Origin of Psychology

History and Origin of Psychology

The word 'psychology' comes from two Greek words, psyche (meaning breath, soul, life, or spirit) and logos (meaning the study of). Wilhelm Wundt was the first to establish himself as a psychologist and opened a laboratory dedicated to the scientific study of psychology. Previously, psychology was more a subdivision of philosophy.

Fig. 1 - Depiction of the psyche.

The word psychology appeared in literature as early as the 16th and 17th centuries. In the sixteenth century, a theologian named Philip Melanchthon, whom many believe, was the first to mention psychology through Latinised forms of the original Greek words.

Later psychology began to take on a new meaning, as popularised by Christian Wolff in his Psychologia Empirica. His work acknowledged that psychology is the science that examines mental phenomena, which is psychology's early attempt to disconnect from philosophy and religion. However, many scholars still attach philosophy to their study of the mind during this time. But what does the origin of psychology have to do with philosophy?

Psychology originated in the ancient study of philosophy, the discipline of great historical minds such as Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Early philosophers spent their time theorising about how the world works, why we are here, and why people behave as they do.

Renowned French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) laid the foundation for studying the mind with his proposed dualism.

Descartes suggested that the mind was non-physical, a state of consciousness and self-awareness that is not purely biological. In contrast, the body is a mechanical system that requires research and investigation. Separating the concepts of mind and body clarified that a study of the mind was needed.

It wasn't until around the 19th century that psychology became more widely embraced, which developed into its modern meaning it is now as the study of mind and behaviour. In the next section, we will see psychology's development and how it became a scientific discipline.

Father of Modern Psychology

Many consider Sigmund Freud to be the father of modern psychology. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) was the first to establish a psychology laboratory in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany, later earning him the title “father of psychology” alongside his work entitled, Principles of Physiological Psychology, published in 1873.

Wundt attempted to study the mind objectively through a process that he called introspection.

Fig. 2 - Wilhelm Wundt

Wundt's attempts at the objective study of the mind involved training individuals in introspection and repeating tests to produce similar results. In this way, Wundt believed that he could identify the components that make up our mind and how these lead to a conscious experience, later forming one of psychology's early approaches, structuralism.

Origin and Development of Psychology: Structuralism

With the need to study the mind came new ideas, methods, and practices that helped shape psychology into what it is today.

The very first psychological approach was called structuralism. Structuralism created a foundation on which early psychologists based their work. Edward Titchener (a student of Wundt) was a structuralist psychologist who assumed that human consciousness could be broken down into smaller parts and used Wundt's process of introspection to understand these parts.

Aside from Wundt and Titchener, Granville Stanley Hall also contributed to the growth of psychology through their expansion of structuralism. G. Stanley Hall also set up a psychology laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, applying introspection, and was elected the American Psychological Association's first president.

Origin and Development of Psychology: Functionalism

With the rise of structuralism in psychology came an opposing view: Functionalism.

William James (1842-1910) looked at how humans are actively involved in their behaviour by studying the relationship between body processes (e.g., sensations) and psychology (e.g., behaviour).

James Cattell and John Dewey were functionalists who focused on mental tests and assessments of human abilities. Functionalism emphasises practical applications of psychology and how the mind adapts to the environment.

The approach laid the groundwork for more modern approaches such as behaviourism and impacted how we approach education and applied psychology today.

Origin and Development of Psychology: Behaviourism

While structuralism and functionalism focused on mental processes, behaviourism rejected studying the mind because of the belief that consciousness is unobservable. Instead, behaviourism emphasises observable behaviour in which the environment determines one's actions. A person learns certain behaviours in response to a stimulus in the environment.

Important figures in Behaviourism included Edward Thorndike, Ivan Pavlov, Burrhus Frederic Skinner and John Watson. Edward Thorndike's experiment on cats using puzzle boxes showed that one could learn behaviour in response to a stimulus if a reward follows it. Ivan Pavlov further expanded this idea by teaching dogs to salivate with the sound of a bell using his technique, classical conditioning.

Later, Skinner introduced his version of conditioning using rewards and punishment called operant conditioning. He experimented on mice and pigeons using the Skinner box. The experiment demonstrated that behaviour can be modified using positive and negative reinforcements.

John Watson, the father of behaviourism, mentioned that behaviour should be the subject of psychology. To Watson, psychology is about understanding how the environment shapes behaviour.

Origin and Development of Psychology: Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) rejected behaviourism and developed psychoanalysis to understand and treat mental disorders. Freud's approach assumes that we all have an unconscious 'layer' to our minds that controls most of our thoughts and behaviours. He also emphasised the role of early childhood experiences in shaping personality.

To Freud, allowing his clients to speak freely about their lives and feelings could help uncover unconscious 'repressed' memories from early childhood trauma causing behavioural symptoms.

Origin and Development of Psychology: Humanism

Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers disagreed with Behaviourism and psychoanalysis. To them, actions and thoughts are governed by the individual's free will and capacity for development.

Humanists value emotion and think people are basically good. The premise of this approach is that humans have an innate desire to reach self-actualisation, the best version of themself. According to humanists reaching this level is quite difficult, and there are several other factors that the individual must achieve before reaching self-actualisation, such as physiological needs.

Indeed, the origin of psychology and its development showed how the need to study the mind led to an objective study from the early to late approaches of psychology, making it truly a scientific discipline.

Origin of Social Psychology

Being the social beings that we are, psychology also began investigating individual behaviour in the presence of others.

In 1924, Floyd Allport proposed in his text that social groups are one of the many stimuli an individual responds to in their environment. He also highlighted experimental research in this new psychology subfield.

Following the Great Depression in the 1930s and the impact of the First and Second World Wars, social psychologists aimed at social issues, which brought about ethics and values into social research. This opened doors for expanding social psychology and included areas such as intergroup relations, propaganda, voting, and organisational behaviour.

The 1940s to 1960s showed a rapid expansion of social psychology as evidenced by new research on authoritarian personality, obedience, persuasion, cognitive dissonance, aggression, prejudice and interpersonal attraction. By the 1970s and 1980s, social psychology faced a crisis, such as accusations of racial and gender biases, that made psychologists in this field reassess their methods.

With the dominance of social cognitive influences in the 1990s, some social psychologists considered emotions and motives to balance out both social and cognitive perspectives in social psychology. Until now, social psychology continues expanding as social psychologists innovate ways of measuring social behaviours.

Origin of Cognitive Psychology

With some psychologists rejecting behaviourism came another subfield of psychology, cognitive psychology, which aims to study higher mental processes.

In 1925, a German psychologist, Wolfgang Kohler, published his findings on The Mentality of Apes, showing that chimpanzees can learn insights and solve problems. In this experiment, the chimpanzee reached for the banana using a bamboo stick. Come 1948, Norbert Weiner, a mathematician, introduced the terms input, output, and feedback in his work Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.

Around the same time, Edward Tolman proposed the term cognitive maps, which are mental representations formed from environmental cues. He demonstrated cognitive maps by training rats to navigate a maze. Between the 1950s and 1960s, George Miller and Jerome Bruner established the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University. Additionally, Miller popularised the concept that the mind can store up to seven objects in its short-term memory.

At this time, Ulric Neisser, the father of cognitive psychology, published Cognitive Psychology, signifying the beginning of the cognitive approach.