Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition) - a summary
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Foundation of psychology
Chapter 4
Establishing psychology as an independent academic discipline
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.
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:
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.
The methods used by Wundt
Wundt used three groups of methods for three different types of problems
Experimental methods
Experimental methods included:
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
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’.
Interim summary
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:
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
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:
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.
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
Hysteric attack
Hypnosis
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
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.
Interim summary
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
Because of these developments, London has been the place where most modern statistical techniques were discovered.
Scotland
Two figures above all had an influence on the developments of psychology at the UK
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.
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
Classical division into five schools
There are surprisingly few traces of the supposedly heroic fights between the schools.
Interim summary
Foundation of Psychology
Chapter 1
The wider picture, where did it all start?
Introduction
This book describes the growth of psychology as an independent branch of learning and tries to comprehend the essence of the discipline.
The introduction of written records represents one of the most important moments in the development of science.
The preliterate culture
Preliterate civilisation: civilisation before writing was invented.
Though these civilisations have not left us with written testimonies, it is possible to discern several important features of them by studying existing cultures that do not use writing.
This research revealed three important characteristics of knowledge in these kinds of cultures:
The first writing systems
Written language appeard separately in at least four cultures:
These four written languages were preceded by protowriting, the use of symbols to represent entities without linguistic information lining to them.
Characteristics of writing systems
From an early stage, writing systems were a combination of pictograms and phonograms.
Pictogram: an information-conveying sign that consists of a picture resembling the person, animal or object it represents.
Phonogram: a sign that represents a sound or a syllable of spoken language.
Phonograms were gradually replaced by simpler signs symbolizing meaningful sounds in language, (phonemes or syllables).
The use of phonograms to represent phonemes led to the alphabetic writing systems.
Logograph: a sign representing a spoken word, which no longer has a physical resemblance to the word’s meaning.
Written documents form an external
.....read moreFoundation of Psychology
Chapter 2
The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and its aftermath
Introduction
The word psychology did not appear in literature before 1500.
Scientific revolution: name given to a series of discoveries in the seventeenth century, involving Galilei, Descartes and Newton, that enhanced the status of science in society.
The geocentric model of the universe in the sixteenth century
The earth as the centre of the universe
The model that of the universe used in the sixteenth century was the model described by Aristotle who built on others) and elaborated by Ptolemy.
Aristotle’s universe was a limited universe with the Earth in the middle
Geocentric model: model of the universe in which the Earth is at the centre; was dominant until the seventeenth century.
The addition of epicycles
A key problem within the Aristotelian universe was the movements of some of the wandering stars.
To explain strange movements, Ptolemy used the notion of ‘epicycles’.
Epicycles: small cycles made by the wandering stars in addition to their main orbit around the earth.
Copernicus’s alternative heliocentric model
The sun at the centre of the universe
Aristotle’s model was not the only one that had been proposed in ancient cultures.
Heliocentric model: model of the universe in which the sun is at the centre.
Copernicus saw the heliocentric model as a valid alternative for the geocentric model.
Why Copernicus waited to publish his model
Only shortly before his death, Copernicus was persuaded to get his book printed.
Possible reasons
Galilei uses a telescope
Because of the many problems with Copernicus’s model, it failed to have much impact.
Galilei’s observations
Galilei built a telescope and found out that:
Foundation of Psychology
Chapter 3
Eighteenth- and nineteenth- century precursors to a scientific psychology
A characteristic of current Western society is that people derive their self-image and self-esteem from their own qualities and accomplishments rather than from the position of their family in society.
Individualisation: trend in a society towards looser social relations and a greater focus by individuals on themselves than on the groups they belong to.
Historians believe that this process of individualisation started sometime around the end of the Middle Ages and is still growing.
Following factors are contributions:
Interim summary
Since the end of the middle ages there has been increasing individualisation in society. Factors hypothesised to play a role include:
Descartes was the first Western philosopher after the Ancient Greeks to value new and independent thinking.
Epistemology: branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge.
Empiricism instead of rationalism
The traditional rationalist view
The traditional view of understanding in philosophy was based on
.....read moreFoundation of psychology
Chapter 4
Establishing psychology as an independent academic discipline
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.
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:
In 1875 Wundt was appointed Professor in Leubzig were
.....read moreFoundations of psychology
Chapter 5
Strengthening the scientific standing of psychology
The USA began to rule psychology in the twentieth century.
The expansion of psychology around the start of the twentieth century
As well as laboratories, in 1892 the American Psychological Association (APA) was founded, giving psychology researchers a forum to meet and discuss their findings.
Two journals were established that would dominate the field and that still exists today.
The first American psychology: functionalism
As psychology in the USA expanded, it got moulded by the expectations and preoccupations of American society.
There was a mistrust of intellectualism, knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
America was a nation of common-sense businessmen, not interested in abstract science, but in practical accomplishments that at the same time made money, revealed God’s glory, and advanced the American dream.
If psychology were to prosper, it had to subscribe to American values, which it readily did.
Part of the attraction to the functionalist approach to the Americans was that Wundt’s experimental research programme ran into problems in 1880s.
Psychology and its position within universities
Most psychology laboratories were set up within philosophical and theological institutes.
Staff members were not always happy with this.
On other occasions experimental psychologists were told not to stay too far from good old psychology as developed in philosophical writings.
Trying to win over the public
Phrenology
Phrenology: view that mental functions are localised in the brain and that the capacity of a function corresponds to the
.....read moreFoundations of psychology
Chapter 6
The input from brain research
Beliefs of the ancient Egyptians
The Edwin Smith papyrus
In 1862 an American collector, Edwin Smith, bought a papyrus scroll in the Egyptian city of Luxor.
In the text, written around 1700 BCE, but probably a copy of an older papyrus from 3000 BCE, a series of 48 cases were described dealing with the consequences of head and neck injuries.
Each case included a title, details of the examination, a diagnosis and an indication of the treatment.
The diagnosis consisted of one of three conclusions
The Edwin Smith papyrus: papyrus from Ancient Egypt that contains short descriptions of the symptoms and treatment of different forms of brain injury; named after the person who bought the papyrus in Egypt and had it analysed.
They illustrate how physicians treating wounded soldiers quite early became convinced of the importance of the head (brain) in controlling behaviour.
Beliefs in the wider society
The existence of the Edwin Smith papyrus did not imply that the knowledge contained in it was widespread.
In Ancient Egypt most scholars were convinced that the heart was the seat of the soul.
The roles of the heart and brain in Ancient Greece
The discussion over whether the soul was in the heart or in the brain continued in Ancient Greece.
Plato
Plato and Hippocrates placed the soul in the brain.
Plat also saw a function for the heart.
According to Plato, the soul was divided into three parts
Aristotle
Aristotle was convinced that the heart was the seat of the soul.
The function of the brain was to counterbalance the heat of the heart.
The heart and the brain formed
Foundations of psychology
Chapter 7
The mind-brain problem, free will and consciousness
Throughout history, humans have been impressed by their ability to reflect about themselves and the world around them.
Self: the feeling of being an individual with private experiences, feelings and beliefs, who interacts in a coherent and purposeful way with the environment.
Mind-brain problem: issue of how the mind is related to the brain.
Three main views
Mind: aggregate of faculties humans (and animals) have to perceive, feel, think, remember and want.
Dualism: view of the mind-body relation according to which the mind is immaterial and completely independent of the body; central within religions and also in Descartes’ philosophy.
Dualism in religion and traditional philosophy
Religion
Dualism is central to religions.
They are grounded in the belief that people possess a divine soul created by God, which temporarily lives in the body, and which leaves the corpse upon its death.
The soul is what gives people their purpose and values in life.
It usually aims for the good, but can be tempted and seduced by evil forces.
This gave rise to the demonologist view of psychopathology.
Demonologists view: the conviction that mental disorders are due to possession by bad spirits.
Plato and Descartes
Dualism was central in the philosophies of Plato and Descartes.
Cartesian dualism: theories in which the mind is seen as radically different from the body and as independent of the biological processes in the
.....read moreFoundation of psychology
Chapter 8
How did psychology affect everyday life?
Introduction
Over the course of the twentieth century, the discipline of psychology grew from a marginal academic field to a discipline that has done more than any other to transform the routines and experiences of everyday life.
Applied psychology: the application of psychological knowledge and research methods to solve practical problems.
Evolutions before World War II
Mental health problems must be treated by partitioners with a medical degree
Psychologists were not allowed to provide unsupervised therapies in official settings and their private practices were not covered by health insurance.
The first clinical psychology centres
Treatment centres run by psychologists started in the USA and were university-related.
Lightner Witmer
Opened the faculty that was the first psychology health centre in 1896.
Aimed at helping behavioural and learning problems in school children.
The founding of clinical psychology centres was impeded by the lack of support from academic psychologists.
In the meantime mental health problems and psychoanalysis became popular courses in psychology.
Clinical psychology: branch of psychology applying psychological knowledge to the assessment and treatment of mental disorders.
The first clinical psychology centre in the UK was set up in 1920 in a private house in London.
The impact of World War II
An urgent need for psychological advice and treatment
Shell-shock: anxiety response of battlefield that prevents soldiers from functioning properly; was one of the first topics addressed by applied psychology.
The finding of shell-shock in World War I gave rise tow two developments
When the USA decided to join World War II they also decided to properly staff the military psychiatric service.
A crash course in the treatment of mental disorders was offered to all medical officers, and clinical psychologists were taken on broad, both for testing and treatment.
The beginning of client-centred therapy
The rising demand for psychological help provided a rich environment for new developments in therapy.
Psychoanalysis required a long series of treatment sessions and was not
Foundation of psychology
Chapter 9
What is science?
Science’s claim of superiority was based on four principles
Thoughts before the scientific revolution
Plato, Aristotle and the sceptics
Plato
A strong rationalist view of knowledge acquisition.
Human perception was fallible and the observable world was only a shadow of the Real world.
The human soul had innate knowledge of the universe, which could be harnessed
Aristotle
More scope for observation and made a distinction between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning.
True, theoretical knowledge started from axioms, form which new knowledge was deduced via so-called demonstrations.
Perception was the source of information but not knowledge itself.
Correspondence theory of truth: a statement is true when it corresponds with reality. Assumes that there is a physical reality which has priority and which the human mind tries to understand it. First formulated by Aristotle.
Pyrrho of Ellis
Scepticism: philosophical view that does not deny the existence of a physical reality, but denies that humans can have reliable knowledge of it; first formulated by Pyrrho of Ellis.
Humans must suspend judgment on all matters of reality.
Augustine
Augustine (354-430CE)
True knowledge was knowledge based on God’s revelations.
This view became dominant until well into the seventeenth century.
Interaction between theory and experiment: the scientific revolution
Galilei’s thought experiments
Galilei is usually credited as the person who convinced the world of the importance of observation and experimentation for the acquisition of knowledge.
But Galilei might in reality be a transition figure steeped in the Aristotelian tradition.
Foundation of psychology
Chapter 10
Is psychology a science?
The foundation of psychology as an academic discipline was legitimised on two pillars
Psychology has a long, respectful past and uses the scientific method
Steven Ward
Makes the case that a new branch of knowledge can establish itself and survive only if it succeeds in convincing the ruling powers of the need for such knowledge as well as reassuring them that it is no threat to their prosperity.
The founders of psychology promoted it as a new academic discipline by stressing two messages
Consequences for the psychology curriculum
Because psychology was promoted on the basis of its long past and its sound method, both ‘history of psychology’ and ‘research methods’ were major components of the curriculum.
These books on history were self-legitimisation as much as essential stepping stones for a good psychology education.
Science is defined by its method rather than by its subject matter
Every topic studied within the scientific method is a science
To be accepted as a science, psychologists had to make the case that what differentiated sciences from non-sciences was the way in which problems were investigated, and not the type of problems addressed.
Although few people spontaneously associated the study of mental life with scientific research, the first academic psychologists maintained that there was nothing inherent in the subject matter that prevented it from being studied using the scientific method.
Methodolatry
Because of its emphasis on method in the definition of science, academic psychology invested heavily in developing appropriate research designs and analysis techniques.
It has been argued that psychology throughout its existence has overplayed the role of research methods at the expense of theory building.
Methodolarty or methodologism: tendency to see methodological rigour as the only requirement for scientific research, at the expense of theory formation.
The shadow of positivism
One reason why psychologists tended to stress valid testing rather than theory formation was that they tried too hard to be good scientists.
Foundation of psychology
Chapter 11
The contribution of quantitative and qualitative research methods
Quantitative research methods: research methods based on quantifiable data; are associated with the natural-science approach based on the hypothetico-deductive method.
Assumptions underlying quantitative research methods
There is an outside reality that can be discovered
Quantitative psychologists start from the assumption that phenomena in the world have an existence outside people’s minds.
They defend the idea that humans can discover reality by using the scientific method.
They are well aware of the fact that science is not a linear accumulation of facts but proceeds through trial and error. But are convinced that in the long term the scientific method based on the hypothetico-deductive model leads to an understanding of reality → scientific knowledge is cumulative
The main aim of scientific research is to find universal causal relationships
Researchers are primarily interested in discovering relationships between causes and effects.
How general are principles? And how do humans function?
Ideally they hope the mechanisms they discover will apply to all humans.
Trying to avoid confounds and sources of noise
Users of quantitative research methods are extremely vigilant about the possible intrusion of undesired factors into their designs.
They try to maximally control the circumstances under which they run their studies
They also try to eliminate the impact of random variables called noise.
Suspicion about the researcher’s input
A source of confounding and noise that is of particular interest to quantitative psychology researchers is the researcher him- or herself.
To protect themselves against biases and noise, quantitative researchers make use of standardised measurements and instruments.
Progress through falsification
Researchers constantly try to prove each other wrong.
Research methods are divided into three broad orientations
Descriptive research
Observation of numerical data
Detailed observation is the start of scientific research.
Typical for quantitative research is that the data are gathered in a numerical form, either by collecting measurements or by counting frequencies of occurrence.
Before researchers collect data, they have a good idea of how they will analyse them; what types of measurements they will obtain and what types of statistics they can apply to summarise and evaluate the data.
Large samples and a few data points per participant
The vast majority of descriptive quantitative studies involve the collection of a limited amount of data from a reasonably large group of participants.
Two main reasons to include
Foundation of psychology
Chapter 13
Psychology and society
Science overtakes religion in Western society
Initial strong links between psychological thinking and religion
Psychology as a separate branch of knowledge grew out of the rising role of scientific thinking in Western society.
Education for a long time was controlled by the churches, which did not look favourably upon those who tried to examine the soul.
Many early psychologists had strong connections with religion.
Alliance formation with the expanding sciences
Rapidly, the experimental psychologists distanced themselves from religion, because it jeopardies their scientific credentials.
They sought to align themselves with the rapidly growing natural sciences, by denouncing weaker fields that might contaminate them, such as religion, philosophy, and sociology.
Psychologists replace pastors
Fewer people felt comfortable discussing their mental health problems with religious authorities.
Whereas for a long time churches were the first port to call for mental health problems, growing secularisation increased the need for non-religious counselling.
At the same time, a growing number of clergy started to study psychology to improve the help they were able to provide.
Changes in society impinge on psychological practice
Impact on psychological research
The massive changes in the organisation of Western society in the nineteenth and twentieth century generated ideas and research opportunities for psychologists.
Six historical developments that affected psychological research
Societal influences were not limited to the science-oriented track of psychology, but also shaped thought in the hermeneutic part.
Impact on clinical practice
Changes in society influenced clinical practice.
Mental disorders show cultural variation.
This is not only true between cultures, but also across time within a culture.
Each culture has a symptom pool, a collective memory of how to behave when ill.
At each time period patients with psychological problems gravitate towards the symptoms that at the time are thought to be legitimate indications of disease, as no patients wants to select illegitimate symptoms.
Society as a metaphor provider
Metaphors: in science, stands for an analogy from another area that helps to map a new, complex problem by making reference to a better
.....read moreThis is my personal collection of content about the history of psychology
The invention of writing
The discovery of numbers
The Fertile Crescent
Civilisations in the Fertile crescent:
The Greeks
Developments from the Roman Empire to the end of the Middle Ages
Ancient Romans:
Byzantine empire
Arab empire:
Western Roman empire:
Introduction
Mind-brain problem: issue of how the mind is related to the brain.
Three main views
Dualism
Materialism
Functionalism
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