Defining Psychology

1. Defining Psychology

2. What is the mind? • The battered offspring of the union of philosophy and psychology (Reber) • The totality of the conscious and unconscious mental experiences of an individual organism (Reber)

3. Where is the mind?

4. The scientific study of behavior and mental process • Behavior • Any measurable response of an item • The actions by which an organism adjusts to its environment • Mental Processes • An ongoing systematic series of actions or events that takes place in the brain

5. History of Psychology In the beginning, psychology was a 3-way synthesis of physics, physiology and mental philosophy

6. Fascination with Abnormality:Trephining • Evidence that the brain controls behavior • 40,000 years ago • Cro-magnons

7. Trephining • Geographical evidence of trepanning • Ancient Egypt • far and middle east • China • India • Aztecs • Incans • Brazilian tribes • the south seas • north and equatorial Africa

8. Trephining • Drill holes in the brain to release “something” • Used to cure mental illness • Lobotomy

9. Early Psychology Early psychology focused on measuring and understanding the mind

10. Early Greek Beginning with the Ancient Greeks, philosophers learned a great deal about the world around them, and attempted to arrange their learning in an orderly way, and speculated on its meaning

11. Orientations of Greek Explanation of Human Activity Biological Eclectic Naturalistic Humanistic Mathematical

12. Naturalistic • Ionian physicists • Life and matter are inseparable

13. Thales (650-546 BC) • Water is first element • Intrinsic to all life • was the first known Greek philosopher, physicist and mathematician.    His contributions to psychology were his discussion of the nature of matter

14. Heraclitus (530-? BC) • Sought unifying principle to explain the nature of change - Fire

15. Biological • Emphasized the internal state of human as holding the clue to life

16. Alcmaeon of Croton(c. 500 B.C.) • Monist • First real psychologist • Dissected the eye • Traced the optic nerve • Thought thought and sensation occur in the brain • He believed that the brain not only received perceptions of vision, audition, and olfaction, but was also the seat of thought.   •  He believed that health and disease are matters of equilibrium,  with health being a balance and disease, a rupture of that balance

19. Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 B.C.) • Monist • The Brain • Pleasure • Joy • Sorrow • Pain • Grief and tears Father of ancient medicine

20. Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 B.C.) • “With it we think and understand, see and hear, and we discriminate between the the ugly and beautiful, between what is pleasant and what is unpleasant and between good and evil”

21. Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 B.C.) • Epilepsy • Disease of the brain • warned against treatment with spells, amulets and “other illiberal practices.”

22. Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 B.C.) • Senses • Occurred in the brain • “the primary seat of sense” • supreme gland • secreted soothing phlegm called pituita (pituitary gland)

23. The Humors

24. Mathematical • Used the order and beauty of math to assert the unity of the world

25. Pythagoras (582-500 BC) • Geometry • Basis for life

26. Eclectic • Wandering Scholars • Study life as presented by people in the world • cautioned against speculation beyond observable reality

27. Protagoras (481-411 BC) • Admits sensory information • Denied ability to make generalizations beyond the physical • Skepticism

28. Humanistic • Humanity on a higher plane of life • emphasizes: • reason • language • self-reflection

29. Anaxagoras (488-428 BC) • Nous • Basic Elements • Earth • Air • Fire • Water Matter composed of infinite elements

30. Socrates

31. Socrates • Devoted his life to moral philosophy and the search for moral good. • He believed in the human soul. • How could we connect this to psychology and the study of behavior?

32. Plato (427-347 BC) • Intelligence • interaction between people and the environment • Excessive pain and pleasure diseases of mind • 3 aspect of the psyche • Reason • Feeling • Appetite

33. Aristotle (c. 384 – 322 B.C.) • Monist • Student of Plato • The heart was the seat of intelligence • The heart was the body’s nerve center • The brain cooled hot blood from the heart

34. Aristotle’s structure of the soul Active Mind Vision Hearing Common Sense Touch Passive Mind Taste Imagination Memory Smell

35. Medieval Times and The Renaissance(c.1000 - 1500) • The emergence of science • The emergence of humanism • Thinking became human-centered • Rather than God-centered • Grünewald’s The temptation of St. Anthony • Human qualities of temptation and evil

36. Medieval Times and The Renaissance(c.1000 - 1500) • The emergence of a more biological view of human behavior

37. Medieval Physicians Explanation for Behavior • Invented humors (bodily fluids) • Phlegm • Blood • Yellow bile • Black bile (melancholy) • All interacted to cause disease or preserve health

38. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) • Cartesian Dualism • Some ideas are innate • The mind was an object • one that took up no space • The soul or mind moved “vital forces” about in the brain • its action on a special organ called the pineal

40. John Locke 1632-1704 • Empiricism • Ideas • Fountains of Knowledge • Sensations • Reflection The idea that the environment shapes you behavior. Believed that all humans began with a ‘blank slate’ or tabula rasa.

41. Psychology as its own Discipline • Emerged in the 19th century • Employed laboratory techniques • Merging psychology and physics

42. Wilhelm Wundt (1832 – 1920) • In Lepzig, Germany • Founded the 1st formal laboratory dedicated to psychological research • Focused on sensation and perception • Looked at speed of simple mental processes

43. Max Wertheimer 1880-1943 • Gestalt Psychology • We see items in whole, not the specific details. • From Germany

44. Early Milestones • G. Stanley Hall – First President of APA and was involved in the development of educational psychology. Believed in Evolutionary Psychology and studied the inheritance of behavior. • Hermann Ebbinghaus 1850 – 1909 Worked in the field of memory and higher mental processes. Development of the “maintance rehearsal” for word lists. • Edward B. Titchner 1867 – 1927 described the structure of the mind; structuralism largest doctoral program in US.

45. William James 1842-1910 • Principles of Psychology important psychology textbook • Functionalism • Worked in the field of educational psychology.

46. Early Milestones (con’t) • Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939 – Developed the view called psychodynamics and psychiatry. Believed in the unconscious mind and defense mechanism. • Margaret Floy Washburn 1871 – 1939 - Studied under Titchener. She worked in the field of perception. First woman to receive her PhD in psychology. • Mary Whiton Calkins 1863 – 1930 – First woman to study in the same room as men at Harvard. First psychology lab at Wellesley College. She was interested in memory and the self. • Ivan Pavlov – 1849 – 1936 Russian. Developed what is known today as “classical conditioning”. Trained a dog to drool to a bell.

47. John B. Watson • Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It • He believed that behavior was measured by only actions that could be observed.