History of psychology
Until the last decades of the 19th century, psychology was considered a
branch of philosophy and its object was defined as the study of the mind. As
a philosophical discipline, it was not subject to experimental control
because the only condition of philosophical arguments--and also of other
abstract disciplines like mathematics--is to be internally coherent.
Philosophers can thence propose different views about a same phenomenon, and
it is up to each person to decide what proposal is more appealing.
During this period, philosophers of the Modern Age who deal significantly
with psychological topics were René Descartes and the British empiricists:
Hume and Locke. They were concerned with issues like: the nature of mind, the
relation of mind with body, and how men elaborate a mental representation of
the world and arrive to abstract concepts.
The first psychological laboratory, founded in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany, was
committed to the experimental study of sensation and perception. Several
scientists of the time: Wilhelm Wundt, Herman Ebbinghaus, Gustav Theodor
Fechner, and Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz, collaborated in the
formulation of the laws of perception.
In the United States of America, Edward B. Titchener and William James help
to separate psychology from philosophy. Titchener insisted in the study of
experience, and James published in 1890 a book that became a landmark:
Principles of Psychology. James, who was a philosopher, is mostly
known for his theories on learning and emotion. He maintained that the
mastering of new situations results in the formation of habits, which are
then the result of the adaptation to environment changes. As to emotion, he
stated that it was the consequence of physiological changes.
The first laboratory of psychology in the United States was founded in 1883
by G. Stanley Hall at Clark University. He was also the first president of
the American Psychological Association (APA). The end of the nineteenth
century saw psychology as a new discipline heavily influenced by the
functionalist doctrine of the philosophers at the University of Chicago.
In the early twentieth century, a book was published that marked a change in
the orientation of psychology. This change was going to influence the work of
psychologists till the century was well into its second half. The
philosophical conception of psychology as the introspective study of the mind
had been preserved by the founders of the new discipline, though introducing
experimental methods. This approach was first challenged by the movement
known as functionalism, which endorsed the use of other methods than
introspection, such as the intelligence tests that at the moment were having
increased use in the United States.
The intent of making psychology an experimental science was curtailed by the
emphasis in the importance of introspection, as introspection is an internal
phenomenon that cannot be replicated or evaluated. The classical conception
of psychology, which became known as mentalism, was particularly under attack
by animal psychologists, who cannot make their subjects to introspect. One of
these animal psychologists was John B. Watson, disciple of the leader of
functionalism, James Rowland Angell. A graduated from the University of
Chicago working at John Hopkins University, Watson postulated a new
conception of animal psychology, that he later expanded to psychology as a
whole.
In a work published in the scientific journal Psychology Review in
1913, Watson defined psychology as a natural science whose goal was the study
of behavior. Thus, Watson dispensed with any use of introspection and any
reference to mind. Data obtained by introspection, he said, was only evident
to the person who produced them. The only objective evidence was externally
observable behavior. Watson's ideas were shared by many psychologists, and
soon a movement was formed called behaviorism, of which Watson is considered
the founder.
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