Dissecting Basic Pyschology

Contemporary psychology is involved in an enormous range of topics, from looking to human behavior and mental process down to the neural and cultural level. However, understanding its origin and development would make you gain a better understanding of how branches of psychology are studied and what you have learned thus far.

From its earliest beginnings, psychology has been challenged with a number of questions. As defining psychology helped establish it as a science separated from physiology and philosophy, other queries has also confronted psychologists throughout history: what research methods must be used? What issues must it be concerned with? Should psychology be focused on observable behaviors or mental process? Etc.

Psychology did not emerge as a separate discipline until late 1800s. Its earliest history can actually be traced back to the time of the early Greeks. During the 17th-century, Rene Descartes introduced the idea of dualism, which stated that the mind and body are two separate entities that interrelate to form a human experience. Sounds philosophical?

While early philosophers relied on observation and logic, today’s psychologists employ scientific methodologies to study and draw conclusions regarding human thoughts and behaviors.

During the mid-1800s, Wilhelm Wundt published a book “Principles of Physiological Psychology”, which outlined major connections between the science of physiology and of human thought and behavior. He also opened the world’s first psychology lab in 1879 at the University of Leipzig. This incident is generally considered the official start of psychology as a distinct scientific discipline.

Psychology’s First School of Thought

Edward B. Titchener was the one to found psychology’s first major school of thought: structuralism. According to structuralists, human consciousness could be divided into smaller parts. While structuralism is prominent for its emphasis on scientific research, its techniques were limiting, and subjective.

Then psychology flourished in America during the mid- to late-1800s wherein William James emerged as father of American psychology through his book “The Principles of Psychology. His book subsequently became the standard text in psychology resources and his ideas have served as the basis for a new school of thought recognized as functionalism.