The Study of Psychology
The study of psychology in a philosophical context dates back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China, India, and Persia. Historians point to the writings of ancient Greek philosophers, such as Thales, Plato, and Aristotle (especially in his De Anima treatise),[11] as the first significant body of work in the West to be rich in psychological thought.[12]
Structuralism
German physician Wilhelm Wundt is credited with introducing psychological discovery into a laboratory setting. Known as the "father of experimental psychology,"[13] he founded the first psychological laboratory, at Leipzig University, in 1879.[13] Wundt focused on breaking down mental processes into the most ...
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he laid the foundations for many of the questions that psychologists would explore for years to come. Other major functionalist thinkers included John Dewey and Harvey Carr.
Other 19th-century contributors to the field include the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, a pioneer in the experimental study of memory, who developed quantitative models of learning and forgetting[15] at the University of Berlin; and the Russian-Soviet physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who discovered in dogs a learning process that was later termed "classical conditioning" and applied to human beings.[16]
Starting in the 1950s, the experimental techniques set forth by Wundt, James, Ebbinghaus, and others would be reiterated as experimental psychology became increasingly cognitive—concerned with information and its processing—and, eventually, constituted a part of the wider cognitive science.[17] In its early years, this development had been seen as a "revolution,"[17] as it both responded to and reacted ...
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Other well-known psychoanalytic scholars of the mid-20th century included psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, and philosophers. Among these thinkers were Erik Erikson, Melanie Klein, D.W. Winnicott, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, John Bowlby and Sigmund Freud's daughter, Anna Freud. Throughout the 20th century, psychoanalysis evolved into diverse schools of thought, most of which may be classed as Neo-Freudian.c
Psychoanalytic theory and therapy were criticized by psychologists and philosophers such as B.F. Skinner, Hans Eysenck, and Karl Popper. Popper, a philosopher of science, argued that Freud's, as well as Alfred Adler's, psychoanalytic theories included enough ad hoc ...
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"The Study of Psychology." Essayworld.com. March 24, 2011. Accessed December 21, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Study-of-Psychology/96751.
"The Study of Psychology." Essayworld.com. March 24, 2011. Accessed December 21, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Study-of-Psychology/96751.
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