- Understand the origins of psychology
- Summarize the contributions of ancient Greek philosophers
- Define the different schools of psychology


[SLIDE 1]

Psychology, which is part of the endeavor to know ourselves has its roots in thousands of years of history. Knowledge of the history of psychology allows us to appreciate its theoretical conflicts, its place among the sciences, the evolution of its methods, and its social and political roles. 2500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Socrates proposed "Know thyself" as a way to encourage introspection.

Another ancient contributor to psychology was the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who lived in 384-322 B.C. Aristotle argued that human behavior, like the movements of the stars, is subject to rules and laws. He delved into a variety of topics such as personality, sensation and perception, thought, intelligence, needs and motives, feelings and emotion, and memory.


[SLIDE 2]

Although he lived 2,400 years ago, Aristotle's contributions are still relevant to contemporary psychology. For example, he argued that science could rationally treat only information gathered by the senses. He defined the five senses as vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Another area he explored was the nature of cause and effect, and noted that people differ from other living things in their capacity for rational thought. Aristotle outlined laws of associationism that are at the heart of learning theory to this day. He also declared that people are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain.


[SLIDE 3]

In addition to Aristotle, other ancient Greek philosophers also contributed to psychology. Around 400 B.C., Democritus suggested that we could think of behavior in terms of a body and a mind. This is a concept still talked about by contemporary psychologists in relation to the interaction of biological and mental processes.

Democritus pointed out that our behavior is influenced by external stimulation. He was one of the first to raise the question regarding whether there is free will or choice. In other words, where do the influences of others end, and our "real selves" begin? 


[SLIDE 4]

Socrates suggested that we should rely on rational thought and introspection. Introspection is the deliberate looking into one's own cognitive processes to examine one's thoughts and emotions. He suggested we should use careful examination of our own thoughts and emotions to gain self-knowledge. He also pointed out that people are social creatures who influence one another.

Other great thinkers, as far back as the Renaissance, also influenced psychology. In this lesson, we will focus on more recent influence, such as the development of psychology as a laboratory science during the second half of the 19th century.  


[SLIDE 5]

Many historians set 1860 as the important marker date for key developments in psychology as a laboratory science. It was then that Gustav Theodor Fechner, who lived from 1801 to 1887, published his landmark book "Elements of Psychophysics." This book showed how physical events, such as lights and sounds, stimulate psychological sensations and perception. Fechner also showed how we can scientifically measure the effect of these events.  


[SLIDE 6]

Psychology as a laboratory science was born in 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany.  Like Aristotle, Wundt saw the mind as a natural occurrence that could be studied scientifically. Wundt used introspection to try to discover the basic elements of experience. He and his students founded the school of psychology called structuralism.

Structuralism argues that the mind consists of three basic elements: sensations, feelings, and images. These combine to form experience. With this framework, Wundt attempted to break conscious experience down into objective sensations, such as sight or taste, and subjective feelings, such as emotional responses, and mental images such as memories or dreams. Structuralists believed that the mind functions by combining objective and subjective elements of experience.


[SLIDE 7]

Late in the 19th century, psychologist William James focused on the relation between conscious experience and behavior. He argued, for example, that the stream of consciousness is fluid and continuous. Introspection convinced him that experience cannot be broken down into objective sensations and subjective feelings as the structuralists maintained.

James wrote the first modern psychology textbook in 1890. He wanted to treat psychology like a natural science. William James was a founder of the school of functionalism, which focused on behavior as well as the mind or consciousness.

Functionalists look at how our experience helps us function more adaptively in our environments. For example, it can shed light on how habits help us cope with common situations. Functionalists turned to the laboratory for direct observations as a way to supplement introspection.

James was also influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Earlier in the 19th century, the British naturalist Darwin had argued that organisms with adaptive features survive and reproduce. Functionalists adapted Darwin's theory and proposed that adaptive behavior patterns are learned and maintained. Maladaptive behavior patterns tend to drop out, and only the fittest behavior patterns survive. These adaptive actions tend to be repeated and become habits.


[SLIDE 8]

John Broadus Watson, who lived from 1878 to 1958, was the founder of American behaviorism. Watson believed that if psychology were to be a natural science, like physics or chemistry, it must limit itself to observable, measurable events - that is, to behavior alone. This differed from the dominant view of psychology of the day -- functionalism -- whose proponents were concerned with the stream of consciousness as well as observable behavior.

Behaviorism sees psychology as the study of observable behavior and studies relationships between stimuli and responses. It focuses on learning observable behavior. The term observable refers to behaviors that are observable by means of specialized instruments, such as heart rate, blood pressure, and brain waves. These behaviors are public -- they can be measured easily and different observers would agree about their existence and features. Given their focus on behavior, behaviorists define psychology as the scientific study of behavior, not of behavior and mental processes.


[SLIDE 9]

B. F. Skinner, who lived from 1904 to 1990, also contributed to behaviorism. He believed that organisms learn to behave in certain ways because they have been reinforced for doing so. A behavior that is reinforced has a positive outcome.

A reinforcement is a stimulus that follows a response and increases the frequency of the response. Skinner demonstrated that laboratory animals can be trained to carry out behaviors through strategic use of reinforcers, such as food. He trained rats to turn in circles, climb ladders, and push toys across the floor .

Because Skinner demonstrated that remarkable combinations of behaviors could be taught by means of reinforcement, many psychologists adopted the view that, in principle, one could explain complex human behavior in terms of thousands of instances of learning through reinforcement.


[SLIDE 10]

In the 1920s, another school of psychology was born in Germany. Gestalt psychology is the school of psychology that emphasizes the tendency to organize perceptions into wholes and to integrate separate stimuli into meaningful patterns.

In the 1930s, the three founders of the school -- Max Wertheimer, Kurt Kofffka, and Wolfgang Kohler left Europe to escape the Nazi threat. They carried on their work in the United States. Gestalt psychologists focused on perception and how perception influences thinking and problem solving. The German word Gestalt translates roughly to "pattern" or "organized whole."

In contrast to behaviorists, Gestalt psychologists argued that we cannot hope to understand human nature by focusing only on overt behavior. In contrast to structuralists, they claimed that we cannot explain human perceptions, emotions, or thought processes in terms of basic units. In other words, perceptions are more than the sums of their parts: Gestalt psychologists saw our perceptions as wholes that give meaning to parts.


[SLIDE 11]

As we saw in the previous slide, Gestalt psychologists tend to perceive separate pieces of information as integrated wholes depending on the contexts in which they occur. They believed that learning could be active and purposeful, not merely responsive and mechanical as in Watson's and Skinner's experiments. They demonstrated that much learning, especially in problem solving, is accomplished by insight, not by mechanical repetition.

Kohler's research with chimpanzees is a classic example (see Figure 1.4 above). At first, the chimp is unsuccessful in reaching bananas suspended from the ceiling. Then it stacks the boxes and climbs up to reach the bananas. It seems the chimp has experienced a sudden reorganization of the mental elements of the problem. In other words, he has had a "flash of insight." 

Kohler's findings suggest that we often manipulate the elements of problems until we group them in such a way that we can reach a goal. The manipulations may take quite some time as mental trial and error proceeds, but once the proper grouping has been found, we seem to perceive it all of a sudden. 


[SLIDE 12]

Psychoanalysis is the school of psychology that emphasizes the importance of unconscious motives and conflicts as determinants of human behavior. Psychoanalysis is the name of both the theory of personality and the method of psychotherapy developed by Sigmund Freud, who lived from 1856 to 1939.

As a theory of personality, psychoanalysis proposes that much of our lives is governed by unconscious ideas and impulses that originate in childhood conflicts. As a method of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis aims to help patients gain insight into their conflicts and to find socially acceptable ways of expressing wishes and gratifying needs.