Psych History Unit 1

Introduction Week

1. Recall the “Is Psychology a Science?” discussion and the models we examined.

(Application of scientific methods, research, behavior, cognition) but it lacks a clear foothold of how the world works skepticism

Pyramid of what’s present in psychology: Data(statistics on dates) > information(correlations/outcomes) > knowledge(WHAT engagement > environment) > wisdom(HOW how to plan date)

Psychology is caught between Skinner (Behaviorism) and Freud (Psychoanalysis) and Biology and Sociology

Be instructed in theory and his grace shall attend you

2. Neal A. Maxwell’s Four Bridges

1 Some such bridges are difficult (spiritual being translated to physical)

2 Some bridges cannot be built for a while (revelation)

3 Some bridges can be widened (correlate scholar with spirit)

4 We know now that some bridges simply cannot be built (inaccessible to believers)

1. Man is created in God’s image 2. Environment and heredity do not account for all uniqueness 3. Free agency and growth are more important than life itself 4. The mortal estate is designed to prove us 5. Opposition in all things 6. World of law misery and blessings 7. Almost all men misuse power

Chapter One – Foundational Ideas from Antiquity

1a. Pre Socratic 

Pythagoras had religious attachment to the ideal triangle (inspired Plato)

Heraclitus mutability

Zeno infinite Achilles can never catch up to Tortoise

2. Hippocrates’ humoral theory – components

Hippocratic Oath precursor, Humoral - natural cause of disease, blood (air liver sanguine), yellow bile (fire gallbladder Choleric), black bile (earth spleen melancholic), phlegm (water, brain/lungs phlegmatic) [affect health, temperament, and character], Nice to women

1. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,  : (rationalism, empiricism, nativism, sophist, etc.)

470 - 399 Socrates: Socratic Method of questions, responses, questions/did not record his teaching; Xenophon and Plato star pupils; modest life and looks; I know that I know nothing Dialogues, native inherent knowledge, rationalism, shunned sophists

428-348 Plato: Theory of Forms/Theory of the Cave; Founded academy; sold as a slave; physically active and attractive Studied with Pythagoras, Academy, Appearance is an imperfect conscious interaction, Republic

384-322 Aristotle: Empirical evidence; taxonomy; tutor to Alexander the Great; not born in Athens; Lyceum strolling school, Wrote in reaction to Plato’s philosophy, De Anima

3. Plato’s Cave – main aspect?

Live in a non-Ideal world, reality is shadows, philosophers try to share truth, masses are ignorant and too stubborn to accept truth

4. Plato’s three components of the psyche

logistikon (reason), the thymoeides (spirit), and the epithymetikon (appetite)

5. Aristotle’s order of the psyches

Plants vegetative soul (reproduction, growth) < Animals sensitive soul (mobility, sensation) < Rational soul (thought, reflection)

Sensations lead to memory and cognition (early blank slate) Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil

6. Avicenna’s floating man conclusions

Consciousness and existence, does a person exist without senses?

Chapter Two – Pioneers of the Mind: Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz

Rene Descartes: Rationalism, I think therefore I am, incisive questions split up big problem, quiet reflection, experience, reason, doubt, meditated in stove; love, joy, wonder, hatred, desire, sadness; don’t rely on authority; moved 24 times wanted to find external peace and safety

Fire tiny fluid Air larger Earth largest

1. The first rule of Descartes’ method

Doubt

2. Components of Descartes’ simple natures

Mechanical [Extension (space being filled) and Motion / Galileo defined similar], intellectual, simple

Animal Spirits clear yellowish fluid, reflex stimulus to response

Innate ideas - exist prior to any sensory experience

Passions - conscious experience of senses

John Locke:

Experience + empirical, tabula rasa, government takes care of people, religious freedom, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Robert Boyle, first teacher u fall to

Simple ideas: Characteristic / Complex ideas: connect simple into idea

ASSOCIATION

3. Locke’s primary qualities and secondary qualities

Primary qualities INHERENT of shape, quantity, and motion which are received and known in secondary qualities PERCEIVED or senses

4. Locke’s three degrees of knowledge

Intuitive: Immediately True / Demonstrative: geometric or logical reasoning / Sensitive: patterns of sensory experiences

5. Leibniz early mathematical discoveries

Binary arithmetic (infentisemal)

6. Leibniz, pantheism, and the theory of monads

Continental Rationalists: Ideas important, God is the universe

Supreme Monad

Rational Monad

Sentient Monad

Chapter 3 – Physiologists of the Mind: Brain Scientists from Gall to Penfield

 Thomas Willis - GRAPHICALLY displayed plates and engravings (Christopher Wren) grey (pulpy outside process) and white (fibrous inner connects) matter

Commissures - Corpus Callosum / 1740 Neurons 1836 nerve cells visualized then axon 1838 cell theory then actual cell 1873 black reaction / Cerebral Cortex / Cerebellum

1. Physiognomy v phrenology

Facial characteristics determine traits - Lavater / brain shape and skull shape denote traits - Gall

2. Flourens’ methodologies

Ablation, Cortex is a unified whole (?), Georges Cuvier built on Flourens studies [extinction]

3. Localization

Bouillard rejected phrenology but believed frontal controlled language, his son-in-law Aubertin agreed

3. Types of aphasia

Global Aphasia is the most severe 

Motor or Broca’s Aphasia - Paul Broca discovered Tan and his inability to speak correctly, he could understand speech though

Sensory or Wernicke Aphasia - Can speak fluently but doesn’t understand what they are saying paraphasias mispronunciation of words

4. The brain’s sensory strip and motor strip

Fritsch and Hitzig discovered motor strip 1st to do electrical stimulation

A. The brain’s sensory strip and motor strip

David Ferrier 1st to be prosecuted for cruelty to animals distinct cortex center

Shepherd Franz ablation on cats, APA Prez

Karl Lashley  worked on memory

Equipotentiality neral plasticity Flourens, take over functions

5. The law of mass action

Lashley, damage expanse = effect