History of Psychology: Wilhelm Wundt

History of Psychology

• Psychology is most relevant to philosophy.
• Psychology is a branch of science that has remained within philosophy for many years; the 19th century was when the sciences declared their independence.
• When psychology was within philosophy, it studied the psyche, not behavior
• Wilhelm Wundt pioneered the separation of psychology from philosophy with the psychology laboratory he founded in Germany.
• Separation from philosophy was not enough for psychology to become a positive science.
• It became a positive science by using techniques and methods used in other positive sciences
• After establishing the psychology laboratory, Wundt devoted his life to psychology
• Wundt replaced the metaphysical soul with a mental structure dependent on physical variables
• Wundt made mental experiences the subject of psychology
• Wundt turned psychology into a natural science
• Wundt is also the founder of experimental psychology
• Wundt psychology is a science of consciousness
• Wundt tried to use the method of introspection
• Wundt was a very good observer, experimenter, analyst and psychologist
• Psychology as a separate scientific discipline began with Wundt's introspective psychology.
• Psychology for a long time, especially in the United States, was dominated by Watson's behaviorism.
• Scientific psychology has gone through many transformations and has developed its understanding of the subject, method and problem, so cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience collaborate today.
• Modern psychology is defined today as the scientific study of behavior and the processes underlying behavior.
• Cognitive processes cannot be directly observed; their existence is determined by observing the behavior of the organism or by using neurological findings.
• Psychology, like other sciences, is a science that changes concepts
• Psychology has chosen human beings as its subject of study, but as a comparative science, it also turned to animal behavior to understand human behavior.

Continuity in psychology

• Psychology is one of the oldest and most ancient of all scientific disciplines that exist today.
• Since time immemorial, human beings have been fascinated by their own nature and behavior and have derived many philosophical theses on them.
• Questions about human nature such as memory, learning, motivation, perception and dreams are an important indicator of the interaction between the past and the present in psychology, starting from ancient Greece to the present day.
• Although the intellectual foundations of psychology go back to ancient times, its existence as a modern science is only a century old.
• Hermann Ebbinghaus, a 19th-century psychologist, explained this situation: "Psychology has a long history, but a short one.”
• Psychology owes its ability to break away from its old philosophical tradition and assert itself as a modern science to the methods it uses to answer questions about human nature.
• The different approaches and techniques have been recognized and used, making psychology break away from philosophy and become a distinct discipline in the world of science.
• Over the past 100 years, psychologists have grounded psychology, defined its main topics, and made it a discipline independent of philosophy.
• The first evidence of the development of psychology as an independent discipline emerged in the last 25 years of the 19th century.
• Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany.
• Wundt also founded the world's first psychology journal, Philosophische Studien (Philosophical Studies) in 1881, which included some experimental reports
• Until 1888, people who studied psychology could work in the philosophy departments of universities.
• James McKeen Cattell was appointed as the world's first professor of psychology in 1888 at the University of Pennsylvania, and thus psychology proved itself in the academic field.
• Cattell was the first person in the world to hold the title of "professor of psychology".
• In 1887, Stanley Hall founded the American Journal of Psychology, America's first psychology journal.
• In 1908, British psychologist William McDougall defined psychology as "the science of behavior" for the first time.
• Psychology was defined for the first time with full grounds and passed into the literature as "the science of behavior".
• According to records, the first attempt to explain human behavior in ways other than supernatural forces began in Ancient Greece.
• 500 years before the crucifixion of Jesus, 2500 years before the first flight experiment at Kitty Hawk, the pioneers of today's scientific thought lived in Greece.
• We are the intellectual heirs of philosophers like Thales, Democritus, Alkmaion and Hippocrates
• Looking back from today, it is easy to criticize their ideas
• Thales' idea that "The basis of everything is water" may seem illogical today.
• Important to note that Thales approached the universe from a natural and objective point of view instead of explaining it with supernatural forces.
• Other thinkers followed in his footsteps and tried to explain the universe with concrete reasons.
• This approach formed the basis of the "scientific" and "naturalistic" approaches in psychology.

History of Psychology Research

• The proposal to offer a history of psychology course at universities dates back to 1911.
• Many psychology departments offer this course today
• Psychologists' interest in the history of their field has helped the history of psychology become accepted as an academic discipline.
• The multidisciplinary Journal of the History on the Behavioral Sciences began to be published in 1965 under the editorship of a psychologist.
• The Archives of the History of American Psychology was established at the University of Akron in Ohio the same year to collect and preserve source materials to meet the needs of researchers.
• In 1985, the American Psychological Association (APA) launched a project of audio-recorded oral history interviews with former presidents and executive staff to preserve the development of professional and scientific psychology.
• In 1998, the APA's Division of the History of Psychology launched the quarterly journal History of Psychology.
• The aim of the journal was to showcase the connection between history and psychology as well as address issues in the teaching of history of psychology.
• In 1969, the International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences (Cheiron Society) was founded.
• Some universities offered undergraduate courses in the history of psychology, institutions like York University, University of New Hampshire, University of Florida, University of Oklahoma and University of Pennsylvania.
• The increase in publications, organized meetings, and archives increases show the importance psychologists attach to the study of the history of psychology.
• One reason for studying the history of psychology has to do with the development of the field and its influences.
• The other has to do the various parts of contemporary psychology and the debates between them.
• There is currently no single definition, approach, or form of psychology that is accepted by all psychologists, but there are important differences in scientific and professional specialization and areas of study.
• Psychologists may focus their attention on conscious or unconscious processes, observable behavior, or physiological and biochemical processes.
• Modern psychology has many fields, and these fields develop a variety of approaches to be relevant to human nature and to be scientific, but they share little in common.
• The framework that brings together the different fields and approaches is the historical development of the field and the emergence of psychology as a discipline.
• Studying the origins give a clearer understanding of the differences of modern psychology, and the history of the new psychology will help explain its current state.
• The influence of the past on the present reflects a technique and way of thinking used by many psychologists.
• Examining patients' past experiences with their current situation, clinical psychologists try to understand past influences that lead individuals to think or behave in a certain way.
• When taking case histories of patients, clinical psychologists try to explain their current behavior in the process by re-enacting the stages they went through.
• Behavioral psychologists also recognize the role of the past in shaping the present In general, human behavior is thought to be the result of previous experiences of conditioning and reinforcement; in this context, the current state of an organism is judged in terms of its past
• The history of psychology, as part of the curriculum in the psychology department, helps you make connections between the many fields and issues that make up modern psychology.
• It can contribute to understanding the interrelationships between facts and theories and to developing a deep awareness of how different, sometimes seemingly unrelated, components of psychology come together.
• It can help to understand how the disparate topics of psychology are inevitably related to its historical pattern of development.
• The course in the history of psychology has been characterized as the keystone of the psychology curriculum (Raphelson, 1982).

Historiography and Psychology

• Using the methods of history to understand the development of psychology
• Historical data differs markedly from scientific data.
• The most obvious characteristic of scientific data is that they are produced by scientists.
• When psychologists want to understand the conditions under which people will help individuals suffering significantly, to develop reinforcement methods to influence the behavior of laboratory animals, or to investigate whether children will imitate aggressive behavior they observe in others, they set up the conditions under which data are collected.
• Psychologists set up laboratory experiments and systematically observe the behavior they want to study under control in a specific environment, conduct surveys, or determine the relationship between two variables.
• Scientists therefore shape the events and situations they want to investigate so that they can be reconstructed a different time or by other scientists working in the field.
• Data can be validated by repeating observations and creating conditions similar to those of the original study.
• Historical data cannot be recreated or replicated
• The event or situation concerned occurred in the past, perhaps centuries ago, and it is possible that historians at the time did not record it in a way that revealed the details of the event, so it may have been lost without being studied in depth
• Historical data exists as fragments of past events, such as testimonies from witnesses or direct participants, letters, diaries, memoirs or official reports.
• These fragments serve as data that historians use to reconstruct people and events of the past.
• The method of historians is similar to the approach of archaeologists working with the remains of past civilizations, such as arrows, ceramic shards, human bones, etc
• Some archaeological excavations provide more data and remains than others, allowing for a more accurate reconstruction; similarly, excavations in history provide a clear indication of the accuracy of the reconstruction.

Challenges in Establishing Historical Facts

• Historical data can sometimes be flawed by loss or deliberate concealment, mistranslation or distortion by a self-interested participant.
• Some data may have been deliberately concealed from the public or altered to protect the reputation of those involved
• There have also been cases of deliberate concealment of data from the public, often for personal reasons.
• Data may exist but may be altered or biased due to mistranslations or manipulations by one of the participants in recording their own actions
• Another problem with data history is that the historian is presented with distorted information.
• Historical data is also affected by the behavior of the individuals involved.
• Consciously or unconsciously, these individuals may act in their own self-interest, either to protect themselves or to improve public perceptions of them.
• History is not a fixed and static structure; on the contrary, it is dynamic, ever-changing, evolving and purifying as new data emerges and mistakes are corrected.
• History should never be perceived as a finished or completed process.
• It is a story that unfolds uninterruptedly.
• This story, as told by the historian, can only be approximated fairly closely to the truth; however, with the completion of each new discovery and piece of historical data, it is possible to get closer to the truth, year after year.
• It would not be right to make an opinion without recognizing the existing social, economic and societal forces.
• A science like psychology did not develop in a vacuum, subject only to internal influences.
• Psychology is part of a much wider culture and is therefore subject to external forces that shape its structure and direction.

Environmental Factors in Psychology

• There were exciting opportunities to apply psychology to practical problems.
• As a result of social changes in the United States
• The influx of immigrants to the US, their birth rates and public education became a growing industry.
• Between 1890 and 1918, school enrollment in the US increased by 700 percent, and there was a trend of new colleges being built across the country.
• More money was spent on education than on military and welfare programs.
• War is another environmental influence that has shaped modern psychology
• The experiences of psychologists helping in World War I and World War II accelerated the influence of applied psychology in fields such as personnel selection and engineering psychology.
• World War 2 changed the face and fate of psychology in Europe, especially in Germany, where experimental psychology began, and in Austria, the birthplace of psychoanalysis.
• It also caused many famous psychologists, including the pioneers of psychology such as Freud, Adler, Horney, Erikson and Gestalt, to flee the Nazi threat in the 1930s and move to the USA.
• The war also influenced the theories and systems developed by individual psychologists
• After witnessing the carnage of World War I, Freud proposed that aggression was as important a drive in human life as sexuality.
• This proposition was a fundamental change within Freud's system of psychoanalysis.
• Erich Fromm, a personality theorist and anti-war activist, later attributed his interest in abnormal behavior to the fanaticism that emerged in Germany during the war.
• Throughout the history of psychology, women have often experienced prejudice and discrimination.
• Women have also faced significant prejudice in mainstream psychology, as have African-Americans and Jews.
• The history of psychology contains very few contributions by women and minority scientists because of the discrimination they faced.

Scientific Views of History

• There are two approaches to explaining how a discipline develops: Personalistic, or great-man theory, and naturalistic theory
• The personalist perspective of scientific history focuses on the extraordinary achievements and contributions of some individuals.
• This approach argues that progress and change are directly linked to the influence and desires of rare individuals who single-handedly steered and changed the course of history.
• Figures such as Napoleon, Hitler and Darwin.
• Personality theory argues that without "great men and women", important events might not have happened.
• The theory emphasizes that, in reality, it is individuals who determine the conditions of the time.
• We often refer to historical periods by the names of the individuals who left their mark on that period like "post Einstein" in physics, "post Watson" in psychology and "post Michelangelo” in sculpture.
• Individuals make dramatic and sometimes shocking changes in both science and general culture that affect historical processes
• There is no denying that the personalist theory has a certain importance, but it is insufficient to explain the development of a science or a society.
• This theory alone is not sufficient to explain the development of a science or society.
• The adoption and application of a discovery may be limited by the dominant mindset in a particular culture, region or era, but an idea that was strange and unaccepted at the time may easily be accepted a generation or century later
• The most talented people may have been hindered and forced by the Zeitgeist.
• Slow change seems to be a rule of scientific progress.
• German origin: Zeit → Time, Geist → Spirit, mind, thought.
• It means "the spirit of time.
• In the 19th century, it appeared frequently in German philosophical texts.
• German philosophers Johann Gottfried Herder and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel developed the concept by arguing that different periods of history have their own spirit or character.
• According to Hegel, Zeitgeist is part of historical development and is an important force that influences the thinking, art, science and politics of societies.
• This concept was later used in disciplines such as history, sociology and cultural studies

Natural History Theory

• Epochs (the ages) shape people, or at least create the possibility for the approval of what one has to say.
• Unless the Zeitgeist is ready for a new idea, its proponent may not be heard, and even if he or she is, he or she may be laughed at or even burned at the stake, depending on the Zeitgeist.
• Examples of simultaneous discoveries also support the natural history theory.
• When people working in distant geographies make similar discoveries is often because one is not aware of the other's work.
• Zeitgeist in a science can have a constraining influence on its research methods, theoretical articulations and the definition of the discipline's central theme
• In 1970, psychologist John Garcia attempted to publish research findings that challenged the traditional stimulus-response (SR) theory of learning.
• Despite the quality and professional recognition of his work, many journals refused to accept his articles.
• Garcia, a Spanish American, was elected to the Society of Experimental Psychologists and his research received the APA's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.
• As a result, his work was published in lesser-known and low-circulation journals
• This delayed the dissemination of his views.

The Subject Matter of Psychology

• As a concept, psychology is formed from the words psyche and logos; it means the science of the soul.
• Psychology is a positive science that studies the behavior of the organism.
• The reason why it is a positive science is that it can be experimented and observed.
• The subject of psychology is to examine the relations of the organism with itself and its environment, to examine its behavior and to observe its change according to the conditions.
• In the study of behavior, the stimulus situation and the state of the organism are evaluated together; as a result, behavior is a set of reactions of the organism against internal and external stimuli.
• Behaviors are divided into observable (walking, talking ...) and unobservable (imagination, thinking ...).
• early stages of the new psychology were heavily influenced by Wilhelm Wundt.
• Wundt had definite ideas about what form this new science should take.
• Wundt set out a clear framework for the main theme of psychology, the methods of research, the topics that researchers should address, and the goals of this new science; he was influenced by the main features of his time and by the prevailing ideas of physics and philosophy.
• Wundt represented his time by drawing conclusions from different currents of thought, and his persuasive personality and his extensive writings and research contributed significantly to the shaping of the new psychology
• Disagreements arose among the growing number of psychologists after a short period.
• The zeitgeist was changing, and as a natural consequence, new ideas began to appear in general culture and other branches of science.
• As a reflection of the new currents of thought, some psychologists began to develop different views on the main themes of psychology based on Wundt's version.
• Several systematic approaches and schools of thought began to coexist as the century changed; these schools began to offer various definitions about the nature of psychology.

Approaches in Psychology

• The science of psychology was previously linked to philosophy, which was separated from philosophy with the establishment of an experimental psychology laboratory in 1879 and became a new branch.
• The purpose of this laboratory was to observe human behavior.
• Wilhelm Wundt took all these steps.
• Titchener followed in Wundt's footsteps.
• The individual can test his or her own emotional state and mental processes through structuralism.
• Inner feelings, intuition and thought are emphasized within structuralism.
• Titchener used the method of introspection where the individual examines himself/herself and expresses and describes what he/she feels, what comes to his/her mind in the face of an event or an effect.
• The subject of psychology should be observable behaviors, according to the behaviorist approach.
• experimentation and observation helps accomplish the observable behavior with behaviorism.
• The behaviors of individuals against stimuli take place in the (Stimulus - Response) relationship and that the study of these behaviors through experimentation and observation will yield more scientific (objective) results, according to behaviorism.
• William James founded functionalism and reacted to structuralism.
• structuralists focus only on the structure of the mind, but functionalism states that the function of the mind is more important than its structure.
• Functionalism seeks answers to how the mind works and what it does.
• The mind tries to adapt to its environment.
• Functionalism emphasizes mental processes such as perception, thinking and learning processes.
• Structuralism emphasizes internal emotions, while functionalism emphasizes mental processes; this is the distinctive and sharp difference between the two.
• Functionalism are based on the adaptation of behaviors to the environment; adaptive behaviors are beneficial.
• Psychology is used to answer the questions of behaviors an mind is for rather than what the mind is.
• Human beings have innate instincts of sexuality and aggression, according to psychoanalysis.
• The subconscious is the main element of psychoanalysis, represented by Sigmund Freud
• The desires that are not welcomed in society, mostly at a young age, are thrown into the subconscious by the individual.
• The subconscious is the area of repressed desires from the environment
• Relief of the discomfort will come by bringing unconsciously repressed desires to the conscious level.
• Human life, together with its behaviors, is an indivisible whole, according to the holistic approach.
• The whole reveals a harmony that is distinct from the sum of its parts.
• Experiences should be analyzed within their integrity.
• The humanistic approach puts those who adopt this approach put the human being at the center.
• Humanistic approach states that the human being takes the power of development from himself/herself and argues that the environment is ineffective.
• Humanism highlights the emotional side of human beings and interprets their behavior accordingly.
• Humanism emphasizes that emotions, feelings, hopes, and expectations that make a person human are important.
• It is necessary to know an individual's inner life to understand the behavior of an individual, Humanism says.
• Requires looking at the environment from his/her point of view (empathy).
• Humnaism uses introspection as a method.
• The cognitive approach, represented by J. Piaget, attaches importance to human mental activities.
• Thinking, comprehension and interpretation are important elements that direct behavior, according to Cognitivism
• Behaviors cannot be examined by reducing them to a stimulus response link, says Cognitivism
• Cognitivism tries to conduct experiments that explain how mental processes are organized and work.
• The cause of behavior can only be found by examining the biological structure of the individual.
• Behaviors emerge as a function of the brain, which is a biological structure.
• They are also influenced by glands and hormone patterns.
• Biological elements should be taken into account in behavior.