Establishing psychology as an independent academic discipline - summary of chapter 4 of Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition)

Foundation of psychology
Chapter 4
Establishing psychology as an independent academic discipline

The foundation of the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Germany

By 1850 there was a thriving literature of psychological subjects in Germany.

The universities reform in Germany

Universities in the German states for a long time were dominated by the humanities and religion.
This was a feature proponents of the Enlightenment fought against.
The Enlightenment ideas mainly came from a group of academics who had been expelled from the University of Leipzig, because of their critical attitude and modern ways of thinking.

A reform took place after the defeat of the Holy Roman Empire in 1805-1806.
The defeat by the French particularly upset the Prussians, who decided it was high time to modernise their country.
The school system was reorganised and a new university model was installed.

• Whereas before the universities had been places of education, mainly aimed at the training of physicians, lawyers and clergy, scientific research now became part and parcel of an academic career with its own financing.
  • Wissenschaft: scholarship and scientific research
  • Bildung: the making of good citizens
• The power of the university was put in the hands of a limited number of professors who were given academic freedom and resources to pursue their interests and who had a number of assistants and lecturers under their command

The emphasis on scientific research and the freedom given to the professors made the German universities dynamic and open to new areas for scientific investigation.

Wundt and the first laboratory of experimental psychology

Wundt’s career

After this Phd in medicine, he obtained an assistantship with Hermann von Helmholtz where Wundt began to identify himself as a scientific psychologist.
In 1862 he gave his first course in ‘Psychology as a natural science’ and in 1874 he published a book on physiological psychology.
In the book, psychology was defined as the study of the way in which persons look upon themselves, on the basis of internal physiological changes that inform them about the phenomena perceived by the external senses.
Wundt called his psychology physiological because:

• He thought physiology should form the basis of psychology
• He was convinced that psychology should use the experimental methods that had been pioneered by the physiologists.

In 1875 Wundt was appointed Professor in Leubzig were he was able to put into practice what he had preached in his book.
He could start a laboratory and the first was opened in 1879

Research in Wundt’s laboratory

One of the main reasons why Wundt’s laboratory had a strong impact on the creation of psychology is that Wundt used it to actively promote psychological research.

• He created a journal
• He set up a six-month introductory course, to which he invited students and colleagues from all over the world

The methods used by Wundt

Wundt used three groups of methods for three different types of problems

Experimental methods

Experimental methods included:

• Psychophysical methods to study the connection between physical stimuli and their conscious states
• The measurement of the duration of simple mental processes
• The accuracy of reproduction in memory tasks

Quite a lot of energy was devoted to the psychological measurement of just-noticeable differences.
Reaction times were measured to get insight into the mental processes that were required to perform a task.
Wundt’s lab did not form an island, but was part of a network of laboratories, that did very similar research and communicated intensively with each other.
The early psychological researchers tried to apply the methods of physics to their topics.

Introspection

The experimental methods were particularly important in Wundt’s early years when he defined physiological psychology and established the laboratory of experimental psychology.
However, Wundt strongly believed in a second method; introspection.
This consisted of a process by which a person looked inside and reported what he/she was sensing, thinking or feeling.
It is based on the belief that people have conscious access to (parts of) their own mental processes and can report them.

Wundt thought he could get away with critique if he introduced more control into the experimental situation.
He made a distinction between

• Innere Wahrnehmung: internal perception
• Experimentelle selbstbeobachtung: experimental self-observation
  Under high controlled circumstances
  • A stimulus was presented repeatedly and the participants reported their experiences to the stimulus

Wundt claimed that experimental self-observation was a valid scientific method were internal perception was not.

The historical method

Historical method: one of the three research methods introduced by Wundt; consists of studying the human mind by investigating the products of human cultures; according to Wundt particularly well suited to investigate the ‘higher’ functions of the mind.
The study of mental differences as revealed by differences between cultures.

Wundt’s legacy

Wundt’s scientific legacy is not very much more than that of being ‘the father of experimental psychology’.

• He did not produce an useful theory
• He did not make an empirical discovery that had wide-ranging, lasting impact
• His writings were far from clear and easy to read
• There were several contradictions in Wundt’s writings over the period of 60 years in which he wrote

Interim summary

• German universities were reformed in the nineteenth century to make them more dynamic and advance the new sciences
• Wundt was a German physician who became interested in applying the physiological methods to psychological phenomena
• When to obtained a professional chair at the University of Leipzig, he established a new laboratory in 1879. This event became seen as the birth of psychology
• Wundt not only used the experimental methods from physiology, but also thought that introspection was a valid research method and that information about the psychology of individuals could be obtained by looking at cultures (historical method). The impact of the latter two methods increased as he grew older.
• Many psychologists got their initial training in Wundt’s laboratory.

Starting psychology in America: James and Titchener

James’s principles of psychology

Introductory psychology courses in the American curricula

In 1875, William James (1842-1910) started to teach a course of psychology at Harvard University.
Many colleges and universities in the United States included such a course as part of the philosophy curriculum.
Psychology was not yet considered as an independent academic discipline and could be taught by whoever was interested.

The impact of The Principles

James gradually planned to write his own textbook, The principles of psychology (1890).
This books had an accessible and clear account of what was known and conjectured about psychology at the end of the nineteenth century.
Within a few years the Principles would become the textbook of choice at many colleges and universities in the English-speaking world.

James and research methods

For James, introspection was the best available method.
He was not fond of the experimental methods.

The impact of evolutionary theory

For James, the human mind had emerged as an adaptation, to increase the chances of survival.
For James, the precise contents of the mind were less important than what consciousness did, what functions it served for man and animal.
Functionalism: name given to an approach in early American psychology research, that examined the practical functions of the human mind inspired by the evolutionary theory.

James’s stress on the adaptive role of the human mind opened the way to comparative psychology, the comparison of the abilities in various animal species.

Titchener’s structuralism

Titchener

Titchener studied by Wundt.
When he returned to England, he found this country unreceptive to psychologists.

Structuralism

Titchener turned Cornell into the centre of structuralism.
Structuralism: name given by Titchener to his approach to psychology, consisting of trying to discover the structure of the human mind by means of introspection.
Titchener tried to discern which sensation elements formed the basics of knowledge and how they were associated with one another.

Structuralism did not inspire many psychologists.
Three main reasons:

• Introspection did not intuitively give rise to the experience of elementary sensations
  Würzburg school: group of psychologists at the University of Würzburg who used introspection as a research method, but came to different conclusions from those of Wundt and Titchener; in particular they claimed that many thought processes were not available to introspection.
• It did not address the issues most American psychologists was as important.
  They were much more interested in pragmatic issues.
• It failed to convince researchers, who remained interested in the contents of consciousness
  • You cannot discover the nature of the human mind by trying to break it down in atoms

Gestalt psychology: group of psychologists who argued that the human mind could not be understood by breaking down the experiences into their constituent elements; perception is more than the sensation of stimuli, it involves organisation

Interim summary

• James was an Americal physician who became interested in psychology through his teachings. Arguably wrote the most influential textbook of early psychology.
•  James was influenced by Darwin’s evolutionary theory. This resulted in interest in the survival functions of the human mind and in comparative research of animals and humans
• Titchener promoted structuralism on the basis of introspection in the USA
• Had limited impact because of criticisms of the method (introspection), the limited usefulness of the knowledge (functionalism), and the objection that humans are more than the sum of the individual sensations (Gestalt psychology)

Psychology in France: Ribot, Charcot, Binet

Ribot and Comte’s legacy

Psychology was a popular topic in French philosophy.
After Comte’s repeated assaults on the scientific status of psychology in the first half of the nineteenth century, there was little doubt that in French minds that psychology belonged in the humanities and not to the natural sciences.
Comte argued that civilisations went through three stages:

• The theocratic stage
  With animistic/religious explanations of natural phenomena
• The metaphysical stage
  With theories of nature based on philosophical systems like those of Aristotle and Descartes
• The positivistic stage
  With theories based on empirical observation and verification

Psychology was a remnant of the metaphysical stage and its elucidation attempts on the basis of introspection would in tame be replaced by proper, scientific explanations provided by biology and sociology.

Théodule Ribot (1839-1916)
Questioned Comte’s view.
His strategy consisted of showing his colleagues how out of touch they were with developments in other countries.
In his book, Ribot tried to convince readers that one could be a ‘good’ positivists without accepting Comte’s claims.

• The mind can attend to more than one impression at the same time.
  Why would the mind be unable to attend to its own conscious mental states?
• Introspection can be based on memories, which allows humans to be aware of their thoughts post hoc even for tasks involving such great effort that simultaneous monitoring is not possible
• If one rejects introspection, how can one then study mental functions?
  How can one find the physiological basis of a mental function, if the latter supposedly does not exists?
• Introspection is not incompatible with the ‘objective method’.
  To be a truly scientific method, introspection must be combined with empirical observation and verification. There is no sharp divide between psychological and physiological facts, which makes it impossible to study them in interaction, just as there is no absolute distinction between humans and simpler life forms.

According to Ribot, his new psychology would study ‘psychological phenomena subjectively, using consciousness, memory and reasoning; and objectively, by relying on facts, signs, opinions and actions that express them’.
Ribot never put his program in practice.

Charcot and the need for methodological rigour

Another major input to the development of psychology in France came from medical research, both related to brain functioning to brain functioning and the treatment of mental illness.

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893)
A towering figure in nineteenth-century French psychiatry.
He was one of the first neurologists.

Hypnosis

Interest in hyponsis started with the German-Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1743-1815)
He became convinced that the movements of the sun, the moon, planets and stars influenced the human body by means of ‘animal magnetism’.
Before long, Mesmer sought to influence the ‘animal magnetism’ as a cure for all kinds of illnesses.
In 1784 a commission concluded that animal magnetism did not exists and that any effect described to it was due to the imagination of the patient.

Mesmer gradually discovered it was not animal magnetism that was important, but the trance-like somnambulist state into which patients could be induced.

Charcot became interested in hypnoses because he thought it was related to hysteria.
Charcot verntured that responsiveness to hypnosis was a hereditary degeneration with the same neurological origin as hysteria and, hence, would be particularly strong in hysteria patients.

Charcot also saw similarities between hysteria, epilepsy and hypnosis.
In their pure forms, the attacks in all three ailments slowed a standard sequence of stages
Epilepsy

• An aura
  Feeling of the attack’s onset
• A tonic phase
  The muscles of the body go rigid and the patient loses consciousness
• A clonic phase
  With convulsions

Hysteric attack

• An epileptiod stage
  The patient felt the oneset of the attack
• Large movement stage
  The patients showed big, uncontrolled movements
• Hallucinatory stage
  The patient experienced self-generated sensations
• Delirious stage
  Withdrawal characterised by disorganised behaviour and decreased attention

Hypnosis

• Lethargy 
  A sleep state
• Cataplexy
  A sudden loss of muscle function
• Somnambulism
  Performing actions in a sleep-like state without recollection afterwards

Far-reaching claims lead to critical examination

Ambriose Liébealt (1823-1904) and Hippolyte Bernheim (1840-1919)
Both practiced hypnotic techniques and treatments and were convinced that responsiveness to hypnosis was not a disorder, but was present to some degree in nearly everyone.
They rarely saw Charcot’s three hypnotic stages, and considered hypnosis as a sleep-like state produced by suggestion.

Binet and the development of the first valid intelligence test

Binet

Binet (1857-1911)
Did investigations on hypnotism.
He published several articles and books on psychology.

Intelligence test

One of Binet’s interests was in development of intelligence in young children.
At the end of nineteenth century intelligence measurement was a hot topic

• Galton’s claims about the heredity of intelligence
• Education became compulsory
  • There were children who did not seem to qualify for regular education, but who were not obviously mentally retarded.

Binet started to study the measurement of intelligence in earnest.
Before 1903 Binet had mainly followed Galton’s lead in the study of intelligence and measured perceptual capacities on the basis of the psychophysical methods initiated by Weber and Fechner and on the basis of response times.
And skull sizes.
None of these measures made clear differences between children with high and low intelligence.

Binet and Théodore Simon (1872-1961) searched for simple tasks that normally developing children of various ages could solve.
In 1907 they presented the first validated intelligence test with norms for normally developing children.

• The Binet-Simon test was based on the assumption that developing children can solve problems of increasing difficulty.
  A sequence of tasks was assembled that allowed the researchers to assess the mental age of a child. By comparing mental age with the chronological age of a child, it was possible to see whether the child was performing as expected, better or worse.
  Within a few years, Binet and Simon’s intelligence test was known all over the world.

Interim summary

• In France, psychology was seen as part of the humanities as a result of Comet’s writings. This was questioned by Ribot, who pointed to the developments in the UK and the German lands.
• Another towering figure in France was Charcot, a neurologist best known in psychology for his research on hysteria. Trusted entirely on his clinical expertise, which turned out to be wrong in case of hypnosis.
• Binet and Simon’s development of the first valid test of intelligence is France’s best-known contribution to early psychology

Freud and psychoanalyses

Changes in the treatment of mental disorders

Informal support

Very little is known about the conditions of people with mental disorders in early times.
There are reasonable grounds to assume that people with mental difficulties have mostly been treated with a combination of compassion and contempt (sometimes hostility), given that they were weak and non-productive.

• Compassion from parents and other members of the (extended) family
• Contempt from outside the family

As long as symptoms were not too bad or dangerous, these people stayed at home and died young, as did the majority of humans in those days.
Because there was a widespread belief that insanity was due to the devil or a bad ghost, they also risked being seen as a source of disaster.

Asylums

From the sixteenth century on, changes in society led to an increased role for the authorities in the treatment of people with a deviation.
The authorities were forced to take action against outcasts, who were not economically useful and became seen as a disturbance to the established order.
Institutions were founded to confine them.
Asylum: name given to the institutions for the insane established from the sixteenth century on; first modelled after prisons, later after hospitals for chronic patients.

From prisoners to patients

Gradually, over the eighteenth century, under the influence of the Enlightenment, the conviction grew that the inhabitants of asylums were not real criminals but ailing patients.
William Battie published the first book on psychiatry.
Philippe Pinel liberated the insane from Bicetre from their chains after the French revolution.

Neurologists

Because the educational approach seemed to lead to (slightly) better results than the medical cures, it was the dominant therapy in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Gradually, the biological view of mental illness regained impetus.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century a new group of physicians entered the scene, neurologists.
Neurologist: name used at the end of the nineteenth century by physicians who were interested in the treatment of milder forms of mental problems outside the asylum; the term was later used to refer to specialist of the nervous system, when the original neurologists merged with the psychiatrists and took up the latter’s name.

Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Psychodynamics: a view that considered living organisms as energy systems governed by the principles of physics and chemistry.

Psychoanalysis

Freud started a new type of treatment based on conversations with patients.
Psychological treatment: treatment of mental health problems consisting of conversations between the patient and the therapist; initiated by Freud as an alternative to the prevailing medical and educational treatments.
Freud became convinced that hysterical symptoms were due to repressed sexual childhood experiences.
These symptoms could be alleviated by the painful process of bringing the unconscious memories into the patient’s consciousness and by freeing them from their emotional energy.

Freud was not the first to talk about unconscious mental processes.
Nobody before had given these processes such an explosive emotional power or made them the real drives of human behaviour.

Psychoanalysis: name given to Freud’s theory and therapy.
Provided the first coherent framework for the treatment of nervous disorders and, therefore, received a warm welcome among the neurologists.
It also exerted a strong attraction on the developing field of psychology, because it was the first complete theory of human psychological functioning.

Freud’s research method

Medical case studies

Freud’s psychoanalytical method was inspired by medical practice and involved case studies.
Case study: within medicine and clinical psychology, the intensive study of an individual patient within the contexts of his/her own world and relations, to understand and help the individual patient.

Introspection and interpretation by the therapists

Freud’s method was also based on introspection.
Patients talked about their thoughts, dreams and feelings.
But, the literal meaning of what the patients said was of little value, because, according to Freud, the patients did not have access to their own unconscious drives.
Freud considered that it to be the therapist’s task to be attentive to occasional slips during which the unconscious forces revealed themselves, and to reinterpret the contents of the introspection according to the psychoanalytic theory.

Freud’s research method was characterised by a surprisingly large input from himself.
On the basis of rather little data, a rich and all-embracing theory of human functioning was built.
On a continuum from evidence-based to principle-driven research, psychoanalysis clearly was biased towards the latter pole.

Interim summary

• Freud was one of the first neurologists, a new group of therapists at the end of the nineteenth century. Before, people with mental disorders had been taken care of first on an informal basis and then – increasingly- in institutions, where they were treated as prisoners or patients. Basic treatment in asylums consisted of containment and attempts to re-educate the patients.
• Freud was the first to actually talk to his patients (psychological treatment). On the basis of these talks he constructed the psychoanalytical theory, which argues that the unconscious mind plays a strong role in the control of people’s actions
• Psychoanalysis had a massive impact, both on neurologists and psychologists, because it provided a coherent and attractive theory of psychopathology

Starting psychology in the UK: finding a place between clerics, philosophers and biologists

Universities in the UK

For six centuries Oxford and Cambridge were the only universities in England.
Oxford and Cambridge were generally considered as conservative universities, heavily dominated first by the Roman Catholic Church and then by the Church of England.
Up to the end of the nineteenth century it was impossible to obtain a degree from these universities without without swearing an oath of allegiance to the Church of England.
As a result, these universities were heavily oriented towards the classics (humanities and mathematics) and unreceptive to natural sciences.

More than other countries, scientific research in England happened outside the universities.

• There were well-off individuals who could devote time and money to new inventions and who paid scholars to come and work for them
• There were societies with their fees and endowments, which could afford some staff and sponsor some research
• There were small-scale institutes and centres that did not have university status, but that could finance a small number of scientists
• There were scholars who sponsored their work with the proceeds of the books they published and the articles they wrote for the emerging scientific journals

Attempts to establish psychology at Cambridge and Oxford

Cattell

The first opportunity to establish a psychology laboratory in the UK was in 1887 when Cambridge was able to attract the Americal James McKeen Cattell as lecturer, after he had obtained his PhD in Wundt’s lab.
Two philosophers with interests in psychology were instrumental in bringing Cattell to Cambridge

• James Ward
  Made several study visits to Germany and written a number of psychology-related treatises
• John Venn
  Had shortly before been presented with some of Galton’s instruments to ‘measure intelligence’ and had started a series of studies along Galton’s lines.

Cattell was a catch because he had done his PhD on mental testing in Wundt’s lab and his brought considerable equipment with him.
Cattell was attracted to Galton’s work in London.
Later Cattell left with all his equipment.

Rivers and Myers

The second attempt to establish a psychology laboratory at Cambridge was made in 1893 by attracting the physician William H.R Rivers as psychology lecturer in the physiology department.
He was given a room in the department to start psychological research, but the senate would not sponsor it until 1901
Rivers’s lab would be overhauled in 1912 when it was taken over by his more proactive and richer student Charles Samuel Myers.

Oxford

One of Rivers’s students, William McDougall was appointed on a Readership funded by the industrialist and inventor Henry Wilde.
The Readership had been created to support mental philosophy and for the sake of clarity the incumbent was explicitly forbidden to get sidetracked by experimental research. Still, this is what McDougall did.
McDougall left Oxford in 1920 and experimental psychology would be almost absent from Oxford until 1935, when the University received a gift that was to be used for the establishment of an institute of experimental psychology.

Developments in London

Foundation of University college London

University College London was the third to have psychology in England.
It was founded in 1826 as a neutral alternative to Oxford and Cambridge so everyone could get a degree.

The Grote Chair

Evidently, UCL was much more interested in the natural sciences and more open to the empirical study of the human mind.
Two elements were of particular importance for the history of psychology

• The establishment of a chair of logic and the philosophy of the human mind (a professorship in psychology)
  • The banker and historian Georger Grote oposed the appointment of region-related persons
• The presence of Galton

Sully and the laboratory of psychology

The Grote Chair was conferred to James Sully (1842-1923).
He had written books on illusions in perception and memory and a Teacher’s handbook of psychology, in which he translated the insights from psychology in the educational context.
Sully frantically began to lobby for space and money, for which he enlisted the help of Frances Galton for a laboratory,

Galton and research into individual differences

The laboratory of experimental psychology was not UCL’s main contribution to early psychology.

• This came from Galton’s efforts to study the heredity of features.
  For these studies, Galton needed statistical measures that allowed him to draw conclusions.
  • As a result, Galton became involved with a group of young mathematicians, the most important of who was Karl Pearson
    Together, the men established the journal Biometrika, which would become the leading journal for the development of statistical methods in the life sciences.

Because of these developments, London has been the place where most modern statistical techniques were discovered.

• The correlation coefficient

Scotland

Two figures above all had an influence on the developments of psychology at the UK

• Alexander Bain (1818-1903)
• George Fredrick Stout (1860-1944)

Bain

Bain was a philosopher and educationalists.
Provided a template of the psychology handbooks to be written.
He often consulted about psychology-related matters in the UK.
He took an initiative that would provide nineteenth-century English-speaking psychologists and philosophers of mind with a research outlet in their own language.

• Together with George Croom Robertson he launched the journal Mind.

Stout

He wrote the first edition of his high-impact book Analytic psychology.
He was editor of the Mind.

Psychological societies

Because so much science in UK took place outside universities, British scholars had a tendency to found a Learned Society as soon as the interest was strong enough.
These societies had regular meetings and usually published some kind of journal or proceedings to disseminate their findings.
The same happened to psychology.

The psychological society of Great Britain

The society was not centred on investigations or ordinary human functioning but on research about the powers and virtues of extraordinary phenomena.
Spiritualism: belief that spirits of the dead can be contacted by mediums; flourished in English-speaking countries at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.
The psychological society of Great Britain was not completely confined to spiritualist, members also discussed topics such as memory, sleep and hereditary.
After four years of existence, the meetings ended when the founder died in 1879.

The British psychological society

A new attempt to invigorate British psychology was made by James Sully in 1901.
The British psychological society still exists.
Only those who were recognised as teachers in some branch of psychology or who had published work of recognisable value were eligible to become members.

At the end of World War I Charles Myers tried to have the criteria relaxed, so that scholars working in psychology-related topics could join as well.

Interim summary
 

• Psychology had a hard time becoming an academic discipline in the UK. This largely had to do with the fact that the universities did not encourage the new discipline. Although there is no evidence for active opposition, every bit of progress required substantial effort
• In England James Sully from University College London was the driving force, although the University of Cambridge managed to have the first laboratory of experimental psychology under the direction of W.H.R Rivers. Another main source of inspiration was Galton’s work on individual differences.
• In Scotland the most active college was the University of Aberdeen where Alexander Bain was professor and G.F Stout got his first appointment as lecturer
• To fill the void left by universities, intellectuals interested in psychology twice founded a Learned society. The first attempt collapsed with the death of the initiator; the second one, started by Sully at UCL, was more successful and still exists today
• The UK also had some impact because it was home to two early journals of psychology; Mind and the British Journal of Psychology, both of which still exists

Focus on: What about the five schools of psychology?

Classical division into five schools

• Structuralism
• Functionalism
• Gestalt psychology
• Behaviourism
• Psychoanalysis

There are surprisingly few traces of the supposedly heroic fights between the schools.

Interim summary

• The beginnings of psychology are often depicted by making a distinction between five quarrelling schools.
• A look at the original sources does not warrant this view as a summary of the core developments within psychology. It rather seems to be a re-interpretation of the original meaning of the philosophical term ‘school’, in order to depict the history of psychology in simplifying theses, antithesis and syntheses.