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Period: to
History of Modern Psychology
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Philippe Pinel is inspired by France's passion for Liberté, égalité, and fraternité.
Philippe Pinel began working at the Bicêtre Hospital in France, which was then a military hospital and insane asylum. He encouraged a moral treatment of patients that focused on the psychological, instead of the harsher psychical ways of treating the 'insane' at the time. Alongside his colleagues, Pinel replaced inhumane therapies with more ethical ones and took shackles off of patients. Research into the development and treatment of mental disorders followed from these more humane practices. -
Franz Joseph Gall Begins the Study of Phrenology
Phrenology was an influential discipline that claimed that the brain's inner functions and a person's personality could be determined by an external examination of the skull. It was popular throughout Europe until advances in science began to discredit it. Phrenology remained an early theory that assumed that emotions, personality, and cognition were located inside the head. While the phrenology charts are largely seen as inaccurate, phrenology is still related to later work in neurology. -
The Nature vs Nuture Debate
A major debate in developmental psychology but began in Aristoltle's time. Theorists argued whether knowledge was an innate and hardwired process that resulted from an individuals genetics or if knowledge was learned from the interactions within the environment. Generally, these extremes perspectives are no longer taken and now combinations of the perspectives are taken. The debate did allow psychologists to see that developmental processes could include both views instead of one or the other. -
Weber's Law
Weber's LawErnst Heinrich Weber is considered one of the founders of experimental psychology. Weber published his theory of Just Noticeable DIfference now known as Weber's Law. His law states that the just-noticeable difference between two stimuli is proportional to the magnitude of the stimuli. Gustav Fechner later elaborated the theory and stated that the subjective sensation is proportional to the logarithm of the stimulus intensity -
Phineas Gage, a railway worker, had an accident that caused permanent brain damage and made him a famous figure in psychology.
While working, an iron rod was blasted through Gage's frontal lobe and while not fatal it caused severe negative personality change, memory difficulties, and decision making problems. After the accident his personality was totally different. It's a significant event because of the rarity of observable brain trauma survivors, and it became important for theories on localization and personality research. His changing psychological state has been of interest to both neurologists and psychologists. -
Bringing the gap
Hermann von Helmholtz, a man of vast interests and student of Wilhelm Wundt, is a critical entity in the founding of psychology. He is considered the bridge between the natural sciences and psychology and his work may be considered the origins of neuroscience. Helmholtz was influential in the study of vision and perception and realized the importance of top-down processing in perception. The study of the body and the effects the mind has on this processes bridge the two areas together. -
Darwin publishes 'On the Origin of Species'.
Darwin's On the Origin of Species called attention to the role of individuals' biology, and brought focus to the ideas of adaption and survival. Instead of studying people in general, psychology began to focus on the differences between both individuals and their descendents. Alfred Binet, for example would later look at intelligence in the context of the individual instead of the entire populace. Darwin's work was one of the foundations for the importance of biology and evolution in psychology. -
Fechner founds Psychophysics
In 1839, the physicist Gustav Fechner contracted an eye disorder that led to him studying the mind and how it was related to the body. He is known as the founder of Psychophysics. In 1860, he published Elemente per Psychophysiks in which he described how he believed physical stimuli related to cognitive processes. Psychophysics was inspired by the early experiments of Ernst Weber and the log-linear psychophysical function, and his work was further studied by Charles Pierce. -
The start of psychophysics
Gustav Theodor Fechner wanted to develop a method that could relate matter to the mind. He therefore began research that he thought related physical stimuli to the sensations and perceptions they affect, which he coined psychophysics. In psychophysics, experiments test perception by seeing whether a subject can detect, identify, and ultimately differentiate a stimulus such as tones varying in intensity, or lights varying in luminance. -
Paul Broca is credited with Brocas Area
Paul Broca is credited with the discovery of an area of the brain in the frontal lobe that is essential in the production of speech. He is credited with the discovery that patients who have a lesion in this particular area have an aphasia that included symptoms of difficulties in speech production. This occurred only with lesion in the left frontal area and provided the first credited example of function localization in the brain. This led to other functions being localized to specific areas. -
Karl Ewald Konstantin Hering begins studying colour perception
"Opponent-Proccess" Theory of Colour Vision
Ewald Hering (1834-1918) was a German phsyiologist who opposed von Helmholtz's trichromatic vision theory and pioneered the "opponent-process" theory of colour vision. This theory was a great contribution to perceptual psychology, providing explanations for the holes in trichromatic theory. Hering studied under Ernst Heinrich Weber, Gustav Fechner, and Otto Funke. -
Jean-Martin Charcot and hysteria
Diathesis Stress Model Charcot did his research on hysterical disorders and was one of the first to bring to light that these disorders involve what appear to be physiological symptoms but there is no evidence of any physiological abnormalities - therefore the root of the problem is psychological. He was also one of the first advocates of the diasthesis-stress model. he believed that hysteric patients inherited a genetic predisposition, but that the disease manifested only after exposure to environmental stressors. -
Sir Francis Galton publishes 'Hereditary Genius' in 1869.
Galton was interested in, among other things, the hereditary nature of intelligence. In his book, he expanded on Darwin's 'Origin of Species' and argued that biology and intelligence were directly linked. His work allies itself with the 'nature' element of the nature vs. nurture debate. In some ways it was an attempt to find out what influenced great men, and influenced future studies of intelligence. Galton a teacher of James Cattell's, and influenced both Charles Spearman and Lewis Terman. -
William James Begins Work At Harvard University
After studying at Harvard, James also because a professor there in a variety of departments, not just psychology. The importance of James' residency was the interaction with all sorts of talented minds and ideas, like Chauncey Wright, Charles Peirce and even Freud. There, he also had the opportunity to teach several students who would go on to be prominent figures themselves, among which were G. Stanley Hall and Mary Calkins. It is hard to say how big an influence they all had on each other. -
Wilhelm Wundt publishes Principles of Physiological Psychology
Principles of Physiological Psychology Between 1873 and 1874 Wilhelm Wundt, considered by many to be the father of modern psychology, worked on and published "Principles of Physiological Psychology". In his book, "A History of Experimental Psychology", Edwin Boring describes Wundt's book as "the most important book in the history of modern psychology" (pg 322). It is considered the first psychology textbook. -
William James creates first psychology lab in the United States
William James created the first psychology laboratory in the United States. James proposed functionalism rather than structuralism as the correct psychological method. While James was more interested in philosophy than psychology (even giving control of his lab over to Hugo Munsterberg in 1892), he is, nonetheless, the creator of the Jame-Lange Theory of Emotion. His students include Calkins, Thorndike, Hall, and Dewey. -
Wilhem Wundt: Father of Psychology
Wilhelm Wundt created the first experimental psychology lab. He was the first to view psychology as a science and study low level cognition in an experimental setting. He also believed that high level cognition could not be studied in the lab, but only in natural settings and this was the basis of cultural psychology. Wundt was fundamental in establishing psychology as an actual science, and is credited as the father of structuralism. Wundt's students included Titchner, Hall, and Cattell. -
Galton publishes "Statistics of Mental Imagery"
Sir Francis Galton was an avid researcher in the area of mental imagery and how it differed on an individual basis. In order to do this, Galton created a questionnaire that was used to describe certain scenarios and individuals were asked to describe certain aspects of the visual scene. He pioneered the use of the questionnaire and from this information he published the Statistics of Mental Imagery, which described the use of the questionnaire and statistics involved in mental imagery -
Charcot's use of hypnotism as a part of diagnosis and therapy
Charcot presented his findings that hysterical symptoms could be relieved through the use of hypnotism to the French Academy of Sciences. Charcot believed that In the hypnotic state the patient falls into an apparent sleep where the patient can sometimes recall events in their life which are not recalled in the waking state. To demonstrate his ideas, Charcot publicly performed hypnosis to provoke or eliminate hysteric symptoms. -
Charcot’s influence on Freud
For five months, Sigmund Freud attended Charcot's clinical hysteria demonstrations. At the time of his visit Freud, was a neurologist, and many historians believe that his visit with Charcot is partially responsible for his future interest in unconscious processes as well as his association between hysterical symptoms and sexual problems. Though Freud gradually abandoned hypnotism in favour of psychoanalysis, he always acknowledged that Charcot had an outstanding influence on him. -
Herman Ebbinghaus publishes Memory: A contribution to Experimental Psychology
Forgetting Curve Using himself as a subject, Ebbinghaus memorized lists of non-sense syllables. His experiment demonstrated that non-sense syllables were more difficult to memorize than meaningful words. His data also revealed that increasing the list to be learned usually dramatically increases the amount of time it takes to learn it which he referred to as the learning curve. Finally he described the forgetting curve which showed a relationship between time and forgetting. -
G. Stanley Hall and the American Journal of Psychology
Founded in 1887 by G. Stanley Hall and with the notable help of Edmund Sanford, the American Journal of Psychology was the first journal for scientific publications of psychological findings written in English. Editors in early years include notable psychologists such as Edwin Boring, Edward Titchener, and Karl Dallenbach, the latter of which remained editor for 41 years. The APJ remains a very popular journal for psychology, with 124 volumes released between 1887 and 2011. -
Freud meets Wilhelm Fliess
Fliess attended several of Freud's conferences and the two quickly became friends. The two arrived at the view that unconscious memories are a necessary precondition to neurosis and hysteria. With Fliess, Freud later developed his first ideas on the talking cure which is seen as the basis of psychoanalysis. The talking cure was named by Freud to describe the disappearance of a patient’s (Anna O’s) hysteric symptoms once repressed trauma and their related emotions were expressed. -
William James Publishes 'Principles of Psychology'
James' text was based off of simple principles that would later be one of the foundational texts of psychology. It focused on: analysis, introspection, experiment, and comparison. Like Freud, not all of James' work has stood up to the test of time but those four principles are still the most basic parts of psychology. James wrote extensively in his lifetime, but this text took almost twelve years to complete. He later published a more accessible abridged version of 'Principles of Psychology'. -
James Cattell coins the term 'mental tests' and works extensively with statistics.
James M Cattell was an American Psychologist who conducted a number of studies on students that included mental tests in an attempt to measure intelligence. In this way he was influenced by one of his mentors, Sir Francis Galton. He paid special attention to the statistical data he gathered, partly because of his goal to make Psychology be viewed as a legitimate, and quantifiable, science. He wrote extensively on mental tests and statistics, and helped to increase their prevalence in psychology. -
Creation of the American Psychological Association
The creation of the American Psychological Association, also known as the APA, was a historical landmark for psychology, helping to standardized and regulate the relatively new branch of science carried out by the individuals of various backgrounds and specialities. Founded in 1892 with G. Stanley Hall as its president, it remains a resource for researchers to further the collective knowledge with strict standardization and code of ethics. -
Georg Elias Muller publishes multiple papers on Colour Theory and Memory
Brief BibliographyG. E. Muller (1850-1934) was a German experimental psychologist interested in psychophysics, memory, thought psychology, and color theory. He supported Hering's theory on "opponent-process" color vision and elaborated extensively on Ebbinghaus' studies on memory. Trained Wertheimer, Külpe, Schumann, Katz, and had many female students, including Lillie Martin, Christine Ladd-Franklin, and Eleanor Gamble. -
Wilhelm Wundt proposes Tridimensional Theory of Emotions
Wilhelm Wundt proposed his tridimensional theory of emotion. This theory, along with Wundt’s use of introspection as a method of exploring of psychology, was criticized for its lack of generalizability and possible issues with external validity. Notable critics of this school of psychology were behaviourists. Edward Titchener continued Wundt’s work with structuralism, while Charles Spearman, a student of Wundt’s, fathered factor analysis, as is seen in Wundt’s tridimensional theory of emotion. -
Hermann Ebbinghaus creates his first laboratory in Breslau
Ebbinghaus created his first labratory in Breslau, Germany. His work was incredibly influential and includes such noteable achievements as the creation of the sentence completion task (heavily critized by Binet), the Ebbinghaus illusion, and the standard format for APA Journal papers. However, his most famous contribution to psychology is the forgetting curve, which remains a valid model of forgetfulness. The inventor of the Intelligence Quotient, William Stern, was a student of Ebbinghaus. -
Oswald Kulpe founds systematic experimental introspection
Oswald Kulpe's "Outlines of Psychology"In 1894, Oswald Kulpe (1862-1915) stopped studying under Wilhelm Wundt and took up a professor position at the University of Wurzburg. At Wurzburg he founded systematic experimental introspection as a method of studying human cognition. Max Wertheimer, founder of the Gestalt school of Psychology, was trained under Kulpe. -
Calkins defends her thesis
Calkins defended her thesis "An experimental research on the association of ideas". And although she completed all the requirements for a PhD, Harvard denied her a degree simply because she was a woman. Radcliffe, Harvard's university for women, offered her a degree but Calkins declined it. -
The first psychological clinic is opened
The first psychological clinic was opened by Lightner Witmer at the University of Pennsylvania and this is considered to be the birth of clinical psychology. In the beginning of the discipline it was based primarily on the diagnosis of psychological disorders and had little focus on the treatment of the illnesses. After the Second World War the need for clinicians increased and emphasis on treatment increased. This has led to the distinct diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems -
Introduction of the term “Clinical Psychology”
Lightner Witmer, who was James McKeen Cattell’s assistant, founded the world’s first psychological clinic at the University of Pennsylvania. The goal of this clinic was to diagnose and treat problematic school children. Witmer also published the first issue of his journal “The Psychological Clinic”. This journal is regarded as the first scholarly psychology journal and introduced this new term in the journal’s lead article “Clinical Psychology”. -
Self-analysis begins
Freud's self-analysis begins altering some of the theories on neuroses that Freud had developed. Freud performed self-analysis to check his unconscious psychic life and started analyzing his own dreams. He pronounced that dreams are the disguised fulfilment of unconscious wishes and changed his views that neurotic features are present not only in sickness but also in health. -
Edmund Sanford creates the first experimental psychology lab manual.
Edmund Sanford, PhD student of G. Stanley Hall, creates the first experimental lab manual for psychology, titled A Course in Experimental Psychology. This manual was filled with hundreds of demonstrations, including such topics as visual, auditory, and olfactory sensation as well as descriptions of apparatuses used in his experiments. Notably, the manual had very little subjective analysis on Sanford’s part, his attempt to create an unbiased work. -
"The Interpretation of Dreams" is published
Interpretation of DreamsFreud publishes "The Interpretation of Dreams" in which he proposed that dreams help to preserve sleep by replacing fulfilled wishes of the dreamer that would otherwise awake them. In other words, repressed wishes that come in conflict with one's psyche are released. Freud acknowledged and cited research done by Mary Whiton Calkins, mainly the idea that dream content is influenced by external stimuli. -
Ivan Pavlov coined the term conditioned reflexes
Pavlov focused purely on observable behavior, rejecting the emphasis on both the conscious and unconscious mind. Through his research of digestion in dogs, Pavlov found that a conditioned reflex is a learned behavior, one that happens in response to something. This is different than an unconditioned reflex. Pavlov, however, did not publish his results until later. -
Edwin Twitmyer publishes his results of classical conditioning in his paper “Knee jerks without simulation of the patellar tendon”
Before Pavlov published any of his results, Twitmyer published his results describing classical conditioning. While studying the patellar tendon reflex, he accidentally discovered that if a participant anticipates that a sound precedes a hammer hitting their knee, the reflex will still ensue if the sound goes off despite the lack of the hammers action. He later presented his work at an APA meeting, however, no one at the time realized the significance of the discovery. -
Charles Spearman and Factor Analysis
Charles Spearman, a student of Wilhelm Wundt, was the pioneer of factor analysis. Wundt's work on the Tridimensional Theory of Emotion helped lead to the founding of factor analysis, a technique that is still used in psychology today. This technique statistically determines the relationships between groups of related items. -
Pavlov wins the nobel prize
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1904 was awarded to Ivan Pavlov "in recognition of his work on the physiology of digestion, through which knowledge on vital aspects of the subject has been transformed and enlarged". Pavlov’s discoveries in this field forever changed the way study psychology and paved the way for an objective science of behavior. It wasn’t until Pavlov won the nobel prize that classical conditioning and behaviourism were seen as credible. -
Mary Whiton Calkins elected president of APA
Mary Calkins was elected to be the first woman president of the American Psychological Association in 1905. Studying under William James and Josiah Royce, Calkins was denied a degree due to her gender in 1895. Despite lacking a degree, Calkins provided many contributions to the development of psychology. She would later help found an experimental psychology laboratory with Edmund Sanford at Clark University. Further, Calkins invented the paired associate task, although Titchener claimed credit. -
Alfred Binet and Intelligence
Alfred Binet's intelligence test was introduced as the test of school officials to identify children with disabilities and was later revised as the Standford-Binet Intelligence Scale. It sparked studies in learning and development but had the effect of stigmatizing intelligence and was racially and socially biased. Later revisions were vital for the studies of the effects of individuals' development of intelligence. Binet's work was strongly influenced by Charcot as he worked under him for years -
The Neuron Doctrine wins the Nobel Prize
This doctrine, by Cajal, proposed that the neuron was the fundamental unit of the nervous system. It was based on three ideas: that neurons were cells that were able to interact, that neurons communicated through electrical signalling, and that these signals travelled in one direction. At the time there was a debate on how the nervous system was organized the Neuron Doctrine was accepted over the reticular theory, and became the basis for modern day neuroscience. -
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung began to collaborate
Carl Jung was fascinated by Freud after reading “The Interpretation of Dreams” and was inspired by his work when he published “The Psychology of Dementia Praecox”, mainly the idea that there are conscious and unconscious parts of the mind. This publication caught the attention of Freud and consequently sent Jung a collection of his essays. The two began to collaborate and became good friends. -
Munsterberg's On the Witness Stand is published
Hugo Munsterberg is considered the founding father of Industrial Psychology, and an important contributor to applied psychology, especially Forensic Psychology. He was one of the first people to point out how unreliable eye witness testimonies were. In his book On the Witness Stand, he pointed out many factors that could affect the outcome of the trial, as well as factors that can influence testimonies. Munsterberg worked as Wundt’s research assistant and disagreed on many accounts. -
Clifford Beers publishes "A Mind That Found Itself"
In 1908, Clifford Beers published" A Mind that Found Itself", an account of his own experiences in a mental asylum. He witnessed and experienced the maltreatment and abuse within the mental asylums. In 1909 he founded the National Committee for Mental Hygiene in order to reform the ways in which mental patients were treated. He was an advocate for changing the way mental patients were treated and he contributed to how modern mental institutes are managed today. -
Freud and Jung travel to America
G. Stanley Hall invited Freud and his protégé Jung to give 5 speeches and introduce psychoanalysis to the students at Clark University. This was a concern to many American psychologists since they had concerns with Freud’s fascination with sexuality and argued that psychoanalysis was non-scientific. The first lectures focused on the case study of Anna O, in which Freud discovered the talking cure. Later lectures focused on infantile sexuality and on dream interpretation. -
Sabina Spielrein's influence on psychoanalysis
Spielrein became Carl Jung’s laboratory assistant and not only was the first woman to write a psychoanalytic dissertation, but later wrote over 30 more. Jung and Spierlrein went on to have a romantic relationship which had a direct effect on psychoanalysis as well as the growth of Jung's ideas. Spierlrein was the first person to introduce the idea of the death instincts, a concept that Freud later adapted in his own theory of “thanatos”, the drive that compels humans to engage in risky behaviour -
The Beginning of Gestalt Psychology
Gestalt psychology, a branch of psychology that emphasizes the human mind as a whole, was introduced in response to structuralism. Gestaltists main assumption was that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” and this assumption led to many discoveries involving perceptual sensations, the gestalt laws. Important contributors to Gestalt psychology included Wertheimer, Kohler, and Koffka. The ideas of the Gestaltists impacted many people, including Goldstein, Lewin, and Tolman. -
William Stern creates the Intelligence Quotient
William Stern, who was taught by Ebbinghaus, created the Intelligence Quotient or IQ based on the work of Alfred Binet. Stern noticed while studying the scores on Binet's intelligence test that the scores seemed to vary with respect to mental age. Stern was an advocate of the idea that individuality was important to psychology. -
Alder opposes Freud's views and creates Individual Psychology
Alfred Adler developed the theory of Individual Psychology. He believed that a single force or drive was responsible for all behaviour by people. He called this drive that motivated all of humanities behaviour, striving for perfection. This theory was developed as Alder broke away from the study of psychoanalysis and from Freud’s doctrine. He shifted the attention for shaping behaviour by environmental and societal factors opposed to sex and libido that Freud saw shaping behaviour. -
1915, Lewis Terman revises the Binet-Simon Scale and publishes on intelligence.
During his career, Terman was inlfuenced by Sir Francis Galton and Alfred Binet's work on inheritance and intelligence. He focused on identifying gifted children through testing and helping them flourish. He used mental tests, coined by James Cattell, to research both stupidity and genius in children, and in 1916 at Stanford he published an edition of the Binet-Simon scale for American children which became the Stanford-Binet Scale. Terman's career shows a culmination of the work of great minds. -
Intelligence testing is used during WWI in the US army
After the United States entered the First World War in 1917 Robert Yerkes, president of the APA at the time, started the initiative to begin intelligence testing within the US army which included Lewis Terman. This led to the Army Alpha and Beta tests which tested millions of army recruits intelligence to see if special positions were a correct fit. This was important because it was the time that intelligence testing was used on a large grouping and help increase the popularity of the tests. -
The beginnings of Cultural-historical psychology
Working with Lev Vygotsky, Alexander Luria and Alexei Leonte’ev developed cultural-historical psychology which emphasizes the role of culture in higher cognitive functions throughout childhood development and through to adulthood. The belief is that humans who developed in different cultures will be different psychologically from those that have grown up in other cultures. The new approach fused cultural psychology, historical psychology and instrumental psychology into one discipline. -
John Watson and Rosalie Rayner's Little Albert Experiment
John Watson and Rosalie Rayner conducted a study inspired by Pavlov's work with classical conditioning. Their infant participant, Little Albert, became famous when Watson was able to teach him to fear a neutral stimulus, a white rat, by associating it with loud noises. With no previous fear, Albert soon cried if the rat was even in the same room. This was significant for behaviourism especially because it showed a child being molded by stimulus-response associations alone, with nothing innate. -
“The Language and Thought of the Child”
Spielrein was one of the first psychoanalysts who showed an interest in child language and presented a paper at the Congress of Psychoanalysis which was attended by Jean Piaget, Spielrein later became Piaget’s psychoanalyst. At this time, Piaget's research also involved child language and thought. One year later, Piaget published “The Language and Thought of the Child” which applied insights of social psychology and psychoanalysis to the observation of children. -
Psychodiagnostik is published
A systematic approach was developed by Herman Rorschach in order to determine an individual’s personality by using ambiguous images now called Rorschach inkblots. His book Psychodiagnostik was written in 1921 after he had study 300 psychiatric patients and 100 control subjects using this method; however, Rorschach inkblots did not gain popularity until 1927 when his book was published 5 years after his death. The inkblot test is said to provide data on motivations, cognition, and perceptions. -
Anna Freud Publishes Her First Book, 'An Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis'
In her first published book, Anna Freud expands and broadens her father's theories on the treatment of children. Her work with child psychoanalysis reflected her fathers work while also straying from it in some ways. This book was for parents and teachers to better understand the developmental processes of children and adolescents. Her main focus remained on children throughout most of her career, with this book being her first step towards major influence in this field, and the first of many. -
Karen Horney Moves to America and Begins Her Part in the Creation of Neo-Freudianism
One of the earliest female psychologists, Horney's move to the US partly marked the beginning of her growth into a significant female historical figure. Originally a Freudian of sorts, she altered many of the sexist aspects and changed the focus of his theories until breaking away from it altogether. Her theory of womb envy directly mirrored Freud's penis envy. Her theories on neurosis, narcissism and feminine psychology set her apart and helped her to be one of the founders of neo-freudianism. -
'Purposive Behaviourism'
Edward Tolman, considered a neobehaviourist, viewed the Stimulus-Response theory, proposed by B.F Skinner, as an unacceptable approach to explaining behavior. Instead, Tolman believed that behavior was holistic and was not only in response to stimuli but also involved a cognitive aspect that included the individual’s beliefs and attitudes. This belief was influenced by Gestalt psychology, specifically Kurt Koffka, who Tolman had studied with. This view contradicted Skinner’s view of psychology. -
The Big Five personality traits, or OCEAN, was first introduced.
Based on some of Galton's theories, it was first introduced by the APA's president L.L Thurstone. The five traits, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, are tested and given a number that is supposed to represent the person's personality. The Big Five personality test is one that, in its long history, has not been entirely discredited and is still used today, even in popular mediums such as eharmony. The big five is an important part of psychology's history. -
Adolf Hitler becomes head of state and head of government in Germany.
The rise of Nazism in Europe had varying repercussions for psychology. The aggressive oppression of the regime forced many talented minds, such as Sigmund Freud, to flee to other parts of the world. As well as this sudden spreading of knowledge, there was also an eradication of knowledge as books and people were both destroyed. The brutality of the Nazi regime also lead to questions about the capabilities of human nature and societal influence, as seen in the experiments by Milgram and Zimbardo. -
Anna Freud’s contributions to psychoanalysis
Anna was the daughter of Sigmund Freud, but unlike her father her work focused on the ego. She published “The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense” which became a founding work of ego psychology. She also had an interest in child development (pre-Oedipal phases as she termed it) and integrated it with psychoanalysis to create child psychoanalysis. Child psychoanalysis used many of the same techniques as psychoanalysis (free association, dream analysis) but is modified to be used with children -
Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire Publishes His Work on Lobotomies
Also known as Antonio Egas Moniz, he was a neurologist who in 1936 published his research on frontal lobotomies as a way to treat mental illness; for this he received a Nobel Prize. Now many see lobotomies to be ethically and logically wrong. Though largely discredited, they were performed commonly into the 1980s and sparingly within the last ten years. Thought to be a possible cure for disorders ranging from mild depression to schizophrenia, the side effects were often fatal or incapacitating. -
Walter J. Freeman Performs His First Lobotomy
Following in the footsteps of his mentor, Egas Moniz, Freeman brought the lobotomy procedure to the USA and performed thousands of these surgeries. Though many of his patients died, he continued and even furthered the practice by accessing the brain through the patients eye, avoiding drilling through the skull. Freeman helped to prove there was a physiological basis to cognitive processes and promoted the use of neurosurgery, but he did so through the sacrifice of many of his sick patients. -
The Canadian Psychological Association is Formed
The CPA was formed to represent Canadian psychologists, and is built upon the three pillars of research, practice, and education. It has more than 6600 members, and aims to improve the health and well being of Canadians while promoting excellence, innovation, and the advancement of psychology. Created to be a resource for its members, the association and its members work to uphold ethical codes and standards of conduct in the practice of psychology as Canada's largest psychological association. -
Piaget defined the four stages of intellectual development
Genetic Epistemology Piaget contributed a lot to the study of cognitive development of children, but one of his lasting influences was described in his book “Genetic Epistemology”. This publication described the theory of genetic epistemology, the study of origins of knowledge. He believed that this theory explained the process of how a human being develops cognitively from birth throughout life via four primary stages of development (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational). -
Raymond Cattell and 16 Personality Factor model
Raymond Cattell, a student of Spearmans' and an advocate of factor anaylsis, Cattell applied his knowledge of factor anaylsis and created the the 16 personality factor model. It was the first hierarachial model of personality that had basic factors that developed into broader factors. The basic factors are still used in the Big 5 personality traits -
Donald Hebb publishes The Organization of Behavior
Hebb publishes The Organization of Behavior, a book which greatly inspired the connectionist neural network, as well as advances in neuroscience. Hebb proposed that neuronal firing efficiency increases when one cell repeatedly causes another to fire, a theory of learning that has become the most prevalent view in neuropsychology and connectionist modelling. This theory is still used in basic connectionist principles, and has simply been revised to increase functionality and power (Dawson). -
Abraham Maslow and Humanistic Psychology
Hierarchy of NeedsMaslow was influenced by his Columbia University colleague’s (Alfred Adler) theory that people are constantly striving for success and personal superiority - he termed his new discipline humanistic psychology. Maslow created the hierarchy of needs to help explain that people must satisfy lower physical needs to be able to move onto higher psychological needs, the last one being self actualization. Humanistic psychology influenced other psychologists including Carl Rogers -
Erik Erikson Creates Psychosocial Developmental Stages
Psychosocial StagesWhile in Vienna, Erikson became acquainted with Anna Freud who had a major influence on him. Erikson decided to be an analyst himself and like Anna he focused on the ego. In his publication “Childhood and Society”, Erikson proposed that development from infancy through death occurred through 8 stages which he called psychosocial development. During each stage, people are faced with a developmental conflict that impacts later functioning and further growth. -
Carl Rogers publishes Client-centered Therapy
Rogers devoloped an approach to therapy in which therapists facillitate opposed to directing the session. He emphasised the aspect of human potential that seemed to be negelected from earlier models of psychotherapy. Contrary to Freud's view of human nature, Rogers believed that humans were good natured and they strive to be the best they can be. This veiwpoint provided psychology with a postive form of therapy that did not rely on the negative forces that drive our decisions and choices. -
The APA publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual was published by the American Psychological Association in order to have a standardized model for the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders and illnesses. The DSM has evolved and has been revised on numerous occasions to add new disorders and revise the criteria for others. It gave clinical psychologists a common ground for the diagnosis of disorders and continues to do so. A new edition of the DSM is being published in May of 2012. -
Albert Bandura and Observational Learning
Bobo Doll ExperimentBandura joined the faculty at Stanford University and was influenced by Robert Sears’ work on social behavior. Bandura began to do research on antisocial boys and published the book “Adolescent Aggression” where he first explained observational learning and the role of modeling in human behavior. Because Bandura thought that direct reinforcement could not account for all types of learning he proposed the social learning theory which explains that people can learn within a social context. -
Special Interest Group in Information Theory is held.
This conference marked one of the first major attempts at collaboration between many scientific disciplines including computing science, cybernetics, and psychology. The goal was to propose a methodology which combined these unique fields to explain the complexities of the human mind. George Miller stated that: “I date the moment of conception of cognitive science as 11 September, 1956, the second day of a symposium organized by the Special Interest Group in Informormation Processing at [MIT]." -
Rosenblatt Creates First Perceptron
Frank Rosenblatt creates the first perceptron at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory. The perceptron is an artificial neural network which attempts to emulate the function of the mind in a biologically plausible manner (albeit formed in a very different substrate). The perceptron was the first computer program capable of learning via trial and error. It remains useful today as a method of modelling animal learning behaviour. -
'Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition ' is published by Joseph Wolpe
Another psychologist influenced by the events of WWII, Wolpe joined the army in South Africa as a medical officer. It was there that he first developed the idea of systematic desensitization, that would be first published in this text, as a way of treating anxiety, phobias, and PTSD. Influenced by classical conditioning, systematic desensitization gradually exposes the patient to their fears to overcome them. Wolpe is part of the foundation for cognitive-behaviour therapy and trauma therapy. -
Stanley Milgram begins his obedience experiments
The Milgram Experiment was a study done on obedience and the power of authority figures, and was largely inspired by the events that occurred in Nazi concentration camps. It asked how much pain someone would willingly inflict on someone else, and how responsible people are for their actions when ordered by people of authority. The study is famous for both its findings and its questionable ethics. His research led him to write 'Obedience to Authority', and inspired the Stanford Prison Experiment. -
Lev Vygotsky vs. Jean Piaget
Vygotsky built his developmental theories on Piaget's, but he asserted that Piaget had flaws which he described in “Thought and Language”. His main criticism was Piaget's assumption that developmental growth was independent of social and cultural contexts. He also argued against Piaget’s beliefs that concepts should not be taught until children are in the appropriate developmental stage. Vygotsky believed that a person’s abilities can be influenced by assistance (zone of proximal development) -
Atkinson-Shiffrin Memory Model
Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffirin proposed a psychological model for the structure of memory which suggests that human memory involves three stages: sensory memory, short term memory, and long term memory. The model explains that our senses experience different things but only a fraction of it is remembered, if the memory is retained long enough it enters our short term memory. Short term memory can be transferred into long term memory only if the information is rehearsed. -
Minsky and Papert Publish Perceptrons
Minsky and Papert publish Perceptrons: an introduction to computational geometry, a book which heavily criticises single layered perceptrons for their inability to solve simple logic problems, specifically the XOR. The result of this publication was an incredible decrease in the amount of connectionist research in the resulting years. Since then, both the multilayer perceptron and Dawson's perceptron utilizing the Gaussian learning function can readily solve linearly non separable problems. -
The Stanford Prison Experiment
Philip Zimbardo's study of power relations in prisons caused controversy when participants, 12 prisoners and 12 guards, became so invested they began to believe their roles. Riots occurred and breakdowns as the fake prisoners were verbally and physically abused. It lasted only 6 out of the planned 14 days. This study is a lesson in ethics as well as showing the effects power and situation can have on average people. Relate-able to the Nazi concentration camps as well as the Abu Ghraib scandal. -
SRI International Develops Shakey
SRI International develops Shakey, the "first mobile robot to reason about its actions." Shakey would create an internal representation of the world, create a plan based on the internal model, and the proceed to act on the model. Shakey's (and other autonomous robots created at the same time) biggest problem was its basis of methodological solipsism, which resulted in a perceived separation of agent and environment. As a result, Shakey's design left it very slow to make any decisions. -
Bowlby's Attachment Theory
As part of child psychoanalysis theory, Anna Freud described “psychological parent” which refers to the importance in parent-child bonding because normal development depends on its continuity. John Bowlby expanded on this theory and created the attachment theory which describes how the earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life. Caregivers who are responsive to their infant's needs establish a sense of security in the child -
Stanley Milgram Publishes 'Obedience to Authority '
Based on the controversial experiments on authority and obedience, his book, 'Obedience to Authority' summed up what he recorded. Both his experiments and his book are important to psychology because the findings are so shocking, and tests of that kind would be almost impossible to ethically conduct today. Interestingly it was published over a decade after his actual experiments, as well as Zimbardo's study, which might imply he felt more encouraged to publish after similar studies were done. -
Baddeley and Hitch's Model of Working Memory
Baddeley and Hitch wanted to describe a more accurate model of short term memory than Atkinson and Shriffin’s model. They replaced the term short term memory with working memory. And Instead of all information going into one single store, they explained that there are different systems for different types of information. Working memory consists of a central executive which controls and co-ordinates the operation of two subsystems: the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad. -
Self Efficacy
One concept of social learning theory is self efficacy which Bandura described in his publication "Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change,". Self efficacy is a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a situation and is a determinant of how people think and behave. This theory influenced the attribution theory which focuses on how people attribute the cause of an event and is defined by three major elements of cause: Locus, Stability, and Control ability -
“Strange Situation” Study
Attachment StylesMary Ainsworth further expanded upon Bowlby's attachment theory in "Strange Situation" study. The study involved observing children responding to a situation in which they were left alone and then reunited with their mother. Ainsworth concluded that there were three major styles of attachment: secure attachment, ambivalent-insecure attachment, and avoidant-insecure attachment. A fourth style - disorganized/disoriented attachment - was later added. -
Gibson Publishes The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
James Gibson publishes The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, a novel look at the concept of affordances with an environment. Gibson claims that "the affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill.” This concept plays a vital role in the thesis of embodied cognitive science, which proposes an extended mind hypothesis, rather than the methodological solipsism proposed by classical cognition and connectionism. -
David Marr proposes Tri-level Hypothesis
David Marr proposes the Tri-level Hypothesis, an account of functional analysis which looks at multiple levels of investigation when describing a particular system. Marr's first use of this hypothesis was during his study of the early visual system and focused on the workings of parvocellular neurons within the LGN. Because of this approach, Marr was able to fully describe the workings of the early visual system. Pylyshn later suggests a fourth level of investigation: the architecture. -
The Study of Patient HM
HM suffered from epilepsy, therefore, a majority of his hippocampus and amygdala were removed. After surgery he suffered from severe anterograde amnesia and could not transfer new memories to long-term memory. The study of HM has revolutionized the understanding of human memory and has supported the Atkinson-Shiffrin model. He had marked long term memory problems after surgery but his short term memory remained intact - supporting the idea that memory passes through three stages. -
FINST (or Multiple Object Tracking)
Zenon Pylyshn proposes a cognitive mechanism detailing how objects are tracked by our visual system, called fingers of instantiation (or FINST). Pylshyn's proposed theory demonstrates a very thorough and plausible account for visual tracking in an information processing context. Further, it has been proposed that this model can be instantiated within robotic representations (embodied cognition). Significant students of Pylyshn include Michael Dawson, Brian Scholl, and Brian Fisher. -
Rodney Brooks Attacks Conventional Cognition and AI Attempts
Rodney Brooks publishes an influential paper, Elephants Don't Play Chess, an attempt to dissuade current symbolic research. He claims that most modern cognition research is derivative and argued that physical symbol systems (found in both classical and connectionist methodologies) were incapable of providing accurate and up to date information to an agent existing in the external world. He proposed an alternative which remains the thesis of embodied cognition: "the world is its own best model." -
Dawson & Schopflocher create value unit learning function
Dawson & Schopflocher develop an alternative learning function for single and multilayer perceptrons called the value unit, which takes the form of a Gaussian function. This learning function solves many problems faster than previous functions, including the generalized delta rule (step function) and the logistic function. Further, the value unit is capable of allowing single layered perceptrons to solve linearly non separable problems- the main critique of Minsky and Papert's book Perceptrons. -
The first law allowing psychologists prescriptive authority is passed in North America
A differences between psychology and psychiatry is the latter's authority to write prescriptions for their patients. While there are stipulations, New Mexico was the first state to pass a law allowing psychologists to prescribe some medications, with others states following. This is called the RxP movement and will allow psychologists similar authority to other non-physician professions who are able to write prescriptions, and give psychologists more say in the treatment of their own patients. -
Gardner proposes the Theory of Multiple Intelligence
Howard Gardner proposes the idea of multiple intelligences. He believed that intelligence came in many different forms and learning happened in many different ways. This opposed the previous thoughts of intelligence being a general factor. Eight different types of intelligence were proposed and these included linguistics, logic-mathematics, musical, spatial, bodily, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and natural. The theory proposes that intelligence does not arise from one single unit and that it is
