The Historical Background of Psychology

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF PSYCHOLOGY
We can actually trace the historical background of psychology along the
two ways- the traditional and the scientific.
A. Traditionally, psychology is said to have begun with man’s earliest
speculations regarding human nature. Since the dawn of recorded
thought, man has had a curiosity about his own behavior and its
relationship to casual events. The earliest attempts were essentially
animistic wherein the gods or the spirits were attributed the power to
direct or cause such events and activities of men.


B. The Greek Influence
Democritus (c. 460-c. 370BC) believed that the human mind is
composed of atoms which could calculate freely and which enable it to
penetrate the whole body. According to him, atoms from our environment
enter through our sense organs enabling us to perceive the world around
us.
According to Plato (c 427-347BC) the mind or soul are distinct in its own
right and it’s God-given. It enters the body with its reflected perfection of
God and rules the body which it inhabits knower, thinker and determiner of
action. The soul is composed of three parts- that which exerts reason (in the
head); that which responsible for our noble impulses (in the heart); and the
basest part, the seat of our passions (in the diaphragm).
Aristotle (c 384-322BC), a student of Plato, distinguished three function
of the soul-the vegetative, concerned with basic maintenance of life; the
appetitive, concerned with motives and desires; and the rational, the
governing function located in the heart. The brain merely performs minor
mechanical processes as a gland.
Our perception of the external world is the result of two processes,
according to Aristotle. (1) The use of a medium (the air which fills space)
and which affects our sense organs and (2) the ability of the form of the
object to leave its substance and to pass directly to the perceiver. Aristotle
also conceived of “common sense”, one of the mental functions which ties
perception and sensation together.
Galen (AD c 130-200) contributed his theory of the dependence of
human temperament on physiological factors. Differences in behavior are
attributable to the “humors” or vital juices of the body: blood, phlegm, black
bile and yellow bile. Hence, he correspondingly named temperaments
sanguine (cheerful), phlegmatic (sluggish), melancholic (sad) and choleric
(irascible).
For about fifteen centuries the philosophy and science of the Greeks held
sway and dominated psychological thinking.
C. The Medieval Period

St. Agustine (354-430) combined Platonic psychology with Christian
thinking. He introduced and used the method of introspection (the
description of one’s own conscious processes) and manifested his interest in
distinguishing several faculties of the soul as will, memory, imagination and
others, producing the first definite development of what later was called
faculty psychology.

About nine century later, St. Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) combined
“Aristotelian notion (the mind is the form of living matter) to the
theologically imperative idea of immortality.”

D. Pre-Modern Period

The philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) formulated a theory of
mind-body interaction: John Locke (1632-1704) in his An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding introduced the idea as the unit into
which all experiences may be analyzed: George Berkeley (1685-1753) in his
theory of knowledge (solipsistic philosophy) said that ideas (which in their
own sum constitute mind) become the one reality. David Hume (1711-1776)
like Berkeley, wrestled with the problem between impression and ideas,
between image and direct sensations.

Thus, British empiricism, which grappled with questions concerning
sensory stimulation and the association of these ideas with one another to
account for memory, recall and product consequences of thinking-grew out
of philosophy and made imprints in psychological thought.

Three influences in the general trend of knowledge at this time become
evident-associationism, faculty psychology, and Darwinism. According to
Associationism, ideas come to the mind by the way of the senses and were
associated according to the principles of continuity, similarity and contrast.
It means that ideas present at nearly the same time were more likely to be
associated than those occurring at different times; similar ideas were more
readily associated than unrelated ones.

Faculty psychology, on the other hand, the precursor of phrenology, held
that differences in mental structure, directly related to the size of the certain
parts of the head were the determining factors of human behavior. Thus, by
measuring and cataloguing the bumps upon a person’s head, the faculties
of the mind would be determined.

Darwinism assumed the gradual development of man’s structure giving
rise to the notions of species evolution and natural selection.

E. Scientific Psychology

Scientific psychology cannot be said to have begun until the second half
of the nineteenth century. Hence, compared to other sciences, psychology is
said to be very young.

It was in 1879 when Wilhelm Wundt, a German psychologist, founded
his Psychology Laboratory at Leipzig, Germany which earned for Wundt the
title of Father of Scientific Psychology. He first undertook through the
experimental approach, a systematic, scientific body of knowledge about
man’s interaction with his environment.

1. Psychology in America

Many Americans pioneers like G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924) and
James KcKeen Cattell (1860-1944) studied with at Wundt at Leipzig.

William James, an eminent philosopher, psychologist and
physiologist conducted experiment at Harvard as early as 1875 and
published in 1890 his Principles of Psychology.

Granville Stanley Hall worked with James in 1881, established the
first psychological research laboratory at John Hopkins University, a
leading center of psychological research. Hall pioneered in child study
and wrote on child, adolescent and senescent psychology. He founded
the first psychological journal The American Journal of Psychology in
1887. He was the first president of the American Psychological
Association in 1892.

E.B. Titchener, an Englishman who studied with Wundt at Leipsig
moved to Cornel University in 1892 and directed for 35 years its newly-
established psychological laboratory.

James McKeen Cattell founded psychological laboratory at
University of Pennsylvania in 1888 before going to Columbia University
in 1891. He started the mental testing movement and the study of
differential psychology in America.

Other American pioneers include John Dewey, philosopher and
educator, who worked with Hall at John Hopkins, G.T Ladd, J.M
Baldwin, Joseph Jastrow, E.C. Sanford, James Rowland Angell and
Harvey A. Carr.


2. Psychology in France

Philippe Pinel and others began as early in the nineteenth century
the enlightened psychological interpretation of insanity. Anton Mesmer
in 1779 developed hypnosis or “animal magnetism”. Seguin (1848) made
use of testing in the teaching of mentally-retarted children. Alfred Binet
(1857-1911) the father of intelligence test, started the first intelligence
test.

3. Psychology in England

Charles Darwin published Origin of the Species in 1859. Sir Francis
Galton studied individual differences and evolved his ingenious
technique of measurement. Other leaders include Karl Pearson (1857-
1936) and Spearman (1863-1945), giving England a leadership in the
development of Statistics methods



4. Psychology in Germany

E.H Weber’s work in 1830on sensation and stimulation was modified
by Fechner (1860) into the Weber-Fechner Law. Helmholtz developed
the theory of color vision in 1852 and audition in 1863. Brentano’s book
Psychology from an Empirical Point of View contributed to later schools of
thought like Functionalism, Behaviorism and Gestalt psychology.

Max Wertheimer in 1912 worked on the organization of mental
processes. A new psychology by the name of Gestalt came to be
identified with Wertheimer (1880-1943), Wolfgang Kohler (1887- ),
and Kurt Koffka (1886-1941). Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) introduced
his field theory which laid emphasis on motivation and social
psychology.