2. History of Psychology
• PHILOSOPHY + PHYSIOLOGY = Psychology
o Philosophers had asked questions about human
emotions, thoughts, and behavior
o Tried to deduce answer by applying logic and
common-sense reasoning
• ARISTOTLE
o Aristotle believed that thinking occurred in the
heart, while the brain only served to help cool
the blood
3. History of Psychology
• HIPPOCRATES
o Hippocrates believed that emotions resulted
from different combinations or levels of four
bodily humors-- black bile, yellow bile, blood and
phlegm.
o A proponent of Humorism
o Hippocratic Medicine
4. Humorism/Hippocratic
Medicine
• an excess or deficiency of any of four distinct bodily
fluids in a person directly influences their
temperament and health.
• Sanguine/Blood =
courageous, hopeful, amorous
• Choleric/Yellow bile = easily
angered, bad tempered
• Melancholic/Black bile =
despondent, sleepless, irritable
• Phlegmatic/Phlegm =
calm, unemotional
5. Physiology
• Physiologists were especially influential in providing
a new understanding of the brain and the nervous
system and the way in which they affect behaviour
• Also explored the senses and the rest of the body.
6. Union of Philosophy &
Physiology
• Questions asked by Philosophers and
• Careful scientific analysis of the physiologists led to
the field of study which we call PSYCHOLOGY.
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12. Origin of the word
PSYCHOLOGY
ψυχήλογία
Psukhelogia
The work Psukhelogia was Latinized into Psychologia
by Marco Marulic in the 15th/16th century
Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae
13. What is Psychology
• The early psychologists defined the field as the
“study of mental activity”
• With the development of behaviourism early in the
last century and its concern for studying only those
phenomena that could be objectively
measured, psychology was refined as the “study of
behaviour”
14. • Information from experiments with animals could be
generalized to the human organism
• Animal behaviour was of interest in its own right.
• True from the 1930s up to the 1960s. With the
development of cognitive and phenomenological
psychology, the most common definition of
psychology include references to both behaviour
and mental processes.
15. PSYCHOLOGY
• For our purposes, we shall define psychology as the
SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF BEHAVIOR AND MENTAL
PROCESSES.
• Reflects psych’s concern with an objective study of
observable behaviour.
• Recognizes the importance of understanding
mental processes that cannot be directly observed
but must be inferred from behavioural and
neurobiological data.
16. What are the Goals of
Psychology
• To DESCRIBE
o Look for characteristics and patterns
• TO EXPLAIN
o To look for causes, answer the Q why
• TO PREDICT
o To predict based on unknown values
• TO CONTROL
o To maintain good behaviors, to stop
maladaptive ones
19. Structuralism
• Analysing conscious experience
• Set up a laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in order to
carry out a systematic analysis of the structure of
the conscious mind
o Break down consciousness into elements
o Discover how the elements interacted with each other
• The best way to analyze the structure of the mind
was to rely on self-observation
o INSTROSPECTION
• Break down conscious experiences into basic parts
20. Structuralism
• Edward B. Titchener who studied in Wundt’s
laboratory brought Structuralism to the US and
began a psych lab at Cornel University in 1892
• STRUCTURALISM had several flaws
o INSTROSPECTIVE METHOD
o The very act of introspection altered the conscious experience they
wanted to examine
o Different researchers independently using instrospective methods were
getting different results
o NO RESOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM
21. Structuralism
• Each researcher were describing their own personal
experiences, who could say which observer was
correct?
• 1930’s Structuralism was abandoned
• Psychologists working with animals were finding
exciting results without introspection
• Psychology owes Structuralism:
o Provided psychology with a strong scientific and research impetus
o Gave instrospective method a thorough test
o Served as a foundation against which new schools of psychological
thought could rebel.
23. Functionalism
• The first completely American psychology
• Founded by William James (1842-1910)
• Was not an experimentalist
• Functionalism began as a rebellion against the
structural approach
o NARROW
o ARTIFICIAL
o POINTLESS
• Rejected the idea that the conscious mind had a
permanent structure or blue-print
• STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
o Conscious experience was like a river that was always changing and
flowing
24. Functionalism
• James was influenced by Charles Darwin
• James concluded that human consciousness must
also have a function, or why would it have
evolved?
• The conscious mind enabled people to make
rational choices which in turn helped them to
survive generation after generation
“An organ added for the sake of steering a nervous
system grown too complex to regulate itself.”
25. Functionalism
• G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924)
o Interested in the development of human beings during childhood and
adolescence
o DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCH
• John Dewey (1859-1952)
o Interested in the problem-solving ability of the conscious mind as a factor
in our survival as a species
o EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
• Functionalism is no longer a distinct psychological
system
27. Behaviorism
• Originally called as Behavioralism
• Watson had been trained as a functional
psychologist
• Interested in the purpose and function of animal
behavior
• There was no way to objectively observe the
conscious mind
• Felt that functionalism hadn’t gone far enough in its
rebellion against structuralism
28. Behaviorism
• If a purely objective experimental science of
psychology was to be developed, psychology must
reject all subjective methods and rely solely on
what could be objectively observed.
• 1929: “psychology made a false start under
Wundt… because it would not bury its past. It tried
to hand on to tradition with one hand push forward
a science with the other. Before progress could be
made in astronomy, it hat to bury astrology; and
chemistry had to bury alchemy. But the social
science, psychology, sociology, political
science, and economics would not bury their
“medicine men.”
29. Behaviorism
• Rejected the study of conscious thought and
mental activity
o Unobservable
• Emphasized on observable environmental stimuli
and the observable behaviors or responses that
occurred in the presence of such stimuli
• S-R Psychology (Stimulus-Response Psychology)
30. Behaviorism
• Considered the mind to be a black box
• Behaviorists have shown that the associations we
experience, the pleasant or unpleasant
consequences following our actions, and our
observations or actions or those around us often
determine our responses.
• CRITICISM AGAINST BEHAVIORISM
o Behaviorists ignore important but unobservable aspects of human
behavior, such as emotion, thoughts, and unconscious process, and that
they discredit feelings or ideas that didn’t readily lend themselves to
controlled experimentation
33. Gestalt Psychology
• A reaction to structuralism which developed in
Germany
• APPARENT PERCEPTION OF
MOTION
• PHI PHENOMENON
• Wertheimer, Kohler and Koffka
argued that the Phi Phenomenon
needed no explanation
• To reduce it to simpler terms would
be to destroy it.
34. Gestalt Psychology
• Such an argument rejected a fundamental tenet of
Structuralism
o ALL experience can be broken down into elementary parts to understand
it better – STRUCTURALISM
• The WHOLE EXPERIENCE (GESTALT) was not just the
sum of its parts; it was more, it was itself.
• Gestalt psychology argues that conscious sensation
can be examined but that the whole experience
must be taken for what it is.
36. Psychoanalysis
• Did not develop as a reaction against structuralism
• Has roots in neurology and medicine
• Its goal was to treat and understand Abnormal
Behavior
• Freud presented, as one of the major tenets of
psychoanalysis, the concept of the unconscious
mind.
37. Psychoanalysis
• Sigmund Freud was a Viennese physician and the
founder of Psychoanalysis.
• behaviour is determined by the unconscious
mind, a repository of repressed impulses and
desires, of which the waking mind is completely
unaware, but determine the way we think, feel, and
act.
38. Psychoanalysis
• PLEASURE PRINCIPLE / LIBIDO
• all behavior is motivated by the desire to feel pleasure.
That motivation is organized and directed by two
instincts:
o THANATOS /
o
AGGRESSION
EROS / SEXUALITY
