The History Of Psychology - Essay Example

‘Critically evaluate the role that the study of human evolution, philosophy, and the history of psychology can contribute to understanding the field of modern psychology” Introduction The history of philosophy dates back to to the ancient Greek when people like Aristotle and Plato event though it never emerged as a separate discipline. According to Benjamin, early philosophers relied on methods such as observation and logic while todays philosophers utilize scientific methodologies (43). Philosophy and its development have greatly contributed to the psychology emergence as a scientific discipline that can be relied upon and applied in daily lives. There is also evidence of psychology being practiced in ancient Egypt since it was also a center of early civilization. The history of psychology Psychology did not develop as a discrete discipline till the late 1800 when a number of people came out with arguments that were important to the human civilization. It became a serious discipline when Rene Descartes the French philosopher introduced the idea of dualism by asserting that the mind and body are two separate entities and should not be treated as the one entity (Benjamin 51). Structuralism becomes psychology first school of thought when Wundt found that human consciousness can be broken down into much smaller units using as a process known as introspection. Wundt founded the first laboratory exclusively dedicated to psychological research where he carried our psychological research and wrote the first textbook on psychology and naming himself a psychologist (Snyder., Lopez & Teramoto 19). After the development of experimental psychology, various kinds of applied psychology emerged in a bid to expand on their understanding of the behavior of human beings (Chalmers 73). The Early Psychologists Before psychology, the social and cultural context for three developments in psychology had its roots in three popular movements that are the mesmerism, spiritualism, and phrenology and one academic discipline that is mental philosophy (Zehr 17). Fechner was among the early psychologist and he established that it is possible to measure with great precision the relationship between physical stimuli and the resulting psychological stimuli. His writings had a profound influence on Wundt who set up the first psychological laboratory to enhance his studies in psychology (Jacobs 88). William James is among the early psychologist and he contributed to the principles of psychology, radical empiricism, the American spiritualist medium, and the variety of religious experience. His famous works include the Principles of Psychology (1890) that advocated for early person centered introspection and valued individual experience over experimental research. He also authored the Variety of Religious Experience that is still being used in religious psychology today and covers topics on the sick soul, the healthy soul, and saintliness and conversion experiences. James is highly credited for being the forerunner of humanistic psychology and his four makers of mystical experience includes ineffability, Noetic quality, transiency, and passivity (Beins 15). Henry Murray is also amongst the early psychologist whose works were greatly influenced by James who mentored him. James personality was however superseded by American graduates of German school who were staunch experimentalists and this greatly influenced his future works. The early German psychologist was greatly associated with hard, scientific and experimental psychology of the kind that ultimately spawned behaviorism in modern psychology. James liberal approach to the stream of consciousness saw him active in the investigation of paranormal and spiritual in the United States of America. The American psychologists who were trained in the early experimental psychology of the German type are the ones who strike out for a kind of psychology that is recognized as modern behaviorism. In Europe, the earliest psychologist was equally determined in grounding the psyche in biology that would later lead to the development of modern psychology of Psychoanalysis (Rutherford 18). The elements of behaviorism dominated the experimental psychology until the late 1960s when the new movements in psychology like cognitive psychology and Humanistic Psychology began to dominate. Cognitive psychology evolved out of the critique of behaviorism while humanistic psychology developed out of eclectic interest in the whole human being fomented by influences from a range of areas in philosophy. The spiritual legacy of the early structuralist and functionalist is still felt working out in cognitive and humanistic psychology (Rappard 12). The precursors of cognitive theory included Fredrick Bartlett who studied memory for stories and demonstrated the notion of schemata as intervening memorial templates that recall events from stories. Herbert Simon noted the symposium heralded several important and direct challenges to behaviorist perspective and predicted that computers would beat the world chess champion by 1987. Naom Chomsky is also a critique of the verbal behavior and his works on linguistics still retains currency as one of the two major acquisitions in the modern day cognitive study of psycholinguistics. Humanism on the other hand has both American and European influences and its credited to people like William James, Henry Murray and Abraham Maslow (Kline 81). Philosophy of Mind The philosophy of mind status can be attributed to at least two related factors that are the importance of the subject matter and the diversity of the field (Benjamin 45). Mental phenomena are of great importance in most of the human activities since it encompasses our hopes, fears, thoughts, and desires. The mentality is essential to human nature and at least some sort of mental life is necessary for human beings. The specific aspects of human mentality and human rationality distinguish humans from other creatures of the mind. Dualism Dualism may differ on how two kind of things relate to each other and they involve interactions, Epiphenomenalists and Parrallelists. Dualism fits intuitively with our folks and psychology and with the tenets of religious belief in the soul. Dualism argues for an immortal soul in a spooky interaction with finite physical brain and when the brain dies, the soul remains (Benatall, 64). Dualism is a commonly held view only amongst parapsychologist and for the past two hundred years, it is the most accepted metaphysics of both religion and science. In later development stages of human civilization, the growing success of science in its grasp of physical reality led to a move towards materialism. This view led to the belief that reality is purely material and the modern variants of materialism are the dominant mainstream metaphysics in science. Materialism This is also another philosophy of mind and it can be traced back to the Greek philosophy. History of Psychology Early materialism seems quite quaint by todays standards that result from the development of materialistic science that has enormously extended the understanding of matter. Through the atoms of physical science, the early physicist demonstrated that the atom indivisible and it contains units of electrons, protons, and neutrons (Chalmers 87). Quantum physics also found that sub atomic particles are themselves composed of even smaller constituents like muons, quarks, and neutrinos that are hardly visible even by the use of machines. Scholars also argue that the fundamental properties of these sub atomic particles are explicable in terms of rapidly vibrating loops of string (Kline 43). According to studies, materialism does not deny the existence of thoughts, feelings, and consciousness; however, deny that these mental phenomena are anything rather than material events. A classical modern example of modern theory is the one offered by Ullin Place in his work Consciousness of the Brain. He offered what is widely known as the type identity theory and his essential argument was that every type of mental event is equal with a type of brain event. He avoided mentioning that identity is logical or necessary identity but stressed that it’s perfectly obvious that there is no necessary or logical identity between mental and events and brain events. This is demonstrated in the event whereby one can easily mention about pain without ever talking about the events of the brain (Synder, et al, 112). He made an effort to identify that identity of pain with the brain process is a contingent identity and this can be established by empirical correlation of mental events with specific types of brain events. He further argues that Place argument hinges upon an analogy that lightning is nothing more than the movement of electrical charges. The scientific truth of identity of lighting and electrical discharges is a contingent identity in which suitable scientific experiment will confirm that lighting is composed of electrical discharges. He further argues that science shows that the conscious events are composed of nothing but the brain process and hence is nothing new. However, consciousness is not clearly like lightning in this regard since consciousness cannot be microscopically magnified to reveal the components that are really inside (Kline 43). The biggest problem with materialism is the success of material sciences that has made people to have a different view hence he concluded that materialism eats itself. The early forms of materialism posited a billiard ball universe with three dimensions of space and one separate and uniformly linear dimension of the time (Jacobs 25). Many scientists have a different view of materialism since Einstein relativist physics pictured space and time as intimately bound together in a continuum. This physics blurred the distinction between fields and particles and crucially showed that consciousness play a role in determining the realities of life. Materialism its crudest form is thus largely discredited but more modern variants materialism is still the tacit philosophy behind the hard sciences. Idealism This is a philosophy of mind that argues that only mental events exist and thus the world is a great thought. Some scholars argue that this theory is quite absurd and does not apply in the modern context but a closer analysis of idealist arguments shows the theory has great subtlety. Idealism is a relatively modern philosophy of mind and several British philosophers argued for it cogently at the turn of the twentieth century (Benjamin 67). Idealism was strongly advocated by the German philosophers who were and famous Irish philosopher Bishop Berkeley. Berkeley like other philosophers made great contributions by developing the theory of optics, calculus, and development of materialism. His view is grounded in his empirical view that all knowledge is grounded in our experience rather than pure vision and is based on the tenets that all knowledge is based on experience and only experiences are directly known (Chalmers 54). John Locke is amongst the British philosophers who made great contribution to the field of idealism by making a critical distinction between the primary and secondary qualities of an object. Locke asserted that the immediate and directly known perception of secondary qualities is merely relative to the observer and are therefore not actual properties of the thing in itself. He further argued that our perceptions of primary qualities are observer independent real features of something that exist whether perceived or not by anyone and there must be some matter that has these qualities. However, this is largely challenged by Berkeley by directly building the notion that these primary qualities are truly mind-independent. He also adds that primary qualities also depend upon secondary qualities and the motion and shape of a colorless object are absurd (Sdner, 44). Idealism may not seem intuitive at first glance but in very elegant reproduces, the completely known universe just as science and psychology would have it. Idealism avoids the problem of interaction in dualism entirely and permits science to proceed as usual and for there to be a god. Idealism is thus not a knockdown philosophy that many materialists suppose it to be and it has a strong internal logic grounded in an extreme form of empiricism. Idealism coexists with mystical notions of god and provides a fertile context for understanding paranormal phenomena (Bentall 65). Neutral monism is also a philosophy of mind that argues that only one substance exists and that is either mental nor physical. Neutral monism fits perfectly with psychology by arguing that minds and brains are mere aspects of modes of the true substance. Neutral Monism is perhaps not intuitive until deeply considered hence like idealism; it has a strong internal logic. Neutral monism does not suffer from interaction problems of dualism nor does it suffer from explanatory problems besetting attempts to explain mental events in material terms. Neutral idealism happily coexists with mystical notions of god but unlike idealism, it does not force reality in dualism (Bental, 34). Modern Psychology This is a large, diverse, and increasingly professionalized discipline with a well defined variety of pure and applied research specialisms. The relevance of modern psychology is increasingly acknowledged in the society and by the governments as a priority for their citizens, modern psychology is very wide and is thus divided into applied psychology and academic psychology. The academic psychology is further divided into biological, cognitive, developmental, individual and social psychology while applied psychology is divided into educational, clinical, health, forensic and occupational psychology (Benjamin 92). Academic psychology is the foundation of knowledge about a person while applied psychology is the application of such academic knowledge in real life practice. Applied psychology employs academic expertise to explain and control real world psychological issues and they both tend to favour specialism. Modern psychology is diverse and had a great success I gaining scientific and national approval as an increasingly professionalized discipline. Conclusion Psychology started long time ago before the start of human civilization and it can be traded back to ancient Greece and Egypt. Human evolution has played a significant role in the development of psychology from reasoning and logics to experimental psychology. There early psychologist developed philosophies, some of which were critiqued to develop the modern philosophies that are applied today. Psychology did not emerge as a discipline until the 18th century when strong arguments came out about human behavior. Today, modern psychology is a highly professionalized discipline with well defined research that produce tangible results that are applied in human lives. Work Cited Benjamin, Ludy. A Brief History of Modern Psychology. Blackwell: Oxford. 2007. Print. Bentall, Richard. Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature. London: Penguin. 2004. Print. Chalmers, David (Ed.). Philosophy of Mind: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Oxford: OUP. 2002. Print. Jacobs, Michael. Psychodynamic Counselling in Action. London: Sage. 2004. Print. Beins, Bernard. Using History to Teach Contemporary Psychology. Teaching of Psychology,  2011; vol. 38, 4: pp. 309-313. Rutherford, Alexandra. Where History, Philosophy, and Psychology Meet: An Interview with Wayne Viney. Teaching of Psychology,  2004; vol. 31, 4: pp. 289-295. Rappard, Hans. History of Psychology Turned Inside(r) Out: A Comment on Danziger. Theory & Psychology,  1997; vol. 7, 1: pp. 101-105 Snyder, Richard., Lopez, Jeniffer., Teramoto Pedrotti. Positive Psychology: The Scientific and Practical Exploration of Human Strengths. London: Sage. 2011. Print. Kline, Paul. Psychology Exposed: Or the Emperor’s New Clothes. London: Routledge. 1988. Print. Zehr, David. Teaching Psychologys History through a Comparative Analysis of Introductory Psychology Texts. Teaching of Psychology,  2000; vol. 27, 1: pp. 31-33. Read More