History of Psychology

By Pstevens6781
  • 3000 BCE

    Ancient Eqypt

    Edwin Smith Papyrus was invented by Imhotep who was an Egyption physician. The Edwin Smith Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian medical text which documents for the first time surgical procedures on trauma. It was also the first written description of the brain having control over the body. https://goo.gl/images/J0mWkQ
  • 450 BCE

    Ancient Greece

    Pythagoras, Thales, Democritus, and others were influential thinkers of the time. Also, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle made big contributions to the field. Some of which are empiricism by Aristotle which is to test theories in controlled settings.

  • Dark Ages (Renaissance)

    This was a period of great social change. Also there was much mistrust of the church during this time as it was seen as greedy. This era was all about the individual and individual desires. Descartes was an important player in this era. Descartes belived in an innate mind. His method was to doubt everything until you can not doubt it based on evidence. Descartes was also an early proponent of interactive dualism as he believed the mind and body were separate, but could influence each other.

  • Physiology of the brain: Brain Scientists

    Franz Josef Gall- Phrenologist. Phrenology was the study of the head and skull in determining certain characteristics of a person. Pierre Fluorens- French scientist who discredited Gall's phrenology. Conducted ablation studies in animals, which suggested that the brain's cortex functions as a unified whole. Aubertin-Localization theory. Studied areas in the brain specific to language.

  • Broca's Area

    Paul Broca was a German who was chief of surgery in Paris. He was also a figure in the study of the brain. He reached out to Aubertin after hearing him speak on Ablation and got "Tan's" permission to conduct an autopsy on his brain after he died. What he found was physical evidence for localization of one function in one area of the brain. This area was in the left frontal lobe and is necessary for speech and language comprehension. The area is now knows as "Broca's Area".

  • David Ferrier

    Ferrier was another supporter of localization theory and he did more research into localization than those before him. He discovered 3 area's of localization. 1) Primary Somatosensory cortex, are in brain that processes sensory info through skin. 2) Visual Cortex- are in brain responsible for processing visual info.#. Auditory cortex- processes sound information. All of these findings were essential at the time in proving or confirming localization theory.

  • Wilhelm Wundt

    He was known as the founder of psychology. What makes him the founder is simply that he was the first to call it Psychology. He established a lab solely for Psychology. He labeled psychology as a real science and not part of philosophy or natural science. -He studied sensation and perception. He was very interested in attention. He believed psychology was the study of the conscience experience. Also believed in selective attention, which is the ability to perceive some stimuli and ignore others.

  • Sigmund Freud

    Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis= a system of psychological theory and therapy that aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind. Freud also coined the term oedipus complex that is a child's desire to have sexual relations with the parent of the opposite sex. Freud also came up with a series of psychosexual developmental stages that he claimed all young people went through.

  • Francis Galton

    Francis Galton made contributions to many different fields. He became interested in weather and created the first weather map. Galton was a cousin of Darwin and shared many of the same belief's with his cousin. Galton believed that intelligence and other physical and mental abilities of humans were based on biology/genetics.He came up with eugenics which is the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrences of desirable heritable characteristics.

  • Alfred Binet

    Binet was a French psychologist who invented the first practical IQ test, the Binet-Simon test. Binet was also interested in individual psychology, and he developed a series of short tests. The tests were given in less than 2 hours. The results were intended to yield a personality profile.

  • Evolution of Clinical Psychology in America

    During this time which was during or shortly after WW11 patients were being admitted to hospitals and outpatient psychiatric clinics for mental health problems at a much higher rate than before. Clinical Psychologists performed psychotherapy on patients. Psychotherapy is the therapeutic treatment of individual mental and emotional problems. Psychiatrists did not believe in psychotherapy and were in conflict with clinical psychologists. The Rorschach test was used by some psychologists.