PROLOGUE: Philosophical Roots and History of Psychology Flashcards
Psychology
the scientific study of the mind and behavior
Mind
what’s inside our head, the brain, our thoughts and feelings
Behavior
what happens that others can see
Scientific
the methods of research in psychology
What preceded psychology?
Philosophers
Rene Descartes (1600’s)
Dualism - Embodied and disembodied mind
Thomas Hobbes (1600’s)
The mind is what the brain does (embodied)
PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIALISM
The view that all mental phenomena can be reduced to physical processes (Thomas Hobbes)
PHILOSOPHICAL REALISM
- Advocated by the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704)
- The view that as your sensory organs are like a camera, in this case your eyes, that you see the world as it is
- “Naive realism”
PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISM
- Advocated by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
- The view that the way you see the world is more like a painting than a photograph in that your perception of the physical world is the brain’s interpretation of information from the eyes
- (The view of modern psychology)
Nativism
- Also advocated by Kant
- Emanuel Kant thought Locke (Realism) was wrong
- Kant argued that some knowledge is innate rather than acquired
- (Nature - Genes)
Empiricism
- The view that all knowledge is acquired through experience.
- John Locke (1690), a British philosopher in 1690 wrote that the newborn baby is “Tabula Rasa” or a blank slate upon which experience writes
- (Nurture)
Structuralism
Psychology should follow the approach of the natural sciences and break the mind down into its elements (through the use of self-reflective introspection)
Hermann Von Helmholtz (1821-1894)
- German physician and physicist who mainly studied vision but who had taken to asking people to close their eyes and respond as quickly as possible when he touched various parts of their legs (creepy?) and recorded their reaction time
Wilhelm Wundt (student of Wundt)
- Psychology should follow the approach of the natural sciences and break the mind down into its elements, an approach that came to be known as Structuralism.
- Wundt established the first psychology laboratory in Germany in 1879 and published the first psychology textbook.
- Technique of Introspection
Functionalism
Psychology should be built on the purposes of the mind (what was the mind for?). The functions of mind—what does it do? (How mental and behavioral processes function)
William James (1842-1910)
- An American physician & philosopher - a science of psychology should be built on the purposes of mind, what was the mind for? He called this approach Functionalism: The functions of mind. What does it do?
- Heavily influenced by Charles Darwin and evolution: Adaptation, Survival, and reproduction
- Focused on how the mind helps people adapt to the world and function within it
- Suggested link between human and animal psychology
- William James was the first American psychologist and published the first American and the most important book on psychology in 1890, The Principles of Psychology. First American psychology lab.
Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Theory
- Two French physicians (Charcot and Janet) became interested in persons who had an odd collection of symptoms with no detectable cause. They called the malady HYSTERIA.
- A Viennese physician, Sigmund Freud, who at the start of his career was studying the effects of cocaine and the sexual anatomy of eels turned his attention to the idea of hysteria.
- Hysteria was caused by fears and anxieties which existed out of consciousness in the unconscious and psychoanalysis was the way to become aware of these sources of anxiety. Key: Unconscious
Psychoanalytic vs Psychodynamic - Psychoanalytic places emphasis on sexuality while psychodynamic focuses on the social environment
Psychoanalysis’s goal is to uncover the unconscious presumably causing the problems
