A History of Psychology
Chapter one:
The study of the History of Psychology
A note before studying history of psychology
Historical facts can change:
Several Freud’s document will not be available until the 21th century
Bias:
History is highly selective and subjective
Zeitgeist
(the spirit of the time) influences the decision/trend
“Internal”
(psychology) vs. “external”
(socio-cultural, political, or economic context) history
Presentism (looking at past events from today’s perspectives) vs.
Historicism
(placing past events into their actual social and intellectual context)
Approaches to the History of psychology
(Wertheimer, 2000)
1. Quasi-chronologies:
one trend and then a different trend
2. The Great Schools of Psychology:
structuralism, functionalism, Behaviorism, Gestalt
Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Humanistic and Cognitive movement
3. Personal or professional autobiographies
4. Major figures in the history of psychology
5. History of organizations
6. History of psychological research
Why study history of psychology
Avoid mistakes
Indicate the original ideas, the lines of development
The influence of the past helps shape the present
…….
I. The Development of Modern
Psychology
One of the oldest disciplines
Issues first raised in philosophy and theology
Can be traced back to 5 th B.C.
Plato and Aristotle
I. The Development of Modern
Psychology
Modern psychology distinct from the old discipline of philosophy
A primarily scientific field
Applies tools and methods from biology and physiology
Relies on controlled observation and experimentation
Objectivity and precision are continually sought and refined
Eastern Traditions in Psychology
Similarly, psychology had been philosophical, religious, and moralistic in the eastern culture (e.g., Chinese culture)
I-Ching
Yin-Yang (balance and harmony within the environment)
Confucius
A series of practical teaching directed toward morals and politics; the rules of proper conduct in relationships
Taoist Philosophy (e.g., Lao-Tze)
Book of the Ways and of Virtue : a path to wise living
A simple life that is close to nature
Living in harmony with environment
Buddhism
II. The Relevance of the Past for the Present
History of psychology: common requirement for majors
As early as 1911
64% of undergraduate: history of psychology as degree requirement
Unique among the sciences in the focus on our history
II. The Relevance of the Past for the Present
Graduate training in history of psychology
1969: history of psychology course in graduate training
(U of Florida, U of Oklahoma, U of Pennsylvania, $ Texas A&M)
Journal and other document:
1965: Journal of the History of the Behavioral Science
1965: Archives of the History of American Psychology (at
University of Akron, Ohio )--25,000 books, 3,000 photographs, hundreds of film, etc.
1998: History of Psychology (Div 26 journal)
II. The Relevance of the Past for the Present
Formal Organizations
APA Division of the History of Psychology
(Division 26 ) founded in 1966
The International Society for the History of the
Behavioral and Social Science was founded in
1969
II. The Relevance of the Past for the Present
The nature of history of psychology
Values diversity within psychology
Provides a framework for a coherent picture
Values the influence of the past which shape the present
History is the most systematic way to integrate the areas and issues in modern psychology
Recognize relationships among ideas, theories, and research efforts that make the whole cohesive
III. The Data of History:
Reconstructing psychology’s past
How we study history
Historiography : The principles, methods, and philosophical issues of historical research
Data of science
Conduct a laboratory experiment , observe behavior under controlled real-world conditions, take a survey, or calculate correlations….
Can be replicated by other scientists at other time and places
Data of history
Materials used to reconstruct lives, events, eras
Not replicable , conditions not controlled
From data fragments
III. The Data of History:
Reconstructing psychology’s past
Lost or suppressed data
Lost: permanently or temporarily
Suppressed: Freud’s materials to be opened in the 21 st century (to protect the privacy of Freud’s patients and their family and reputation of Freud and his family)
Altered:
Self-interest: Freud’s case; Skinner’s youth
To protect: Freud’s cocaine use
III. The Data of History:
Reconstructing psychology’s past
Data Distorted in Translation
Deliberately: Freud’s use of I and it (ego and id)
Lack of equivalents b/w languages: Zeitgeist
Gestalt
By participants carelessly recording the relevant events
III. The Data of History:
Reconstructing psychology’s past
Self-serving data
Skinner described in his autobiography his rigorous self-discipline as a graduate student. However, he denied later on
=> consulted other sources.
History is dynamic and constantly changes and corrected when new data are reinterpreted or revealed.
IV. External Context in Psychology
Economic opportunity
War (WWI and WWII)
Prejudice and Discrimination
IV. External Context in Psychology
---Economic opportunity
From Experimental Psychology to Applied psychology
More Ph.D.
than job opportunities
Established university In Midwest and West and increased teaching job
But, psychology is the newest science and received smallest financial support
Solving real world problems to get financial support
1890-1918: increased public school enrollments to 700% due to immigrants
Actively apply psychology into education, teaching, and learning.
IV. External Context in Psychology
---War (WWI and WWII)
Personnel selection , psychological testing , or engineering psychology ---This work demonstrated to the public how useful psychology could be.
Psychologist relocated from Europe to the US (because of
Nazi menace in 1930s)
After witnessing the WWI and WWII,
Freud proposed that aggression as a significant motivation force for the human personality
Erich Fromm: interested in abnormal behavior
IV. External Context in Psychology
----Prejudice and Discrimination
Discrimination against women :
Denied admission to graduate school, excluded from faculty position, lower salaries, encountered barrier to tenure
Eleanor Gibson (Visual Cliff): not allow to use graduate students’ library, cafeteria, director’s facility in lab, or take seminars in Freudian psychology at Yale University
Eleanor Gibson
IV.External Context in Psychology
----Prejudice and Discrimination
Discrimination against women :
James Cattell
James Cattell (mental testing): urging the acceptance of women in psychology
1983: he nominated 2 women for APA membership
APA—the 1 st scientific society to admit women.
Female APA members: 15% (1893-
1921), 20% (1938)….
----Prejudice and Discrimination
Discrimination against women :
Mary Calkins (psychology of selves): APA first female president in 1905
denied her doctorate from
Harvard University . She only can be a person to sit-in one class or a guess in the lab.
Mary Calkins
IV. External Context in Psychology
----Prejudice and Discrimination
Julian Rotter
Discrimination based on ethic origin
Late 1800s: a policy to exclude Jewish professors from faculty position (John
Hopkins University and Clark
University)
1960s: admissions quotas for Jewish college students
Julian Rotter (Internal vs. External
Control) : was warned that “Jew simply could not get academic jobs regardless of their credentials” in 1941.
IV.External Context in Psychology
----Prejudice and Discrimination
Maslow was urged by his professor at the University of Wisconsin to change his first name to “something less obviously Jewish”, so that he would have a better chance to obtaining an academic job. Maslow refused to do so.
Abraham Maslow
IV.External Context in Psychology
----Prejudice and Discrimination
Discrimination based on ethic origin
8 out of 3700 Ph.D in psychology was Black
(1920-1966)
Kenneth Clark (psychological effects of racial segregation):
1 st African American president at APA.
Rejected by Cornell U graduate admission because of race, received his doctoral degree from Columbia University in 1940
The Clarks
IV.External Context in Psychology
----Prejudice and Discrimination
Mamie Clark (his wife): earned a doctoral degree at Columbia
University
Could not find the academic job; found a job analyzing data
The Clarks’ research on racial identity and self-concept issues for
Black children impacts the decision to end racial segregation in public school in 1954 .
IV.External Context in Psychology
Recent …Prejudice and
Discrimination
Few female and minority psychologist were listed in the history of psychology or great psychologists
Book: Even the Rat was White
(1998)
A project of “ Great psychologist of color
” is conducting by U of
Notre Dame (2003)
Even the Rat was White
V.Personalistic and Naturalistic theory of scientific history
Personalistic theory :
The view that progress and change in scientific history are attributable to the ideas of unique individual ; focused on the achievement and contributions of specific individuals.
However, often individuals were not recognized during their lifetimes.
V.Personalistic and Naturalistic theory of scientific history
Naturatlistic theory
The view that progress and change in scientific history are attributable to the Zeitgeist (the spirit or climate of the times), which makes a culture receptive to some ideas by not to others
Darwin : his theory developed is because the intellectual climate was ready to accept such a way of explaining the origin of the human species.
V.Personalistic and Naturalistic theory of scientific history
Problems?
An established theory can determine the ways in which data are organized and analyzed as well as research results permitted to be published or not.
Findings oppose current thinking may be rejected by a journal’s editors.
John Garcia : challenging the S-R learning theory .
Major journals refused to accept his articles. (later, he received the APA’s Distinguished Scientific
Contribution Award for his research
VI. Schools of Thought in the evolution of modern psychology.
School of thoughts
A group of psychologists who become associated ideologically and sometimes geographically , with the leader of a movement.
VII. Schools of Thoughts
Each school points to the weakness of the old school and offered new definitions, concepts, and research strategies to correct the previous school.
VII. Schools of Thoughts
Structuralism
Functionalism
Behaviorism
Gestalt psychology
Psychoanalysis
Humanistic psychology
Cognitive psychology