History of psychological thought

general courses

The psychological thought in the pre-scientific psychology era (i.e. through nearly entire course of history), although indirectly, can be easily found in the concepts of upbringing and systems of religious beliefs, the arts, medicine, and later in philosophy and, extended from it, theology, paedagogy, and other fields of intellectual culture. From the moment it became a science psychological thought is present as psychology as we know (although it is also present in the psychiatry). Getting into the history of psychology, not only provides satisfaction to an intelligent subject through mastering knowledge on interesting matters and people, but also makes it easier to understand the main divisions in the contemporary psychology. Further, it should provide a broader view on the fundamentals of psychology, provide understanding of the changes psychological thought went through, and, as a result, provide sense of its continuity.

1. The beginning. There’s more to the history of the psychological thought than the history of the psychology itself. The psychological thought was entwined in the beliefs on upbringing and religion, and further with analogous notions; hence its strong relationship with philosophy, theology, paedagogy, and considerably later, with physiology. The long history of the psychological thought. The emergence of psychology and its short history. The reasons why understanding the history of psychology means more to the psychologists, than understanding the history of biology to biologists. The history teaches about the past, but not without difficulty. The past is gone, but the data it provided allows for certain dynamics. The issues of historiography.

2. The early history of psychology or how little do we know. Pre-history and history. The evidence of the material culture. Some important facts from the most ancient history of civilization. The elements of psychological thought in ancient Sumer, Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Egypt, Israel, India, China.

3. Hellenic-Roman Period. The ancient Greece, primarily: Lycurgus, the sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates of Kos and Pseudo-Plutarch. The ancient Rome, primarily Quintilian and Galen of Pergamon.

4. The transition period, mainly Saint Augustine. The Middle Ages: the educational reforms of the emperor Charlemagne and the response from the popes: Eugene II and Saint Leo IV. The school and the university in the Middle Ages, scholasticism. The epistemology of William Ockham. The empiricism of Roger Bacon. The teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Tommaso d'Aquino). The Silesian accent: Vitello (Witelon). The contribution of the Arab and Persian World: Abu Said al-Balkhi, Hasan ibn al-Haytham (known also as Alhazen), Ahmad al-Biruni, Ali ibn Sina (known also as Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (known also as Averroes).

5. The early modern period, from Renaissance to Baroque – humanism and paedagogy: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Juan Luis Vives, Erasmus of Rotterdam (born Geert Geerts), Saint Thomas More, viscount Francis Bacon, Niccoló di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, Philip Melanchthon (born Philipp Schwartzerdt), Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (properly Andrzej Piotr Modrzewski), Jan Ámos Komenský – one of the greatest pedagogues in history. The first use of the notion of psychology: Marko Marulić, later Rudolph Goclenius the Elder (properly Rudolf Göckel the Elder). Cartesianism as one of the philosophical pillars of the contemporary psychology. John Locke: the author of the classical concepts of empiricism and liberalism.

6. Siècle des Lumières: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), Claude Adrien Helvétius, Benjamin Rush. Selected teachings of Georg Wilhelm F. Hegel and Immanuel Kant. The physiognomy by Johann Caspar Lavater. The phrenology by Franz Josef Gall. The career of Franz Friedrich A. Mesmer and his peculiar findings. Exuberant flourishing of the masonry in the 18th century. The beginnings of the psychiatry: William Battie, Vincenzo Chiarugi, Philippe Pinel, Jean-Étienne D. Esquirol, Johann Christian Reil (the creator of the notion of psychiatry), Johann Christian A. Heinroth (Überuns, Ego, Fleisch).

7. Expanding on the philosophical bases of the contemporary academic psychology: mechanicism, materialism, positivism, empiricism: I. M. Auguste F. X. Comte, bishop George Berkeley, David Hume (born Home), David Hartley, James Mill (born Milne), John Stuart Mill (the former's son).

8. Physiological influences in the beginnings of the psychology as a science: Hermann Ludwig F. von Helmholtz, Ernst Heinrich Weber, Gustav Theodor Fechner. The research projects on neural impulses, vision, hearing. The foundations of the experimental psychology. The origins of the so-called psychophysics. The non-scientific phenomenon of spiritism: Hyppolyte Léon D. Rivail. The achievements (including the work of Dorothea Lynde Dix) and problems (syphilis, alcoholism – the so called golden age of drinking, schizophrenia) of psychiatry in XIXth century. The discoveries of Pierre Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke. The outline of the teachings of Wilhelm Griesinger, Bénédict Augustin Morel, Jean-Martin Charcot and baron Richard Fridolin J. Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg called von Ebing (R. Krafft-Ebing).

9. Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt and the foundations of the academic psychology: multiple faces of wundtism. The introspection. The ethnopsychology. The phenomenology and neo-Kantianism and their influence on other pioneers of psychology: Hermann Ebbinghaus, Franz Clemens H. H. Brentano, Carl Stumpf, Oswald Külpe.

10. Edward Bradford Titchener and his structuralism. The analytic introspection as taught by Titchener versus synthetic introspection taught by Wundt. Structuralism as an autocratic orthodoxy. The beginnings of the classification system of mental disorders: Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum and Emil Wilhelm G. M. Kraepelin. The therapeutical ideas trending at the time: hydrotherapy in spas and the so-called rest cure (including isolation from the family). The hypnosis and the beginnings of psychotherapy (Hippolyte Bernheim and Frederik Willem van Eeden).

11. Evolutionism, individual differences and zoopsychology. Charles Robert Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, the influence of the theory of evolution on psychology. Francis Galton: the pioneer of the psychology of individual differences, eugenics, psychometry, statistics. George John Romanes and his highly speculative ideas on animal behaviour ie. „introspection by analogy”. Conwy Lloyd Morgan and the first psychological studies on animals.

12. Functionalism – the astonishingly solid matrix for modern psychology. Social Darwinism by Herbert Spencer. Great and very original (in comparison to the philosophical background of the academic psychology) conceptual input by William James. The so-called Chicago School: John Dewey and James Rowland Angell. The victory of functionalism over structuralism: functionalism, as of 1920s, became the mainstream of psychology in the USA for a long period of time (however, head-to-head with behaviourism). Theoretical and applied psychology.

13. The development and many faces of functionalism: the roots of the current sub-disciplines within psychology. The USA as the leader in psychology and the americanisation of the worldwide psychology. Granville Stanley Hall and the recapitulation theory. Tests of mental abilities: Alfred Binet and James McKeen Cattell. Lightner Witmer as the originator of the clinical psychology and counseling. Walter Dill Scott and the psychology of business, advertising, and personnel selection. Step backwards: Frederick Winslow Taylor and his so-called scientific management. Step forwards: Hugo Münsterberg and the industrial psychology, psychotherapy and forensic psychology.

14. Foundations of behaviourism: contribution from zoopsychology (going beyond the influences of G. J. Romanes and C. L. Morgan), great contribution from Edward Lee Thordnike and an even greater input from Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. The association reflexes and Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, the would-be psychiatrist of the general secretary of the CPSU Joseph Stalin. The revolutionary scientific programme of John Broadus Watson – behaviourism comes to existence.

15. Behaviourism in its climax: neobehaviourism of Edward Chace Tolman, Clark Leonard Hull and, above all, Burrhus Frederic Skinner whose theory (the so-called radical behaviourism) was the top achievement in this field of psychology (regardless of the significant input of Jerzy Konorski and Stefan Mieczysław Miller); sociobehaviourism: Albert Bandura and Julian Bernard Rotter.

16. The Gestalt psychology and the field theory. Max(imilian) Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler: the notion of Gestalt, organization of perception and problem solving with insight. Kurt Lewin: the idea of life space (the so-called field), topological imagery and the pioneering works in social psychology.

17. Psychoanalytical hiatus: Sig(is)mund Schlomo Freud and classic psychoanalysis. Theory of personality, psychotherapy, dogmatic weltanschauung. From a private practice to the worldwide fame. The problem of the secrecy of the documents.

18. Further history of psychoanalysis. The great apostates: Alfred Adler and his individual psychology; Carl Gustav Jung and his analytical psychology. British school, French school (Jacques Marie É. Lacan) and American school, including object relations theories (Margaret Mahler born Schönberger, Otto Friedmann Kernberg, Heinz Kohut). The ego psychology by Anna Freud or the orthodox psychoanalysis revised. Neopsychoanalysis seen as, for instance, the works of Karen Clementine T. Horney (born Danielsen) and Erich Fromm.

19. Socially oriented therapeutical approaches: Thomas Forrest Main, Joshua Bierer, Maxwell Jones: group psychotherapy, therapeutic community and biologically oriented therapeutic approaches: curing by fever (Julius Wagner von Jauregg), alcaloids, opium, prolonged dream, coma, electroconvulsive shocks, lobotomy; the use of chlorpromazine (Paul Charpentier, Henri-Marie Laborit) as the turning point and beginning of the contemporary age in psychiatry. The humanistic psychology standing in simultaneous opposition towards psychoanalysis as well as behaviourism: Abraham Harold Maslow, Carl Ransom Rogers. The antipsychiatry. The grand experiment, regrettably unsuccessful, discontinued and not present in current psychology. The positive psychology by Martin Elias P. Seligman as a type of contemporary reflection of several ideas proposed by humanistic psychology; however, qualitatively different.

20. Jean Piaget: the psychology of a child (child's mind), the theory of cognitive development; the precursory ideas in regard to the cognitive psychology. George Armitage Miller and Ulric Gustav Neisser and creation of the cognitive psychology. The computer metaphor, approach focused on data processing and the experimental research projects on cognitive processes.

Basic:

Schultz, D. P. & Schultz, S. E. (2008). Historia współczesnej psychologii. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.

Additional:

Rosińska, Z. & Matusewicz, C. (1984). Kierunki współczesnej psychologii, ich geneza i rozwój. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Rzepa, T. & Dobroczyński, B. (2009). Historia polskiej myśli psychologicznej. Gałązki z drzewa Psyche. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Shorter, E. (2005). Historia psychiatrii. Od zakładu dla obłąkanych po erę Prozacu. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne Spółka Akcyjna.

Stachowski, R. (2000). Historia współczesnej myśli psychologicznej. Od Wundta do czasów najnowszych. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe „Scholar”.

Wołoszyn, S. (ed.) (1995). Źródła do dziejów wychowania i myśli pedagogicznej (2nd edition, vol. 1: Od wychowania pierwotnego do końca XVIII stulecia). Kielce: Dom Wydawniczy Strzelec.

KNOWLEDGE:

Awareness of the main problems, currents, and achievements of the psychological thought before and after the establishment of the academic psychology. Understanding of the connections between different fields of human, social and life sciences from which psychology emerged.

ATTITUDES:

Respect and criticism to the knowledge, both resulting from awareness of the processes of creating, transforming, and sometimes hiding the knowledge, in not only cognitive or scientific, but also sociocultural or historical manner. Openness to the opportunity of discovering new, widely unknown historical facts, which could change one’s common beliefs. Moreover, the willingness to understand and help other people, as it is the very core of the subject lectured.

COMPETENCES:

Ability to find information in the vast body of knowledge; the competence quite absent in the present age of specialization. Making use of that knowledge in order to better understand theoretical assumptions and discussions between different currents of modern psychology. Plausibly, in the case of such science as psychology, with its various topics and streams shifting, being followed up, returning, being methodologically modified and emerging under new names over time, only good familiarity of its history enables proper understanding of the current state of the field.

Exam: single choice test and open questions, all based upon basic literature and the contents of the lectures given.