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Defining Psychology
What is the mind?

The battered offspring of the union of
philosophy and psychology (Reber)
 The totality of the conscious and
unconscious mental experiences of an
individual organism (Reber)
Where is the mind?
The scientific study of
behavior and mental process

Behavior
– Any measurable response of an item
– The actions by which an organism adjusts to its
environment

Mental Processes
– An ongoing systematic series of actions or
events that takes place in the brain
History of Psychology
In the beginning, psychology was a 3way synthesis of physics, physiology
and mental philosophy
Fascination with Abnormality:
Trephining

Evidence that the brain
controls behavior
– 40,000 years ago
– Cro-magnons
Trephining

Geographical evidence of
trepanning
– Ancient Egypt
– far and middle east
– China
– India
– Aztecs
– Incans
– Brazilian tribes
– the south seas
– north and equatorial Africa
Trephining

Drill holes in the brain
to release “something”
 Used to cure mental
illness
– Lobotomy
Early Psychology

Early psychology focused on measuring and
understanding the mind
Early Greek

Beginning with the Ancient Greeks,
philosophers learned a great deal about the
world around them, and attempted to
arrange their learning in an orderly way,
and speculated on its meaning
Orientations of Greek
Explanation of Human Activity
Biological
Naturalistic
Eclectic
Mathematical
Humanistic
Naturalistic

Ionian physicists
 Life and matter are
inseparable
Thales (650-546 BC)

Water is first element
 Intrinsic to all life
 was the first known
Greek philosopher,
physicist and
mathematician. His
contributions to
psychology were his
discussion of the nature
of matter
Heraclitus (530-? BC)

Sought unifying
principle to explain the
nature of change - Fire
Biological

Emphasized the
internal state of human
as holding the clue to
life
Alcmaeon of Croton
(c. 500 B.C.)

Monist
 First real psychologist
 Dissected the eye

– Traced the optic nerve
– Thought thought and
sensation occur in the
brain

He believed that the brain
not only received
perceptions of vision,
audition, and olfaction, but
was also the seat of
thought.
He believed that health and
disease are matters of
equilibrium, with health
being a balance and
disease, a rupture of that
balance
Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 B.C.)

Monist
 The Brain
– Pleasure
– Joy
– Sorrow
– Pain
– Grief and tears
Father of ancient
medicine
Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 B.C.)

“With it we think and
understand, see and
hear, and we
discriminate between
the the ugly and
beautiful, between
what is pleasant and
what is unpleasant and
between good and
evil”
Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 B.C.)

Epilepsy
 Disease of the brain
 warned against
treatment with spells,
amulets and “other
illiberal practices.”
Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 B.C.)

Senses
 Occurred in the brain
– “the primary seat of
sense”
– supreme gland

secreted soothing
phlegm called pituita
(pituitary gland)
The Humors
Mathematical

Used the order and
beauty of math to
assert the unity of the
world
Pythagoras (582-500 BC)

Geometry
 Basis for life
Eclectic

Wandering Scholars
 Study life as presented
by people in the world
 cautioned against
speculation beyond
observable reality
Protagoras (481-411 BC)

Admits sensory information
 Denied ability to make generalizations
beyond the physical
 Skepticism
Humanistic

Humanity on a higher
plane of life
 emphasizes:
– reason
– language
– self-reflection
Anaxagoras (488-428 BC)

Nous
 Basic Elements
– Earth
– Air
– Fire
– Water
Matter composed of
infinite elements
Socrates
Socrates

Devoted his life to
moral philosophy and
the search for moral
good.

He believed in the
human soul.

How could we connect
this to psychology and
the study of behavior?
Plato (427-347 BC)

Intelligence
 interaction between
people and the
environment
 Excessive pain and
pleasure diseases of mind
 3 aspect of the psyche
– Reason
– Feeling
– Appetite
Aristotle (c. 384 – 322 B.C.)

Monist
 Student of Plato
– The heart was the seat
of intelligence
– The heart was the
body’s nerve center
– The brain cooled hot
blood from the heart
Aristotle’s structure of the soul
Active Mind
Vision
Hearing
Touch
Common
Sense
Taste
Smell
Imagination
Memory
Passive Mind
Medieval Times and The
Renaissance
(c.1000 - 1500)


The emergence of science
The emergence of
humanism
– Thinking became human-
centered


Rather than God-centered
Grünewald’s The
temptation of St. Anthony
– Human qualities of
temptation and evil
Medieval Times and The
Renaissance
(c.1000 - 1500)

The emergence of a
more biological view
of human behavior
Medieval Physicians
Explanation for Behavior

Invented humors (bodily fluids)
– Phlegm
– Blood
– Yellow bile
– Black bile (melancholy)
 All interacted to cause disease or preserve health
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Cartesian Dualism
 Some ideas are innate
 The mind was an
object
– one that took up no
space

The soul or mind
moved “vital forces”
about in the brain
– its action on a special
organ called the pineal
John Locke 1632-1704

Empiricism
 Ideas
 Fountains of
Knowledge
– Sensations
– Reflection
The idea that the
environment shapes
you behavior.
Believed that all humans
began with a ‘blank
slate’ or tabula rasa.
Psychology as its own
Discipline
Emerged in the 19th century
 Employed laboratory techniques

– Merging psychology and physics
Wilhelm Wundt (1832 – 1920)

In Lepzig, Germany
 Founded the 1st formal
laboratory dedicated to
psychological research
– Focused on sensation
and perception
– Looked at speed of
simple mental
processes
Max Wertheimer 1880-1943

Gestalt Psychology
 We see items in
whole, not the specific
details.
 From Germany
Early Milestones

G. Stanley Hall – First President of APA and was involved
in the development of educational psychology. Believed in
Evolutionary Psychology and studied the inheritance of behavior.

Hermann Ebbinghaus 1850 – 1909

Edward B. Titchner 1867 – 1927 described the structure of
Worked in the field
of memory and higher mental processes. Development of the
“maintance rehearsal” for word lists.
the mind; structuralism largest doctoral program in US.
William James 1842-1910

Principles of
Psychology important
psychology textbook
 Functionalism
 Worked in the field of
educational
psychology.
Early Milestones (con’t)

Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939 – Developed the view called
psychodynamics and psychiatry. Believed in the unconscious mind and
defense mechanism.

Margaret Floy Washburn 1871 – 1939

Mary Whiton Calkins 1863 – 1930 – First woman to study in
- Studied under
Titchener. She worked in the field of perception. First woman to receive
her PhD in psychology.
the same room as men at Harvard. First psychology lab at Wellesley
College. She was interested in memory and the self.

Ivan Pavlov – 1849 – 1936 Russian.
Developed what is known
today as “classical conditioning”. Trained a dog to drool to a bell.
John B. Watson

Psychology as the
Behaviorist Views It
 He believed that
behavior was
measured by only
actions that could be
observed.