The Birth of Psychology

Flashcards about the history and development of psychology as an independent academic discipline.

Around what year does this chapter start?

1850

Prior to the late nineteenth century, what area dominated the field of psychology?

The humanities and philosophy

Who founded the first psychology lab in 1879?

Wilhelm Wundt

What did Wilhelm Wundt use to measure response to stimuli and consciousness?

Psychophysical measurements

What kind of experimental method did Wundt use?

Measuring duration of mental processes

What was Wundt's influential emphasis?

Introspection

What is the focus of Functionalist Psychology?

The overall function of the brain

What is Gestalt?

The idea that an organized whole is more than the sum of its parts

What was the main problem with functionalism and Gestalt?

The methods that they used had limited utility

Who led the neurological influence on psychology?

Charcot

What did Charcot mainly focus on?

Psychopathology and hysteria

What made study of Psychopathology more possible?

People being treated as patients and treated by neurologists for milder cases

Who was a student of Charcot and ushered in the era of psychoanalytic psychology?

Freud

What kind of behaviors did Freud’s thinking give emphasis to?

Unconscious Behaviors

Why was the idea of interpreting things important?

It ushered in what would be the birth of qualitative measures in psychology

Around what period did qualitative methods in psychology begin?

Around the beginning of the 20th century

Why was the growth of psychology in the UK slow?

Universities were dominated by religion and somewhat divided by science

Which textbook argued for different ways of thinking within psychology?

Principles of Psychology