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The History of Psychology
Before Psychology was a
Defined Field
Socrates and Plato (428-399
BCE)
 The mind is separate from the body
 When the body dies, the mind remains
 Knowledge is innate—we are born with it
Descartes (1595-1650)
 French philosopher and scientist
 Everything from the early philosophers and…
 The mind contains “animal spirits”
John Locke (1632-1704)
 The mind at birth is a tabula rasa on which experience
writes
Wave 1: Structuralism and
Functionalism
What vs. Why
Structuralism
 Whilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)
 German
 The father of modern psychology
 December 1879
 Experiment: hear a sound, push a button
 Structuralism- studies the structural elements of the
“mind”
 Introspection
Functionalism
 William James (1842-1910)
 American
 Focused on how the mind allows people to function in
the real world
 Heavily influenced by Darwin
Wave 2: Gestalt
Psychology
More than a sum of its parts
Gestalt Psychologists
 A group of German psychologists lead by Max
Wertheimer
 Argued against dividing human though and behavior
into discrete structures
 When given a cluster of sensations our minds
organize them into “gestalt” (a form or a whole)
 The whole experience is often more than a sum of its
parts
Wave 3: Psychoanalysis
The Commoner’s Psychology
Psychoanalysis
 Freud (1856-1939)
 Believed that humans
possess an
unconscious mind
 The thoughts in the
unconscious mind build
up over the years
through repression
Wave 4: Behaviorism
Where’s the science??
Behaviorism
 Watson, Skinner, Pavlov
 Psychology must limit itself to observable phenomena
 Behaviors (response) and the cause of the behaviors
(stimuli) and reinforcement
 The dominant school of thought from the 1920s-1960s
Wave 5: Multiple
Perspectives
Current Day
Contemporary Psychology can Be
Placed in 7 (8?)Broad Perspectives
 Humanistic
 Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic
 Biological/Neuroscience
 Evolutionary
 Behavioral
 Cognitive
 Sociocultural
while e coyote
Humanist
 Important People: Maslow, Carl Rogers
 Focus: individual choice and free will; how we meet
our needs for love and acceptance and achieve selffulfillment
 How can we work toward fulfilling our potential? How
can we overcome barriers to our personal growth?
Psychodynamic
 People: Freud
 Focus: how behavior spring from unconscious drives
and conflicts
 How can someone’s personality traits and disorders
be explained by unfulfilled wishes and childhood
traumas
Biology/Neuroscience/Biophysi
ological
 People: none for now
 Focus: how the body and brain enable emotions,
memories, and sensory experiences; how genes
combine with environment to influence individual
differences
 How are nervous signals passed? What part of the
brain is functioning when? How is blood chemistry
linked with mood or motive? To what extent is our
personality or intelligence due to genes? The
environment?
Evolutionary
 People: Darwin
 Focus: how the natural selection of traits has
promoted the survival of genes
 How does evolution influence behavior tendencies?
Behavioral
 People: Watson, Skinner, Pavlov
 Focus: how we learn observable responses to stimuli
 How do we learn to fear particular objects or
situations? What is the most effective way to alter
behavior?
Cognitive
 People: none for now
 Focus: how we encode, process, store, and retrieve
information
 How do we use information in remembering?
Reasoning? Solving problems?
Sociocultural
 People: none for now
 Focus: how behavior and thinking vary across
situations and cultures
 How are we alike as members of one human family?
How do we differ as a product of our environment?
#8…Biopsychosocial
 An integrated approach that incorporates biological,
psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis
Meyers, D. G. and Fineburg, A. C. (2014). Psychology for AP. New York, NY: Worth.