We explain the history of psychology, its background, modern psychology and its various currents.
What is the history of psychology?
psychology It is a social science that deals with studying and understanding the mind and human behavior. Despite its formal origins in the 19th century, it is considered the modern continuation of a long philosophical tradition of questioning the origins of consciousness and what, exactly, it is that distinguishes us from animals.
The history of psychology dates back to classical antiquity especially Greco-Roman, since within that Mediterranean society many of the great thinkers of the West emerged.
Philosophers like Socrates and Plato, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. C., important questions were asked regarding what it is to be human, and they came to the conclusion that there must be a “soul” that contrasted the body, and that in the first resided the mental, intellectual and moral aspects of the individual, while that the second was the seat of the passions and the most “animal” aspects of the human being.
This opposition between body and soul, or rather body and mind, was fundamental to Western culture and many religions, such as Christianity, took it literally. It also allowed the emergence of medical studies of the body, many of which also had ancient beginnings, distinguishing as the centuries passed more and more what was a corporeal ailment, from what was an ailment “of the spirit.”
To do this, of course, it was necessary to overcome the religious paradigm of medieval Christianity, which attributed any illness that was not strictly corporeal to demonic possession or other mystical explanations.
Prayer and exorcism were the most common method of dealing with ailments. However, numerous ancient treatises on the subject had survived, such as the famous theory of the four humors, which assumed diseases were the product of an imbalance in the four fundamental fluids of the human body: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile.
The term “psychology” emerged during the Renaissance Western, taking up the Greco-Roman pagan heritage. It was formed, precisely, by the Greek words psyche“soul”, and logos“speech”.
Thanks to this reunion of the West with itself, and to the work of philosophers such as René Descartes (1596-1650), Baruch Espinoza (1632-1677) or John Locke (1632-1704), who delved into and questioned the body/soul dichotomy, the The modern panorama was ready for the first steps to be taken towards the formalization of the sciences, and among them, psychology.
Other important precursors in the matter were the Croatian Marko Marulic (1450-1524), and the Germans Rodolfo Goclenio (1547-1628) and Christian Wolff (1679-1754). Also worth mentioning are the previous forms of psychiatry, which from the mid-18th century to the 19th century were practiced under the name “alienism.”
“Scientific” psychology, that is, Modern psychology was born in the 19th century hand in hand with the increase in medical and biological knowledge, especially neurological and psychophysiological. The studies of scientists such as Gustav Fechner (1801-1887), Paul Pierre Broca (1824-1880) and Carl Wernicke (1848-1905) were key in this regard.
Also important was the revolution caused by the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), whose theories on the origin of species were soon applied to human society itself, often with disastrous political results. In any case, it is important to understand how new scientific perspectives turned to the study of the human mind itself among many other things.
The first experimental psychology laboratory was founded in 1879, at the German University of Leipzig and was the work of the philosopher and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920). This event is considered the founding milestone of modern psychology, that is, its definitive separation from philosophy, embarking on a truly scientific path.
The positivism of Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who valued experimental sciences above any other approach to reality, had an immense influence on this.
This is how they emerged the first two currents of psychology:
- structuralism defended by Wundt.
- functionalism proposed in the United States by William James (1842-1910).
During the first decades of psychology's existence, three new aspects would join them:
- psychoanalysis developed by the famous Sigmund Freud (1856-1939).
- Gestalt psychology proposed by Max Wertheimer (1880-1943) and Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967), among others
- behaviorism whose main representative was the American John B. Watson (1878-1958).
From this initial scenario, new proposals and considerations emerged regarding the human mind and what the ideal approaches should be for its rigorous and scientific study. Advances in medicine also allowed the modernization and formalization of psychiatry, and a new horizon of experimentation was opened for the study of consciousness.
Continue with: Ancient science
References
- “History of psychology” on Wikipedia.
- “Origins and history of psychology – Philosophical background” (video) in Educatina.
- “Birth and evolution of psychology as a science” at Centro Eleia (Mexico).
- “An introduction to the history of psychology” in Academic Report of the University of La Plata (Argentina).
- “Psychology” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
