History Of Psychology

History of Psychology

Psychology has a long past, but only a short history.
This statement, expressed by German experimentalist Hermann Ebbinghaus, suggests a key idea about the history of psychology: though psychology is relatively new as a formal academic discipline, scholars have pondered the questions that psychologists ask for thousands of years. According to psychology historianMorton Hunt, an experiment performed by the King of Egypt, as far back as the seventh century B.C., can be considered the first psychology experiment (Hunt, 1993, p. 1). The king wanted to test whether or not Egyptian was the oldest civilization on earth. His idea was that, if children were raised in isolation from infancy and were given no instruction in language of any kind, then the language theyspontaneously spoke would be of the original civilization of man -- hopefully, Egyptian. The experiment, itself, was flawed, but the king deserves credit for his idea that thoughts and language come from the mind and his ambition to test such an idea.
Typically, historians point to the writings of ancient Greek philosophers, such Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as the first significant work to berich in psychology-related thought. They considered important questions like what is free will, how does the mind work, and what is the relationship of people to their society. For hundreds of years, philosophers continued to wrestle with these and related questions, and psychology eventually sprouted from the roots of philosophy. Psychology also derived its origins from physiology, another subjectthat had been studied for thousands of years. In fact, the father of psychology, William Wundt, was originally a professor of physiology.
Wundt and the Beginnings
Wundt wanted to apply the methodical, experimental methods of science to the study of human consciousness. To this end, he founded the first-ever psychology laboratory at University of Leipzig in Germany, earning him the monumentaldistinction of psychology's founder (1897). At his laboratory, Wundt spent hours exposing individuals to audio and visual stimuli and asking them to report what they perceived. In this way, he studied one component of consciousness, perception. Around this time, other German scientists began doing similar work. Herman Von Helmholtz investigated color vision, hearing, and rate of nerve conduction andGustav Fechner studied and quantified sensory experience (Raphael & Halpert, 1994, p. 54). The school of thought that arose from the work of Wundt and his colleagues is called structuralism. The basic goal of structualists was to study consciousness by breaking it down into it components -- mainly perception, sensation, and affection. Their basic method was to train their subjects inintrospection, which was careful, systematic observation of one's own conscious experience (Weiten, 1992, p. 5).
Structuralism vs. Functionalism
A student of Wundt's, E.B. Titchener was a strong advocate for structualism in the United States, but he had competition from an opposing school of thought, called functionalism. This movement was led by William James and John Dewey. While structuralistsessentially wanted to determine "what is consciousness?", functionalists wanted to determine "what is consciousness used for?" -- in other words, they wanted to study the purpose, or function, of consciousness and basic mental processes.
The two camps debated passionately over which approach to psychology was best, each hoping to shape the direction of their fledging academic subject. Though neither sideemerged as a clear winner, their energy led to the rapid spread of psychology, especially in the United States. In 1883,G. Stanley Hall established the first psychology laboratory in the US at Johns Hopkins University, and by 1900, there were dozens of laboratories, and three psychology journals and the American Psychology Association had been founded. Ultimately, psychology's first two movements...