Chapter 1.3 History of psychology

The history of psychology.

Questions about human nature, such as whether psychological attributes are the same everywhere, were once the province of philosophy. Early in the twentieth century, however, philosophers entered a period of intense self-doubt, wrestling with the limitations of what they could know about topics such as morality, justice and the nature of knowledge. At the same time, psychologists began to apply the methods and technologies of natural science to psychological questions. They reasoned that if physicists could discover the atom and industrialists could mass-produce cars, psychological scientists could uncover basic laws of human and animal behaviour.

Philosophical roots of psychological questions

Philosopher René Descartes contended human action follows on from human intention; that is, people choose a course of action and act on it.

The fact that psychology grew out of philosophy is important. Many issues at the heart of contemporary psychological research and controversy are classic philosophical questions. One of these is whether human action is the product of free will or determinism; that is, do we freely choose our actions or is our behaviour caused — determined — by things outside our control?

Champions of free will follow in the footsteps of seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), who contended that human action follows from human intention — that people choose a course of action and act on it. Proponents of determinism, from the Greek philosopher Democritus onwards, assert that behaviour follows lawful patterns like everything else in the universe, from falling rocks to orbiting planets. Psychological determinists believe that physical forces determine the actions of humans and other animals — internally by genetic processes and externally by environmental events.

This debate has no easy resolution. Subjectively, we have the experience of free will. We could choose to stop writing — or you to stop reading — right now. Yet here we are, continuing into the next sentence. Why? What determined our decision to forge ahead? And how can mental processes exercise control over physical processes such as moving a pen or turning a page?

Humans are part of nature, like birds, plants and water. When we choose to move, our limbs exert a force that counters gravity and disturbs molecules of air. How can a non-material force — will — displace material forces? No-one has ever proposed a satisfactory solution to the mind–body problem, the question of how mental and physical events interact. However, psychological phenomena put the mind–body problem in a new light by drawing attention to the way psychological meaning can be transformed into mechanism (physiological events).

Psychologists do not tackle philosophical issues such as free will directly, but classic philosophical questions reverberate through many contemporary psychological discussions. Research into the genetics of personality and personality disturbances provides an intriguing, if disquieting, example. People with antisocial personality disorder have minimal conscience and a tendency towards aggressive or criminal behaviour. In an initial psychiatric evaluation, one man boasted that he had terrorised his former girlfriend for an hour by brandishing a knife and telling her in exquisite detail the ways he intended to slice her flesh. This man could undoubtedly have exercised his free will to continue or discontinue his behaviour at any moment and hence was morally (and legally) responsible for his acts. He knew what he was doing, he was not hearing voices commanding him to behave aggressively and he thoroughly enjoyed his victim’s terror. A determinist, however, could offer an equally compelling case. Like many violent men, he was the son of violent, alcoholic parents who had beaten him severely as a child. Both physical abuse in childhood and parental alcoholism (which can exert both genetic and environmental influences) render an individual more likely to develop antisocial personality disorder (see Shi et al., 2012). In the immediate moment, perhaps, he had free will, but over the long run, he may have had no choice but to be the person he was.

Other philosophical questions frame contemporary psychological theory and research. Many, such as free will versus determinism, take the apparent form of choices between polar opposites, neither of which can be entirely true. Does human behaviour reflect nature (biology) or nurture (environmental influence)? Does knowledge come from observing the world or from thinking about it?

Philosophical issues and psychological questions

Free will versus determinism: Do people make free choices or do forces outside their control determine their actions?

What causes patients with antisocial personality disorder to produce criminal behaviour?

Nature versus nurture: To what extent do psychological processes reflect biological or environmental influences?

To what extent is intelligence inherited, and how do genes and environment interact to influence intellectual functioning?

Rationalism versus empiricism: To what extent does knowledge about the world come from observation and experience or from logic and reasoning?

How do children come to understand that other people have thoughts and feelings?

Reason versus emotion: To what extent are people guided by their knowledge or by their feelings (and to what extent should they be)?

Should people choose their mates based on ‘gut’ feelings, or should they carefully weigh a potential partner’s costs and benefits if they want to have a happy, long-lasting marriage?

Continuity versus discontinuity with other animals: To what extent are humans similar to other animals (that is, to what extent is human psychology continuous with the psychology of other animals)?

To what degree can studying fear responses in primates inform psychologists about the nature of human emotions?

Individualism versus relationality: To what extent are humans fundamentally self-interested or oriented towards relating to and helping other people?

Do people ever really help others without benefiting themselves, or are they motivated by other considerations, such as desires to feel good about themselves or avoid guilt?

Conscious versus unconscious: To what extent are people conscious of the contents of their mind and the causes of their behaviour?

Can people describe themselves accurately or are they unaware of many aspects of their personality?

Mental versus physical: To what extent can we understand psychological events independent of their neural basis?

How many kinds of memory are there? When we hold a phone number in mind briefly as we reach for the phone, are we using different neural ‘hardware’ than when we store that number ‘for keeps’?

From philosophical speculation to scientific investigation

Philosophical questions have been around throughout human history — they were once the province of religion and, later, philosophy. They have survived because they allow people to better understand themselves.

Philosophical arguments have set the agenda for many issues confronting psychologists. The emergence of psychology as a science provided a new means for answering these long-asked questions. Its roots in philosophy, however, have profoundly influenced the discipline. Philosophers searched for answers to questions about the nature of thought, feeling and behaviour in their minds, using logic and argumentation. By the late nineteenth century, an alternative approach emerged: to understand the mind and behaviour, we should investigate it scientifically, just as physicists study the nature of light or gravity through systematic observation and experimentation. Thus, in 1879, Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), often described as the ‘father of psychology’, founded the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany.

Wundt’s scientific psychology

Wundt hoped to use scientific methods to uncover the elementary units of human consciousness that combine to form more complex ideas, much as atoms combine into molecules in chemistry. Foremost among his methods was introspection, the process of looking inward and reporting on one’s conscious experience. This introspection, however, was nothing like the introspection of philosophers, who speculated freely on their experiences and observations. Instead, Wundt trained observers to report verbally everything that went through their minds when presented with a stimulus or task. By varying the objects presented, he concluded that the basic elements of consciousness are sensations (such as colours) and feelings. These elements combine into more meaningful perceptions (such as of a face or a cat), which can be combined into still more complex ideas by focusing attention on them and mentally manipulating them.

Wundt never identified experimentation as the only route to psychological knowledge. He considered it essential for studying the basic elements of the mind, but other methods — such as the study of myths, religion and language in various cultures — were essential for understanding higher mental processes. The next generation of experimental psychologists took a different view, motivated by their wish to divorce themselves from philosophical speculation and establish a fully scientific psychology.

Structuralism and functionalism

Wundt’s student, Edward Titchener (1867–1927), advocated using introspection in experiments with the hope of devising a periodic table of the elements of human consciousness, much like the periodic table developed by chemists. Because of this interest in the structure of consciousness, the school of thought Titchener initiated was known as structuralism. Unlike Wundt, Titchener believed that experimentation was the only appropriate method for a science of psychology and that concepts such as ‘attention’ implied too much free will to be scientifically valuable. The generation of experimental psychologists who followed Titchener went even further, viewing the study of consciousness itself as unscientific because the data — sensations and feelings — could not be observed by anyone except the person reporting them.

Structuralism was one of two schools of thought that dominated psychology in its earliest years. The other was functionalism. Instead of focusing on the contents of the mind, functionalism emphasised the role — or function — of psychological processes in helping individuals adapt to their environment. Functionalists would not be content with the idea that running comes into consciousness in the presence of a snake raising its head to strike. They would advocate that it is no accident that this particular idea enters consciousness when a person sees a snake but not when they see a flower.

A founder of functionalism, Harvard psychologist William James (1842–1910), penned the first textbook in psychology in 1890. (If you think this one is long, try reading James’s 1400-page, two-volume set.) James believed that knowledge about human psychology could come from many sources, including introspection and experimentation but also the study of children, other animals (whose introspective reports may not be very useful) and people whose minds do not function adequately (such as the mentally ill). James thought the structuralists’ efforts to catalogue the elements of consciousness were not only misguided but profoundly boring! Consciousness exists because it serves a function, and the task of the psychologist is to understand that function. James was interested in explaining, not simply describing, the mind’s contents. As we will see, functionalism bore the imprint of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory, which has again come to play a central role in psychological thought a century later.

Structuralism and functionalism were two early ‘camps’ in psychology that attracted passionate advocates and opponents. But they were not the last.