History of Psychology

Alfred Adler

known as one of the most influential thinkers in psychology. While he was initially a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, he eventually departed from Freud's theories and developed his own perspective, which he called Individual Psychology. He had a strong influence on a number of other eminent psychologists, including Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and Karen Horney.

Mary Ainsworth

a psychologist best known for her research on attachment theory and the development of the "strange situation" assessment. Her work played an important role in our understanding of child development and has influenced other fields including education.

Gordon Allport

a psychologist perhaps best-known as one of the founding figures of personality psychology. He also developed a trait theory of personality that described three broad categories of personality traits.

Solomon Asch

a pioneering social psychologist. His famous conformity experiments demonstrated that people will claim that something is correct when it obviously is not due to social pressure from peers. He also had an important influence on psychologist Stanley Milgram, whose own obedience experiments were inspired by [his] work.

Albert Bandura

psychologist known for his famous "Bobo doll" experiment as well as his concepts of self-efficacy and social learning. His work is considered part of the cognitive revolution in psychology that began in the late 1960s. His theories have had tremendous impact on personality psychology, cognitive psychology, education, and therapy.

Alfred Binet

a French psychologist famous for his development of the first widely used intelligence test. He is often described as one of the most influential thinkers in psychology history and his original test still serves as the basis for modern measures of intelligence.

Mary Whiton Calkins

the first female president of the American Psychological Association. She studied at Harvard with famous teachers including William James and Hugo Munsterberg. Despite completing all of the requirements for a doctorate degree in psychology, Harvard refused to grant her degree simply because she was a woman.

James McKeen Cattell

the first U.S. psychology professor. He is an important figure in psychology thanks to his work in intelligence, his use of quantitative methods and his focus on establishing psychology as a legitimate science.

Raymond Cattell

a pioneering thinker who is perhaps best known for his use of multivariate analysis and his 16-factor personality model.

Mamie Phipps Clark

a pioneering psychologist known for her important research on child development and self-concept among minorities. As the first black woman to graduate from Columbia University, she faced discrimination because of her race and her gender. Her research with her husband, Kenneth Clark, played a major role in the Supreme Court's decision in the pivotal Brown vs. Board of Education case.

John Dewey

American psychologist, philosopher, writer and educational theorist. His work had a vital influence on psychology, education and philosophy and he is often considered one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th-century. His emphasis on progressive education has contributed greatly to the use of experimentation rather than an authoritarian approach to knowledge. Foundation for functionalism

Erik Erikson

well-known stage theory of psychosocial development helped generate interest and inspire research on human development through the lifespan. An ego psychologist who studied with Anna Freud, he expanded psychoanalytic theory by exploring development throughout the full lifespan, including events of childhood, adulthood and old age.

Hans Eyesenck

a very prolific psychologist, publishing more than 75 books and 1600 journal articles. Prior to his death in 1997, he was the living psychologist most frequently cited in scientific books and journal articles. He was also a very controversial figure, and his outspoken views of subjects ranging from psychotherapy to intelligence made him the subject of criticism.

Leon Festinger

an influential social psychologist who is well-known for his theory of cognitive dissonance as well as his social comparison theory.

Anna Freud

began her career influenced by the theories of her father, Sigmund Freud. Far from living in her father's shadow, Anna made important contributions of her own to psychology. She founded child psychoanalysis and summarized the ego's defense mechanisms in her book The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936).

Sigmund Freud

may be one of the best known figures in history, but he is also one of the most controversial. He was the founder of the school of thought known as psychoanalysis. The legacy of his life and work provokes both impassioned acclaim from his supporters and disdain from his detractors. While some view him as a cultural icon and others see him as a pseudo-scientific charlatan, there is no question that he left an indelible mark on psychology as well as other disciplines.

Erich Fromm

a neo-Freudian psychoanalyst who had a major influence on humanistic psychology. Today he is remembered for his concept of freedom as a fundamental component of human nature.

G. Stanley Hall

founded the first American experimental psychology lab at John Hopkins University and also became the first president of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1892. He had a huge influence on the development of early psychology in the United States and many of his students went on to become eminent psychologists, including Lewis Terman, John Dewey and James McKeen Cattell

Harry Harlow

best-remembered for his shocking and controversial experiments demonstrating the effects of social isolation on young rhesus monkeys.

Karen Horney

a prominent psychoanalyst best-known for her theories of neurosis, feminine psychology, and self psychology. While shewas a neo-Freudian, she also challenged many of Sigmund Freud's theories about female psychology. For example, she countered Freud's assertion that women experience "penis envy" by suggesting that men feel "womb envy" because they are unable to bear children.

Clark Hull

a major figure in behaviorism. His ideas, including his drive reduction theory, were once dominant forces in psychology prior to the cognitive revolution of the 1960s.

Melanie Klein

Austrian psychoanalyst best known for developing the technique known as play therapy, which is still used widely today.

William James

often referred to as the father of American psychology. Wrote about the mind's stream of consciousness and about functionalist ideas that sharply contracted with structuralist ideas of discrete conscious elements. He also contributed to functionalism, pragmatism and influenced many students of psychology during his 35-year teaching career.

Carl Jung

a Swiss psychiatrist who founded the school of thought known as analytical psychology. He is known for his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious.

Kurt Lewin

the father of modern social psychology. His pioneering theories argued that behavior is caused by both personal characteristics and the environment. His emphasis on scientific methodology and systematic study had an enormous impact on future research in social psychology. He is also well-known for his styles of leadership.

Abraham Maslow

best known as the founder of humanistic psychology. His famous hierarchy of needs and concepts of self-actualization and peak experiences remain influential to this day, especially in the field of positive psychology.

Hugo Munsterberg

German psychologist who is known for his contributions to applied psychology. Despite the fact that his work still has an influence on many areas of modern psychology, his legacy was largely forgotten for many years.

Ivan Pavlov

a Russian physiologist whose research on conditioned reflexes influenced the rise of behaviorism. His experimental methods helped move psychology away from introspection and subjective assessments to objective measurement of behavior. While he was not technically a "psychologist," his contributions to the field of psychology and his discovery of classical conditioning make him one of psychology's greatest pioneers.

Jean Piaget

a psychologist best-known for his stage theory of cognitive development. He was one of the first thinkers to suggest that children think differently than adults, a concept that was considered revolutionary at the time.

Carl Rogers

one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. In addition to contributing to the development of humanistic psychology, his work had a dramatic influence on psychotherapy and education.

Martin Seligman

described as the father of contemporary positive psychology. He served as President of the American Psychological Association in 1998, and in a survey of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, he was ranked as the 13th most frequently cited psychologist in introductory psychology textbooks.

B. F. Skinner

research on operant conditioning (also known as instrumental conditioning) made him one of the leaders of behaviorism, but his theories and research also made him a target for controversy. His work remains influential today, especially in the field of behavioral therapy where behavior modification and intervention are used to change problem behaviors or reinforce desirable ones.

Sabina Spielrein

best-known as Carl Jung's patient and mistress as well as the subject of the 2011 film A Dangerous Method. However, she was also a psychiatrist and an important contributor to the development of psychoanalysis. Jung and Freud both drew on her ideas about transference and the death instincts. She also had an impact on other psychologists of her time including Melanie Klein and Jean Piaget. In 1941, she was killed by the Nazi's and her writings were lost for many years.

Robert Sternberg

a contemporary psychologist recognized for his research on intelligence, creativity, love and cognitive styles. He developed an intelligence test for a school project when his was in the seventh grade and later went on to form the triarchic theory of intelligence. He has also served as president of the American Psychological Association and has been given numerous awards for his work.

Edward Thorndike

a pioneering American psychologist perhaps best known for the law of effect. Today, he is often referred to as the father of modern educational psychology.

Lev Vygotsky

often described as a seminal psychologist, since most of his ideas were not discovered by many people until well after his death. He is best known for his sociocultural theory and his concepts of the zone of proximal development and guided practice.

John B. Watson

referred to as the "father of behaviorism." His view that psychology was the science of observable behaviors had a strong influence, and the behavioral perspective rose to dominate the field during the first half of the twentieth century. He was one of the strongest advocates for behaviorism, suggesting that psychology should be objective and focus on the study of human behaviors.

Max Wertheimer

one of the founders of the school of thought known as Gestalt psychology. Today, he is best remembered for his influence on areas including sensation and perception as well as experimental psychology.

Wilhelm Wundt

founder of psychology; best-known for establishing the very first experimental psychology lab in Leipzig, Germany. His work helped establish psychology as its own discipline separate from philosophy and physiology.

Robert Yerkes

known for his influence on comparative psychology and intelligence testing. He served on the committee responsible for developing the Army Alpha and Army Beta intelligence tests. He also established the first lab in the U.S. devoted to primate research.

Philip Zimbardo

an influential psychologist who conducted a famous experiment during the early 1970s known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. He is also widely recognized for his research on shyness, cult behavior and heroism.

history of psychology

extends from philosophy to current thought

Socrates

original philosophic mentor who pondered the abstract ideas of truth, beauty, and justice

Plato

Socrates' pupil; physical world is not all that can be known

Aristotle

Plato's pupil, recognized as the world's first professor

Rene Descartes

"I think, therefore I am"; focused on figuring out truths through reason and deduction

mind-body problem

the mind is a nonphysical substance that is separate from the body

John Locke

asserted that, upon entering the world, man's mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate)

Thomas Hobbes

asserted that humans and other animals were machines and that sense-perception was all that could be known

Immanuel Kant

asserted that our minds were active, not passive

Anton Mesmer

created a kind of popular science; believed that the healing of physical ailments came from the manipulation of people's bodily fluids

mesmerism

hypnotism

Franz Joseph Gall

used ideas from physiology and philosophy to create phrenology (idea that the nature of a person could be known by examining the shape and contours of the skull); J. Spurzheim carried on this work

Charles Darwin

wrote Origin of Species and The Descent of Man

Sir Francis Galton

made important, but random, contributions to psychology; promoted eugenics (plan for selective human breeding in order to strengthen the species)

Gustav Fechner

credited with the founding of experimental psychology because of his work Elements of Psychophysics

Johannes Muller

wrote Elements of Physiology and postulated the existence of "specific nerve energies"

Herbert Spencer

wrote Principles of Psychology and became the father of the psychology of adaptation

Hermann von Helmholtz

natural scientist who studied sensation

Stanley Hall

student of James and received America's first Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard; founded the American Psychological Association

Edward Titchener

taught at Cornell University and was the founder of structuralism; through introspection, lab assistants attempted to objectively describe the discrete sensations and contents of their minds

Dorothea Lynde Dix

spearheaded the nineteenth-century movement to provide better care for the mentally ill through hospitalization