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1.3 A History of Psychology: From the Armchair to the Laboratory

Now that you know what psychology is and what it isn’t, and why studying it requires critical thinking, let’s see how psychology developed into a modern science. We will begin this historical review by examining some of our field’s ancestors and distant relatives.

Psychology is a relatively young discipline, with the first psychology lab having been founded just 140 years ago. But for centuries before that, many a writer, artist, scientist, and politician debated questions and thought through issues related to the human condition. William Shakespeare, for example, was born almost 300 years before that first psychology lab came into existence. But he was, in many respects, an astute psychologist, writing about love and jealousy, lapses in morality, unconscious drives, and the limitations of humans’ self-insight.

Robert Harding World

1.3.A The Forerunners of Modern Psychology

Learning Objective 1.3.A Discuss some of the early approaches to explaining psychological topics, from ancient times through the early 1800s.

Until the 19th century, psychology was not a formal discipline. Of course, many of the great thinkers of history, from Aristotle to Zoroaster, raised questions that today would be called psychological. They wanted to know how people take in information through their senses, use information to solve problems, and become motivated to act in brave or villainous ways. They wondered about the elusive nature of emotion, and whether it controls us or is something we can control. Like today’s psychologists, they wanted to describe, predict, understand, and modify behavior in order to add to human knowledge and maximize human happiness. But unlike modern psychologists, scholars of the past did not rely heavily on empirical evidence. Often their observations were based simply on anecdotes or descriptions of individual cases.

This does not mean that psychology’s forerunners were always wrong. Hippocrates (c. 460–377 b.c.e.), the Greek physician known as the founder of modern medicine, observed patients with head injuries and inferred that the brain must be the ultimate source of “our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs, and tears.” Indeed, it is. In the 17th century, the English philosopher John Locke (1643–1704) argued that the mind works by associating ideas arising from experience, and this notion continues to influence many psychologists today.

But without empirical methods, the forerunners of psychology also committed terrible blunders. One was the theory of phrenology (Greek for “study of the mind”), which became wildly popular in Europe and the United States in the early 1800s. Phrenologists argued that different brain areas accounted for specific character and personality traits, such as stinginess and religiosity. Moreover, they said, such traits could be “read” from bumps on the skull. Thieves supposedly had large bumps above the ears. So how would they account for people who had these “stealing bumps” but who were not thieves? Phrenologists explained this away by saying that the person’s thieving impulses were being held in check by other bumps representing positive traits. In this manner, the so-called data could be used to support any conclusion.

phrenology

The now-discredited theory that different brain areas account for specific character and personality traits, which can be “read” from bumps on the skull.

Despite this, all sorts of people eagerly sought the services of phrenologists. Parents used them to make decisions about childrearing; schools used them to decide which teachers to hire; businesses used them to find out which employees were likely to be loyal and honest. Some phrenologists offered classes or self-study programs for people who wanted to overcome their deficiencies—these were the forerunners of today’s self-improvement programs and seminars. Enthusiasm for phrenology did not disappear until well into the 20th century, even though phrenology was a classic pseudoscience—sheer nonsense.

What stands out to you about this 19th-century phrenology “map”? Are you surprised by any of the aptitudes, emotions, and characteristics included? Surprised by anything major that seems to be missing? Does there seem to be any rhyme or reason to which labels are assigned to which regions of the skull? Sure, phrenology has long since been debunked, but as you read the rest of this chapter, consider whether there might be any ways in which the same motivations and assumptions that can be seen in this diagram continue to influence contemporary ways of thinking about human nature.

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1.3-11 Full Alternative Text

1.3.B The Birth of Modern Psychology

Learning Objective 1.3.B Discuss some of the influential perspectives and individuals in the early years of modern psychology.

At about the time that phrenology was peaking in popularity, several pioneering scholars in Europe and the United States were starting to study psychological issues using scientific methods. In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt [VIL-helm VOONT] officially established the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany. Wundt (1832–1920), who was trained in medicine and philosophy, wrote many volumes on physiology, natural history, ethics, and logic. But psychologists especially revere him because he was the first person to announce (in 1873) that he intended to make psychology a science and because his laboratory was the first to have its results published in a scholarly journal. Although it started out as just a few rooms in an old building, the Leipzig laboratory soon became the go-to place for anyone who wanted to become a psychologist.

One of Wundt’s favorite research methods was called trained introspection, in which volunteers were taught to carefully observe, analyze, and describe their own sensations and emotional reactions. This was not as easy as it sounds. Wundt’s volunteers had to make 10,000 practice observations before they were allowed to participate in an actual study. Once trained, they might take as long as 20 minutes to report their inner experiences during a 1.5-second experiment. The goal was to reduce behavior into its most basic elements, much as a chemist might break down water into hydrogen and oxygen. Most psychologists eventually rejected trained introspection as being too subjective, but Wundt is usually credited with formally initiating the movement to make psychology a science. Following his lead, three schools of thought became popular during the early decades of psychology’s existence as a formal discipline: structuralism, functionalism, and psychoanalysis.

Structuralism

In the United States, Wundt’s ideas were popularized in somewhat modified form by one of his students, E. B. Titchener (1867–1927), who gave Wundt’s approach the name structuralism. Like Wundt, structuralists hoped to analyze sensations, images, and feelings into basic elements. A person might be asked to listen to a clicking metronome and to report exactly what they heard. Most people said they perceived a pattern (such as CLICK click click CLICK click click), even though the clicks of a metronome are actually all the same. Or a person might be asked to break down all the different components of taste when biting into an orange (sweet, tart, wet, and so on).

structuralism

An early psychological approach that emphasized the analysis of immediate experience into basic elements.

However, after you have discovered the building blocks of a particular sensation or image, then what? The structuralists did not have an answer. And their reliance on introspection also got them into trouble because despite their training, introspectors often produced conflicting reports. When asked what image came to mind when they heard the word triangle, most respondents said they imagined a visual image of a form with three sides and three corners. But one person might report a flashing red form with equal angles, whereas another reported a revolving colorless form with one angle larger than the other two. Some people even claimed they could think about a triangle without forming any visual image at all (Boring, 1953). It was hard, therefore, to know what mental attributes of a triangle were basic.

And so, despite its ability to generate an intensive program of research, structuralism soon lost favor. Years after its demise, Wolfgang Köhler (1959) recalled how he and his colleagues had responded to it as students: “What had disturbed us was . . . the implication that human life, apparently so colorful and so intensely dynamic, is actually a frightful bore.”

Functionalism

Another early approach to scientific psychology, called functionalism, emphasized the purpose (or function) of behavior, as opposed to its analysis and description. One of functionalism’s leaders was William James (1842–1910), an American philosopher, physician, and psychologist, who argued that searching for building blocks of experience, as Wundt and Titchener tried to do, was a waste of time because the brain and the mind are constantly changing. Attempting to grasp the nature of the mind through introspection, wrote James (1890/1950), is “like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion” or trying to turn on the lights “quickly enough to see how the darkness looks.” (In addition to being a keen psychological mind, James was quite the writer!)

functionalism

An early psychological approach that emphasized the function or purpose of behavior and consciousness.

Whereas the structuralists asked what happens when an organism does something, the functionalists asked how and why. They were inspired in part by the evolutionary theories of British naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Darwin had argued that a biologist’s job is not merely to describe, say, the puffed-out chest of a pigeon or the drab markings of a lizard, but also to figure out how these attributes enhance survival. Do they help the animal attract a mate or hide from its enemies? Similarly, the functionalists wanted to know how specific behaviors and mental processes help a person adapt to the environment, so they looked for underlying causes and practical consequences of these behaviors and processes. Unlike the structuralists, they felt free to pick and choose among many methods, and they broadened the field of psychology to include the study of children, animals, religious experiences, and what James called the “stream of consciousness”—a term still used because it so beautifully describes the way thoughts can flow like a river, tumbling over each other like the rushing current, sometimes placid, sometimes turbulent.

William James (1842–1910)

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As a school of psychology, functionalism, like structuralism, was short-lived. Yet the functionalists’ emphasis on the causes and consequences of behavior was to set the course of psychological science.

Psychoanalysis

The 19th century also saw the development of psychological therapies. In the United States, the wildly popular Mind Cure movement lasted from 1830 to 1900; “mind cures” were efforts to correct the false ideas that were said to make people anxious, depressed, and unhappy. The Mind Cure movement was a precursor to modern cognitive therapies.

However, the form of therapy that had the greatest worldwide impact for much of the 20th century had its roots in Vienna, Austria. While researchers were working in their laboratories, struggling to establish psychology as a science, Sigmund Freud [SIG-muhnd FROYD] was in his office, listening to his patients’ reports of depression, nervousness, and obsessive habits. Freud (1856–1939) became convinced that many of his patients’ symptoms had mental, not physical, causes. Their distress, he concluded, was due to conflicts and emotional traumas that had occurred in early childhood and that were too threatening to be remembered consciously, such as forbidden sexual feelings for a parent.

Freud argued that conscious awareness is merely the tip of a mental iceberg. Beneath the visible tip, he said, lies the unconscious part of the mind, containing unrevealed wishes, passions, guilty secrets, unspeakable yearnings, and conflicts between desire and duty. Many of these urges and thoughts, he suggested, are sexual or aggressive in nature. We are not aware of them as we go blithely about our daily business, yet they make themselves known in dreams, slips of the tongue, apparent accidents, and even jokes. Freud (1905a) wrote, “No mortal can keep a secret. If the lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”

Revisiting the Classics

Sigmund Freud

It is easy when reading an introductory text to confuse famous with flawless. Just because researchers, studies, or particular theoretical viewpoints become well-known enough to be cited or even written in bold does not mean they are immune from careful scrutiny and criticism. Accordingly, once per chapter in this text, you will find a feature like this one, titled Revisiting the Classics, in which we will review through a critical lens some of the most famous studies in all of psychology.

In this opening chapter, we turn our critical attention to not a single study, but rather a looming legend of the early decades of psychology, Sigmund Freud. Freud’s perspectives have had an unsurpassed influence on philosophy, popular culture, and public awareness of psychology. Defense mechanisms, dream analysis, Freudian slips, the Oedipal Complex, phallic symbols, the battle of id versus superego . . . these are all concepts that continue to influence popular discourse and depictions of human nature. Today, Freud is as much of a household name as Einstein, even if the two men placed vastly different emphases on the importance of the scientific method.

Even in his own day, Freudian concepts were far from embraced by empirically oriented scientists. Karl Popper, a fellow Austrian and a famous early 20th-century philosopher of science, considered psychoanalysis to be the height of pseudoscience, a conclusion echoed by various critics today as well. Scientific theories, after all, are supposed to have testable predictions and conclusions based on objective empirical data. Freud’s ideas, his critics have suggested, exhibit “fundamental departures from the scientific ethos” (Crews, 1996, p. 66).

Why, then, devote so much attention to Freud in this opening chapter? (And again in Chapters 6 and 14 . . .) Because few if any early psychologists have had the amount and longevity of impact on both the field and general public. Some practitioners of psychotherapy continue to draw on psychoanalytic ideas today. And a variety of contemporary research areas continue to emphasize unconscious forces and conflicts within individuals—though they do so via a reliance on empirical observation and the scientific method that would have been largely unfamiliar to Freud in his own time.

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA[LC-USZ62-72266]

Freud’s ideas were not exactly an overnight sensation. His first book, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900/1953), sold only 600 copies in the 8 years following its publication. Eventually, however, his ideas evolved into a broad theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy, both of which became known as psychoanalysis.

From these early beginnings in philosophy, natural science, and medicine, psychology has grown into a complex discipline encompassing many perspectives, methods, and specialties. Today the field is like a large, sprawling family. The members of this family share common great-grandparents, and many of the cousins have remained close. But like any family, some members quarrel regularly, and a few barely speak to one another.

• Psychology is a relatively young field, starting about 140 years ago.

• Early discussions on human behavior date back centuries with thinkers like Aristotle and Shakespeare.

• Early psychology didn't use scientific methods; observations were often anecdotal.

• Phrenology was an early, incorrect belief that personality traits could be read from bumps on the skull.

• In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology lab in Germany, marking psychology's formal establishment as a science.

• Wundt used a technique called introspection, where individuals described their own experiences.

• Two main approaches emerged:

  • Structuralism: Analyzed mental experiences by breaking them down into basic parts.

  • Functionalism: Focused on how mental processes help individuals adapt to their environments.

• Sigmund Freud later introduced psychoanalysis, highlighting the impact of childhood experiences on thoughts and behaviors.

• Freud's ideas were influential but controversial, shaping our understanding of emotions and the mind today.