HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES OF PSYCHOLOGY

 Psychology has come a long way since the days of studying bumps on skulls. In the fifth and sixth centuries B.C., the Greeks began to study human behaviour and decided that people’s lives were dominated not so much by the gods as by their own minds: people were rational.

These early philosophers attempted to interpret the world they observed around them in terms of human perceptions, objects were hot or cold, wet or dry, hard or soft, and these qualities influenced people’s experience of them. Although the Greek philosophers did not rely on systematic study, they did set the stage for the development of the sciences, including psychology, through their reliance on observation as a means of knowing their world.

In the mid-1500s, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) published the idea that Earth was not the centre of the universe, as was previously thought, but revolved around the sun. Later, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) used a telescope to confirm predictions about star position and movement based on Copernicus’s work. The individuals of the Renaissance were beginning to refine the modern concept of experimentation through observation.

Seventeenth-century philosophers popularized the idea of dualism, the concept that the mind and body are separate and distinct. The French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) disagreed, however, proposing that a link existed between mind and body. He reasoned that the mind controlled the body’s movements, sensations, and perceptions. His approach to understanding human behaviour was based on the assumption that the mind and body influence each other to create a person’s experiences. Exactly how this interaction takes place is still being studied today.

As one psychologist has expressed it, “Modern science began to emerge by combining philosophers’ reflections, logic, and mathematics with the observations and inventiveness of practical people” (Hilgard, 1987). By the nineteenth century, biologists had announced the discovery of cells as the building blocks of life. Later, chemists developed the periodic table of elements, and physicists made great progress in furthering our understanding of atomic forces. Many natural scientists were studying complex phenomena by reducing them to simpler parts. It was in this environment that the science of psychology was formed.

The history of psychology is a history of alternative perspectives. As the field of psychology evolved, various schools of thought arose to compete and offer new approaches to the science of behaviour.

 Structuralism

In 1879 in Leipzig, Germany, Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) started his Laboratory of Psychology. Because of his efforts to pursue the study of human behaviour in a systematic and scientific manner, Wundt is generally acknowledged as establishing modern psychology as a separate, formal field of study.

Although he was trained in physiology, the study of how the body works, Wundt’s real interest was in the study of the human mind. Wundt was a structuralist, which means that he was interested in the basic elements of human experience. In his laboratory, Wundt modelled his research on the mind after research in other natural sciences he had studied. He developed a method of self-observation called introspection to collect information about the mind. In carefully controlled situations, trained participants reported their thoughts, and Wundt tried to map out the basic structure of thought processes. Wundt’s experiments were very important historically because he used a systematic procedure to study human behaviour. This approach attracted many students who carried on the tradition of systematic research.

 Functionalism

William James (1842-1910) taught the first class in psychology at Harvard University in 1875. James is often called the “father of psychology” in the United States. It took him 12 years to write the first (1890). James speculated that thinking, feeling, learning, and remembering, all activities of the mind, serve one major function: to help us survive as a species. Rather than focusing on the structure of the mind as Wundt did, James focused on the functions or actions of the conscious mind and the goals or purposes of behaviours. Functionalists study how animals and people adapt to their environments. Although James was not particularly interested in experimentation, his writings and theories are still influential.

 Inheritable Traits

Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), a nineteenth-century English mathematician and scientist, wanted to understand how heredity influences a person’s abilities, character, and behaviour. (Heredity includes all the traits and properties that are passed along biologically from parent to child.) Galton traced the ancestry of various eminent people and found that greatness runs in families. He therefore concluded that genius or eminence is a hereditary trait. This conclusion was like the blind men’s ideas about the elephant. Galton did not consider the possibility that the tendency of genius to run in distinguished families might be a result of the exceptional environments and socioeconomic advantages that also tend to surround such families. He also raised the question: Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could get rid of the less desirable people? Galton encouraged “good” marriages to supply the world with talented offspring. Later, scientists all over the world recognized the flaws in Galton’s theory. A person’s heredity and environment interact to influence intelligence.

Pause and reflect

Galton declared that the “most fit” humans were those with high intelligence. He assumed that the wealthiest people were also the most intelligent. What factors did Galton fail to take into account in his studies?

The data Galton used were based on his study of biographies. Not content to limit his inquiry to indirect accounts, however, he went on to invent procedures for directly testing the abilities and characteristics of a wide range of people. These tests were the primitive ancestors of modern personality tests and intelligence tests.

Although Galton began his work shortly before psychology emerged as an independent discipline, his theories and techniques quickly became central aspects of the new science. In 1883 he published a book, Inquiries into Human Faculty, that is regarded as the first study of individual differences. Galton’s writings raised the issue of whether behaviour is determined by heredity or environment, a subject that remains a focus of controversy today.

Gestalt Psychology

A group of German psychologists, including Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), Wolfgang Kohler (1887-1967), and Kurt Koffka (1886-1941), disagreed with the principles of structuralism and behaviourism. They argued that perception is more than the sum of its parts, it involves a “whole pattern” or, in German, a Gestalt. For example, when people look at a chair, they recognize the chair as a whole rather than noticing its legs, its seat, and its other components. Another example includes the perception of apparent motion. When you see fixed lights flashing in sequence as on traffic lights and neon signs, you perceive motion rather than individual lights flashing on and off. Gestalt psychologists studied how sensations are assembled into perceptual experiences. This approach became the forerunner for cognitive approaches to the study of psychology.