Psychology = psyche + logos

Soul + to study

Psychology: the scientific study of mind and behavior.

Mind:

Behavior:

Plato(428 BC-347 BC)

Socrates(??? – 399 BC)

PlatoSoc. Some of them were priests and priestesses, who had studied how they might be able to give a reason of their profession: there, have been poets also, who spoke of these things by inspiration, like Pindar, and many others who were inspired. And they say-mark, now, and see whether their words are true-they say that the soul of man is immortal, and at one time has an end, which is termed dying, and at another time is born again, but is never destroyed.

…The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things; there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection -all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection. And therefore we ought not to listen to this sophistical argument about the impossibility of enquiry: for it will make us idle; and is sweet only to the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and inquisitive. In that confiding, I will gladly enquire with you into the nature of virtue.

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC)

Have not we already disposed of the difficulty about interaction involving a common element, when we said that mind is in a sense potentially whatever is thinkable, though actually it is nothing until it has thought? What it thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a writing-tablet on which as yet nothing stands written: this is exactly what happens with mind

Aristotle

Nativism: certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn

Philosophical empiricism: all knowledge is acquired through experience

Nurture vs. Nature

René Descartes (1596-1650)

Cogito ergo sum

Dualism: the body and mind are fundamentally different things

Phrenology: specific mental abilities and characteristics, ranging from memory to the capacity for happiness, are localized in specific regions of the brain

Developed by Francis Gall (1758 – 1828)

Physiology: the study of biological processes, especially in the human body

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-94): stimulus reaction time experiments

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920):

Structuralism: the analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind

Consciousness experiments

Introspection: the subjectiveobservation of one’s own exp-erience

Charles Darwin1809 - 1882

The Origin of Species (1859)

Natural Selection

Evolution

William James (1842-1910): enlists Darwin’s theory of natural selection, applies it to the mind

Functionalism:

Gestalt Psychology: a psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Psychoanalysis: an approach that emphasizes the important of unconscious mental processes in shaping feelings, thoughts, and behaviors

Behaviorism: psychologists should restrict themselves to the scientific study of objectively observable behavior