Historical background and early development

Psychology - History of Psychology

THE HISTORY and EVOLUTION of MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

Background and Early History:

The interest in understanding human behavior likely predates any recorded history. The earliest known philosophers of ancient Greece and Egypt wrote extensively on theories of the mind, in addition to their historical counterparts in the Far East. Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas devoted considerable attention to behavioral pathologies and post-Enlightenment philosophers like Emmanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Jean Jacques Rousseau all addressed human thought processes, motivation, and behavioral tendencies.

The modern era of psychology began with first formal laboratory dedicated to the field established in 1879 by Wilhelm Wundt, and with the simultaneous efforts of nineteenth-century physicians like William James and Edward Titchener (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005). By the early twentieth century, several specific schools of Psychological thought had developed their own directional approaches to understanding the human mind, lead by pioneers such as Freud, Maslow, and Skinner.

Today, psychology has grown into a major branch of modern medicine featuring multiple theoretical frameworks, each appropriate to different ailments and patient profiles. Despite their fundamental theoretical and practical differences, all modern schools of psychology can be traced to their historical origin represented by the work of a relatively small number of contributors who contributed their major work between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century (Coleman, et al. 1984).

The Behaviorist Perspective:

Psychological Behaviorism began with John Watson (1878-1958) whose original foundational premise emphasized the need to understand the external influences that caused human beings and other biological organisms to develop specific behaviors as a response to them (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005). Watson focused his work on studying the ways that external circumstances and experiences triggered behavioral responses in subjects, as well as the measurable subsequent impact of those responsive behaviors. His original premise was further developed by B.F. Skinner, most famously, through the study of the effect of emotional deprivation and social isolation on infants.

While Skinner's work predated the strict code of professional ethics that governs all human experimentation in modern psychology, it was partly responsible for its evolution by raising the need to address ethical issues in experimental psychology.

The Psychodynamic Perspective:

The Psychodynamic perspective of psychology was introduced by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who developed his initial views about the unconscious mind and its direct influence on human behavior after working with clinic patients afflicted with mental disorders (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005). The fundamental tenet of the psychodynamic model is that human behavior is, to a very large extent, a combination of latent manifestations of internal desires and conflicts between them and the need to conform to societal expectations (Coleman, et al. 1984)

According to strict Freudian principles, traumatic experiences and the ordinary frustrations of infancy, childhood, and those associated with lifelong sexual urges are repressed into the subconscious mind, which then direct much of our external behavior.

The Humanistic Perspective:

The Humanistic perspective was originally developed by Carl Rogers (1902-

1987), according to whom the natural state of the individual is to strive for continual psychological development throughout life in conjunction with much broader issues than addressed by either behaviorism or psychodynamics (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005).

Whereas behaviorists focus exclusively on the influence of external environmental factors and psychoanalysts view all human behavior as expressions of subconscious desires and conflicts, humanistic psychologists maintain that both of those approaches are too narrow in relation to the full spectrum of behavioral influences (Coleman, et al. 1984)

According to the humanistic perspective, human behavior includes many more contributing components than strictly subconscious influences or strictly external environmental experiences. Rather, it conceives of human behavior as a more holistic combination of biological tendencies, foundational relationships, formative experiences, as well as both conscious and subconscious reactions and the contributing effects of the external environment.

The best-known twentieth-century proponent of humanistic psychology is Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) who coined the concept of self-actualization as the highest level of psychological development at the top of a pyramidal representation of hierarchical levels of personal development. He suggested that everyone strives, over the course of a lifetime, to achieve a higher level of internal comfort, specifically in relation to others in society and to society as a whole (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005).

Whereas the behaviorist and psychodynamic models contradict each other in their fundamental assumptions and focus, humanistic perspective does not necessarily contradict behaviorism or the psychodynamic approach, except that it considers both of those views as explanations of only portions of human behavior rather than all human behavior.

The Cognitive Perspective:

The Cognitive perspective broadens the study of human psychology even further than the humanistic perspective. In addition to considering all of the influential elements within the behaviorist, psychodynamic, and humanistic views, cognitive psychology also studies the combined contributions of knowledge, memory, previous experience, subconscious desires, external factors, and volitional thought on external behavior (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005).

Cognitive psychology accepts many of the fundamental concepts of other schools of psychological thought, and much like the humanistic point-of-view, merely considers them incomplete explanations of human behavior rather than oppositional theories.

According to cognitive psychologists, even the most inclusive theories like humanistic psychology are limited in their focus to passive elements while excluding more active elements of thought and action.

Unlike the other perspectives which fail to account for the importance of higher conscious thought and volitional responses, cognitive psychology examines the underlying explanations for purposeful behavioral responses (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005).

The cognitive perspective also studies the many physiological phenomena and measurable changes in brain waves, circulation, hormone secretion, and volitional choices as well as their many consequences on the organism. The Biological and Evolutionary Perspectives:

The Biological and Evolutionary perspectives are two separate schools of psychological theory, but so closely related and complementary that they are best discussed together. The biological perspective views all outward human (and other biological organisms') behavior mainly as manifestations of physical changes occurring at the cellular level (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005).

According to the strict biological perspective, every biological organism is naturally predisposed to certain patterns of behavior. Those patterns are susceptible to secondary influences, such as those described by competing theories of human psychology. However, even those responses to external factors are predictable because they are merely repeatable patterns that correspond to specific external influences on the organism's natural tendencies.

The Evolutionary perspective views the behavior of all biological organisms as the product of Darwin's Theory of Evolution through natural selection and genetic mutation over successive generations (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005). The essential difference between the evolutionary perspective and the strict biological perspective is that the latter considers external behavior as a reaction to environmental stimuli while the former considers external behavior as the inevitable outcome of tendencies dictated by evolutionary biology. The Cross-Cultural Perspective:

The Cross-Cultural or Socio-Cultural perspective of human behavior expands the study of human psychology beyond the realm of the individual to include one specific external influence; namely, the profound influential effect of the social society and culture in which human beings live. The cross-cultural view accepts many general propositions proposed by other psychological theories, but maintains that their significance is rivaled by the important contribution of learned social expectations and many other complex elements of cultural learning. As a result, the cross-cultural perspective suggests that the areas of focus essential to other perspectives neglects the degree to which even those valid observations reflect the influence of social learning and culture.