History of psychology

Psychology is defined as "the scientific study of behavior and mental processes". Philosophical interest in the human mind and behavior dates back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Persia, Greece, China, and India.

Psychology as a field of experimental study began in 1854 in Leipzig, Germany when Gustav Fechner created the first theory of how judgments about sensory experiences are made and how to experiment on them. Fechner's theory, recognized today as Signal Detection Theory foreshadowed the development of statistical theories of comparative judgment and thousands of experiments based on his ideas (Link, S. W. Psychological Science, 1995). Later, 1879, Wilhelm Wundt founded in Leipzig, Germany, the first Psychological laboratory dedicated exclusively to psychological research. Wundt was also the first person to refer to himself as ''a psychologist.'' A notable precursor of Wundt was Ferdinand Ueberwasser (1752-1812) who designated himself ''Professor of Empirical Psychology and Logic'' in 1783 and gave lectures on empirical psychology at the Old University of Münster, Germany. Other important early contributors to the field include Hermann Ebbinghaus (a pioneer in the study of memory), William James (the American father of pragmatism), and Ivan Pavlov (who developed the procedures associated with classical conditioning).

Soon after the development of experimental psychology, various kinds of applied psychology appeared. G. Stanley Hall brought scientific pedagogy to the United States from Germany in the early 1880s. John Dewey's educational theory of the 1890s was another example. Also in the 1890s, Hugo Münsterberg began writing about the application of psychology to industry, law, and other fields. Lightner Witmer established the first psychological clinic in the 1890s. James McKeen Cattell adapted Francis Galton's anthropometric methods to generate the first program of mental testing in the 1890s. In Vienna, meanwhile, Sigmund Freud developed an independent approach to the study of the mind called psychoanalysis, which has been widely influential.

The 20th century saw a reaction to Edward Titchener's critique of Wundt's empiricism. This contributed to the formulation of behaviorism by John B. Watson, which was popularized by B. F. Skinner. Behaviorism proposed emphasizing the study of overt behavior, because that could be quantified and easily measured. Early behaviorists considered the study of the "mind" too vague for productive scientific study. However, Skinner and his colleagues did study thinking as a form of covert behavior to which they could apply the same principles as overt (publicly observable) behavior.

The final decades of the 20th century saw the rise of cognitive science, an interdisciplinary approach to studying the human mind. Cognitive science again considers the "mind" as a subject for investigation, using the tools of cognitive psychology, linguistics, computer science, philosophy, behaviorism, and neurobiology. This form of investigation has proposed that a wide understanding of the human mind is possible, and that such an understanding may be applied to other research domains, such as artificial intelligence.

There are conceptual divisions of psychology in so-called "forces" or "waves," based on its schools and historical trends. This terminology is popularized among the psychologists to differentiate a growing humanism in therapeutic practice from the 1930s onwards, called the "third force," in response to the deterministic tendencies of Watson's behaviourism and Freud's psychoanalysis. Humanistic psychology has as important proponents Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Gordon Allport, Erich Fromm, and Rollo May. Their humanistic concepts are also related to existential psychology, Viktor Frankl's logotherapy, positive psychology (which has Martin Seligman as one of the leading exponents), C. R. Cloninger's approach to well-being and character development, as well as to transpersonal psychology, incorporating such concepts as spirituality, self-transcendence, self-realization, self-actualization, and mindfulness. In cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, similar terms have also been incorporated, by which "first wave" is considered the initial behavioral therapy; a "second wave", Albert Ellis's cognitive one; and a "third wave", with the acceptance and commitment therapy, which emphasizes one's pursuit of values, methods of self-awareness, acceptance and psychological flexibility, instead of challenging negative thought schemes. A "fourth wave" would be the one that incorporates transpersonal concepts and positive flourishing, in a way criticized by some researchers for its heterogeneity and theoretical direction dependent on the therapist's view. A "fifth wave" has now been proposed by a group of researchers seeking to integrate earlier concepts into a unifying theory.

Early psychological thought

Many cultures throughout history have speculated on the nature of the mind, heart, soul, spirit, brain, etc. For instance, in Ancient Egypt, the Edwin Smith Papyrus contains an early description of the brain, and some speculations on its functions (described in a medical/surgical context) and the descriptions could be related to Imhotep who was the first Egyptian physician who anatomized and discovered the body of the human being. Though other medical documents of ancient times were full of incantations and applications meant to turn away disease-causing demons and other superstition, the Edwin Smith Papyrus gives remedies to almost 50 conditions and only two contain incantations to ward off evil.

Ancient Greek philosophers, from Thales (fl. 550 BC) through even to the Roman period, developed an elaborate theory of what they termed the ''psuchẽ'' ( psyche) (from which the first half of "psychology" is derived), as well as other "psychological" terms – ''nous'', ''thumos'', ''logistikon'', etc. Classical Greece (fifth century BCE), philosophers taught “naturalism,” the belief that laws of nature shape our world, as opposed to gods and demons determining human fate. Alcmaeon, for example, believed the brain, not the heart, was the “organ of thought.”He tracked the ascending sensory nerves from the body to the brain, theorizing that mental activity originated in the CNS and that the cause of mental illness resided within the brain. He applied this understanding to classify mental diseases and treatments.The most influential of these psychologists are the accounts of Plato (especially in the ''Republic''), Pythagoras and of Aristotle (esp. ''Peri Psyches'', better known under its Latin title, '' De Anima''). Plato's tripartite theory of the soul, Chariot Allegory and concepts such as ''eros'' defined the subsequent Western Philosophy views of the psyche and anticipated modern psychological proposals, such as Freud's id, ego and super-ego and libido; to the point that "in 1920, Freud decided to present Plato as the precursor of his own theory, as part of a strategy directed to define the scientific and cultural collocation of psychoanalysis". Hellenistic philosophers (viz., the Stoics and Epicurians) diverged from the Classical Greek tradition in several important ways, especially in their concern with questions of the physiological basis of the mind. The Roman physician Galen addressed these issues most elaborately and influentially of all. The Greek tradition influenced some Christian and Islamic thought on the topic.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Manual of Discipline (from the Dead Sea Scrolls, ca. 21 BC–61 AD) notes the division of human nature into two temperaments or opposing spirits of either veracity or perversity

Walter M Freeman proposes that Thomism is the philosophical system explaining cognition that is most compatible with neurodynamics, in a 2008 article in the journal ''Mind and Matter'' entitled "Nonlinear Brain Dynamics and Intention According to Aquinas".

In Asia, China had a long history of administering tests of ability as part of its education system. Chinese texts from 2500 years ago mention neuropsychiatric illness, including descriptions of mania and psychosis with or without epilepsy. “Imbalance” was the mechanism of psychosis. Other conditions described include confusion, visual illusions, intoxication, stress, and even malingering. Psychological theories about stages of human development can be traced to the time of Confucius, about 2500 years ago.

In the 6th century AD, Lin Xie carried out an early experiment, in which he asked people to draw a square with one hand and at the same time draw a circle with the other (ostensibly to test people's vulnerability to distraction). It has been cited that this was the first psychology experiment.

India had a theory of "the self" in its Vedanta philosophical writings. Additionally, Indians thought about the individual's self as being enclosed by different levels known as koshas. Additionally, the Sankya philosophy said that the mind has 5 components, including manas (lower mind), ahankara (sense of I-ness), chitta (memory bank of mind), buddhi (intellect), and atman (self/soul). Patanjali was one of the founders of the yoga tradition, sometime between 200 and 400 BC (pre-dating Buddhist psychology) and a student of the Vedas. He developed the science of breath and mind and wrote his knowledge in the form of between 194 and 196 aphorisms called the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. He developed modern Yoga for psychological resilience and balance . He is reputed to have used yoga therapeutically for anxiety, depression and mental disorders as common then as now. Buddhist philosophies have developed several psychological theories (see Buddhism and psychology), formulating interpretations of the mind and concepts such as aggregates (''skandhas''), emptiness (''sunyata''), non-self (''anatta''), mindfulness and Buddha-nature, which are addressed today by theorists of humanistic and transpersonal psychology. Several Buddhist lineages have developed notions analogous to those of modern Western psychology, such as the unconscious, personal development and character improvement,Germano, David F.; Waldron, William S. «A Comparison of Alaya-Vijñana in Yogacara and Dzogchen». In Nauriyal, D. K. Drummond, Michael S. Lal, Y. B. Buddhist Thought and Applied Psychological Research: Transcending the Boundaries. London and New York: Routledge. 2006. pp. 36–68 the latter being part of the Noble Eightfold Path and expressed, for example, in the Tathagatagarbha Sutra. Hinayana traditions, such as the Theravada, focus more on individual meditation, while Mahayana traditions also emphasize the attainment of a Buddha nature of wisdom ( prajña) and compassion (karuṇā) in the realization of the boddhisattva ideal, but affirming it more metaphysically, in which charity and helping sentient beings is cosmically fundamental. Buddhist monk and scholar D. T. Suzuki describes the importance of the individual's inner enlightenment and the self-realization of the mind. Researcher David Germano, in his thesis on Longchenpa, also shows the importance of self-actualization in the dzogchen teaching lineage.

Medieval Muslim physicians also developed practices to treat patients with a variety of " diseases of the mind".A. Vanzan Paladin (1998), "Ethics and neurology in the Islamic world: Continuity and change", ''Italian Journal of Neurological Science'' 19: 255-258 57 Springer-Verlag.

Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi (850–934) was among the first, in this tradition, to discuss disorders related to both the body and the mind. Al-Balkhi recognized that the body and the soul can be healthy or sick, or "balanced or imbalanced". He wrote that imbalance of the body can result in fever, headaches and other bodily illnesses, while imbalance of the soul can result in anger, anxiety, sadness and other ''nafs''-related symptoms.

Avicenna, similarly, did early work in the treatment of ''nafs''-related illnesses, and developed a system for associating changes in the mind with inner feelings. Avicenna also described phenomena we now recognize as neuropsychiatric conditions, including hallucination, mania, nightmare, melancholia, dementia, epilepsy and tremor.

Ancient and medieval thinkers who discussed issues related to psychology included:

*Thales developed an elaborate theory of what they termed the psuchẽ (psyche) (from which the first half of "psychology" is derived), as well as other "psychological" terms used today.
* Socrates of Athens (c. 470 – 399 BCE). Emphasized virtue ethics. In epistemology, understood dialectic to be central to the pursuit of truth.
*As early as the 4th century BC, the Greek physician Hippocrates theorized that mental disorders had physical rather than supernatural causes.
*Plato's tripartite theory of the soul, Chariot Allegory and concepts such as ''eros'' defined the subsequent Western Philosophy views of the psyche and anticipated modern psychological proposals.
* Alcmaeon theorizes the brain in the seat of the mind.
*In 387 BCE, Plato suggested that the brain is where mental processes take place.
*Boethius and his work represented an imaginary psychological dialogue between himself and philosophy, with philosophy personified as a woman, arguing that despite the apparent inequality of the world.
*In the 6th century AD, Lin Xie carried out an early psychological analysis experiment. It has been cited that this was the first psychology experiment.
* Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, who developed ''al-‘ilaj al-nafs'' (sometimes translated as "psychotherapy"),
*Padmasambhava was the 8th-century medicine Buddha of Tibet, called from the then Buddhist India to tame the Tibetans, and was instrumental in developing Tibetan psychiatric medicine.
*Patanjali founded Yoga and the method of psychological balance and resilience through breathing exercises and inner peace.
* Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis), described head surgery;
*Ibn Tufail, who anticipated the tabula rasa argument and nature versus nurture debate.G. A. Russell (1994), ''The 'Arabick' Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England'', pp. 224-262, Brill Publishers, .
* William of Ockham who has lot of interests in writing about logic and invented occams razor.
*Thomas Aquinas who’s works were show allocated notion regarded emotions.
* Albertus magnus describes metaphysical morals in psychology and philosophical theories.

Maimonides described rabies and belladonna intoxication.

Witelo is considered a precursor of perception psychology. His ''Perspectiva'' contains much material in psychology, outlining views that are close to modern notions on the association of idea and on the subconscious.

Further development

Many of the Ancients' writings would have been lost without the efforts of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish translators in the House of Wisdom, the House of Knowledge, and other such institutions in the Islamic Golden Age, whose glosses and commentaries were later translated into Latin in the 12th century. However, it is not clear how these sources first came to be used during the Renaissance, and their influence on what would later emerge as the discipline of psychology is a topic of scholarly debate.

Etymology and the early usage of the word

The first print use of the term "psychology", that is, Greek-inspired neo-Latin ''psychologia'', is dated to multiple works dated 1525. Etymology has long been attributed to the German scholastic philosopher Rudolf Göckel (1547–1628, often known under the Latin form Rodolphus Goclenius), who published the ''Psychologia hoc est: de hominis perfectione, animo et imprimis ortu hujus...'' in Marburg in 1590. Croatian humanist Marko Marulić (1450–1524) likely used the term in the title of a Latin treatise entitled ''Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae'' (c.1520?). Although the treatise itself has not been preserved, its title appears in a list of Marulic's works compiled by his younger contemporary, Franjo Bozicevic-Natalis in his "Vita Marci Maruli Spalatensis" (Krstić, 1964).

The term did not come into popular usage until the German Rationalist philosopher, Christian Wolff (1679–1754) used it in his works ''Psychologia empirica'' (1732) and ''Psychologia rationalis'' (1734). This distinction between empirical and rational psychology was picked up in Denis Diderot's (1713–1780) and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's (1717–1783) ''Encyclopédie'' (1751–1784) and was popularized in France by Maine de Biran (1766–1824). In England, the term "psychology" overtook "mental philosophy" in the middle of the 19th century, especially in the work of William Hamilton (1788–1856).

Enlightenment psychological thought

Early psychology was regarded as the study of the soul (in the Christian sense of the term). The modern philosophical form of psychology was heavily influenced by the works of René Descartes (1596–1650), and the debates that he generated, of which the most relevant were the objections to his '' Meditations on First Philosophy'' (1641), published with the text. Also important to the later development of psychology were his ''Passions of the Soul'' (1649) and ''Treatise on Man'' (completed in 1632 but, along with the rest of ''The World'', withheld from publication after Descartes heard of the Catholic Church's condemnation of Galileo; it was eventually published posthumously, in 1664).

Although not educated as a physician, Descartes did extensive anatomical studies of bulls' hearts and was considered important enough that William Harvey responded to him. Descartes was one of the first to endorse Harvey's model of the circulation of the blood, but disagreed with his metaphysical framework to explain it. Descartes dissected animals and human cadavers and as a result was familiar with the research on the flow of blood leading to the conclusion that the body is a complex device that is capable of moving without the soul, thus contradicting the "Doctrine of the Soul". The emergence of psychology as a medical discipline was given a major boost by Thomas Willis, not only in his reference to psychology (the "Doctrine of the Soul") in terms of brain function, but through his detailed 1672 anatomical work, and his treatise ("Two Discourses on the Souls of Brutes"—meaning "beasts"). However, Willis acknowledged the influence of Descartes's rival, Pierre Gassendi, as an inspiration for his work.

The philosophers of the British Empiricist and Associationist schools had a profound impact on the later course of experimental psychology. John Locke's '' An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (1689), George Berkeley's '' Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge'' (1710), and David Hume's ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1739–1740) were particularly influential, as were David Hartley's ''Observations on Man'' (1749) and John Stuart Mill's '' A System of Logic''. (1843). Also notable was the work of some Continental Rationalist philosophers, especially Baruch Spinoza's (1632–1677) '' On the Improvement of the Understanding'' (1662) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's (1646–1716) ''New Essays on Human Understanding'' (completed 1705, published 1765). Another important contribution was Friedrich August Rauch's (1806–1841) book ''Psychology: Or, A View of the Human Soul; Including Anthropology'' (1840), the first English exposition of Hegelian philosophy for an American audience.

German idealism pioneered the proposition of the unconscious, which Jung considered to have been described psychologically for the first time by physician and philosopher Carl Gustav Carus. Also notable was its use by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1835), and by Eduard von Hartmann in ''Philosophy of the Unconscious'' (1869); psychologist Hans Eysenck writes in ''Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire'' (1985) that Hartmann's version of the unconscious is very similar to Freud's.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard also influenced the humanistic, existential, and modern psychological schools with his works '' The Concept of Anxiety'' (1844) and '' The Sickness Unto Death'' (1849).

Transition to contemporary psychology

Also influential on the emerging discipline of psychology were debates surrounding the efficacy of Mesmerism (a precursor to hypnosis) and the value of phrenology. The former was developed in the 1770s by Austrian physician Franz Mesmer (1734–1815) who claimed to use the power of gravity, and later of "animal magnetism", to cure various physical and mental ills. As Mesmer and his treatment became increasingly fashionable in both Vienna and Paris, it also began to come under the scrutiny of suspicious officials. In 1784, an investigation was commissioned in Paris by King Louis XVI which included American ambassador Benjamin Franklin, chemist Antoine Lavoisier