From Ancients to the 20th Century
From Ancient Times…
 Cultures throughout history have speculated on the
nature of the mind, soul, spirit, etc
 Philosophy of the Mind
 nature of the mind
 mental events
 mental functions
 mental properties
 consciousness
 their relationship to the physical body, particularly the
brain
The Story of the Cave
 Plato: believed that
We all exist in a deep in a cave, where the only thing which we can
see is the shadow of figures behind us
 True Knowledge: thought & reason
 Aristotle :knowledge from our senses
 Philosophers explore nature vs. nurture
 Are we born?
 Are we made?
…to the Middle Ages
 Muslim physicians: developed practices to treat
patients suffering from a variety of "diseases of the
mind“
 First insane asylums: Baghdad in 705
 "if the nafs [psyche] gets sick, the body may also find
no joy in life and may eventually develop a physical
illness.“
 Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi
Beginnings of Western psychology
 Early psychology was regarded as the study of the soul
 Associated with Christian & Enlightenment Traditions
 Studied the effects of ____ to cure various physical and
mental ills
 Hypnosis
 Gravity
 Animal Magnetism
 Brain structures
Modern Psychology: From
Speculation to Science
 Prior to 1879
 Physiology and philosophy scholars studying questions about the
mind
 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) University of Leipzig,
Germany
 Campaigned to make psychology an independent discipline
 Established the first laboratory for the study of psychology in 1879
Wilhelm Wundt’s International
Influence
 Leipzig, the place to study psychology
 Graduates of Wundt’s program set up new labs
across Europe and North America
 G.Stanley Hall (1846-1924), Johns Hopkins
University
 Established the first psychology laboratory in
the U.S. in 1883
 Between 1883 and 1893, 24 new laboratories
in North America
Fig. 1.1 – Early research laboratories in North America. This map highlights
the location and year of founding for the first 24 psychological research labs
established in North American colleges and universities. As the color coding
shows, a great many of these labs were founded by the students of Wilhelm
Wundt, G. Stanley Hall, and William James. (Based on Garvery, 1929; Hilgard, 1987
The Battle of the “Schools” in the U.S.:
Structuralism vs. Functionalism
 Two intellectual schools of thought regarding the
science of psychology
 Structuralism – led by Edward Titchener


Focused on analyzing consciousness into basic
elements
Introspection – careful, systematic observations of
one’s own conscious experience
 Functionalism – led by William James
 Focused on investigating the function or purpose of
consciousness
 Led to investigation of mental testing, developmental
patterns, and sex differences
 May have attracted the first women into the field of
psychology
Fig. 1.2 – Women
pioneers in the
history of
psychology. Women
have long made major
contributions to the
development of
psychology (Milar,
2000; Russo &
Denmark, 1987), and
today nearly half of all
psychologists are
female. As in other
fields, however,
women have often
been overlooked in
histories of psychology
(Furumoto &
Scarborough, 1986).
The three
psychologists profiled
here demonstrate that
women have been
making significant
contributions to
psychology almost
from its beginningdespite formidable
barriers to pursuing
their academic careers.
Who Won the Battle?
 Most historians give the edge to James and
the functionalists
 Today, psychologists are not really categorized as
structuralists or functionalists
 Applied psychology and Behaviorism -
descendants of functionalism
 Behaviorism - early 1900’s
 The next major school of thought to influence the development
of psychology