Psychology, according to Pavlov and other behaviorists, is the study of behavior. Because consciousness and the mind are invisible and immeasurable,
A Brief History of Psychology: From Plato to Pavlov
Dave Farina 00:00:06 We actually need to study a little bit of history before we can learn psychology. You might be asking yourself why a psychology series would begin with a history lesson. It turns out that what we now perceive to be psyc…
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