History of psychology
Plato observed that philosophy begins in wonder-
this is the case with science
Psychology was one of the last sciences to separate from philosophy and is still strongly influenced by it
The founders were both philosophers and scientists- e.g. Mind, James
The term psychology first appeared in the 1600's but was only widely sed in the 1800's
psyche= soul, logo = study
Psychology took with it several parts of philosophy- 1. the nature of the mind, 2 epistemology and 3. ethics
1. Now we use the term mind instead of soul but the same questions are asked, e.g. does the mind exist, what is its nature and functions
2. Epistemology the study of knowledge- how do we know the world? This involves questions about sensation, perception and memory and is what is now known as cognitive psychology
3. Ethics- what is human nature? Are humans by nature good? What are people's motives? Is there a common good life right for all people?
Ethics concerns itself with scientific questions (what are people's motives) and applied (morality) questions
How might we ethically use psychological science? (Should we make con artists better con artists?
The conceptual foundation for psychology lies in philosophy but the idea of psychology as an independent branch of science comes from biology
A number of finding led to this- discoveries about the brain, the acceptance of evolution (what was man to become and what separated him from animals)
How should science proceed- with psychology there were choices
These choices are important because at various times in history psychologists have advocated each
1) The Newtonian style: Hypotheses non fingo- I do not propose hypotheses-
In Newtonian science you search for a finite number of laws to explain regularities in nature
Early psychology- e.g.Weber's Law and Thorndikes Law of Effect
2) Positivism (Auguste Comte early 1800's)- the basic job of science is description not explanation- Tolman and some behaviorists
the first function of science is description
the second is prediction
prediction makes control possible which is the third function of science
we will see this later with the behaviorists
Later behaviorists such as Skinner and Watson
How do we explain what we observe
1) The nomological approach
Positivists have no room for explanation or hypotheses- just facts
The nomological approach (Hempel-Openheim model) is a positivist offshoot
If an event to be explained can be deduced from recognised laws there is room for hypotheses and explanations BUT
1) The laws can't be part of the explanation (tautologies)- Iron Law of Explanation
2) explanation and prediction are symmetrical
3) Explanations aren't causes
Behavior analysis- some cognitive theories e.g. hopelessness theory
Nomological theorists believe that all we can hope to do is describe the world as we experience it
The Causal Approach
Positivists can only predict what comes later- not what comes before
Positivists state useful correlations not causes
Most explanations do not require laws
Causalists argue that the goal of science is to penetrate the causal structure of reality and discover (not invent) the laws of nature.
Science gains strength from being true- not from being logically organized
Rigorous hypothesis testing is what allows science to progress
The difficulty we causal explanations is that we have yet to identify what a cause really is-
we also tend to appeal to the metaphysical as a matter of course
Causal theorists believe that we can penetrate the truths underlying the universe
Neuropsychology and to some degree cognitive psychology
The Pragmatic approach
explanations are social events- they take place in a social context-
as scientific explanations and context chanage and advance so do causal explanations e.g., understanding of AIDS
cross-cultural psychology and some developmental researchers
SO who were the first psychologists
"We must not be to sure of the ignorance of our ancestors- Will Durant
The Ancient Chinese
Were the first to propse that mental processes occur in the physical substrate of the body- this opened the door to physiological psychology
Believed there were five basic elements (wood, fire, metal, earth and water)
Five senses ear,,eye, nose, mouth and body
Five tastes, colors,tastes etc
Five emotions anger, joy, desire, sorrow and fear
Five types of relationships ruler and minister, father/son, elder brother/younger brother, husband/wife, friend/friend
Confucious (551-479) interested in moral life and harmony
Hsun Tzu is the Chinese Aristotle- argued for empirical methods and against superstition- believed that basic human nature was evil and we attain goodness through education
Chinese philosophy dominated by concepts of Yin and Tang which are oposite and complementary forces
Yang is fore, masculinity heat and dryness
Yin is softness, feminity and moistness
a balance between the two is necessary for mental health
How? Acupuncture
organ therapy (drank blood or ate tiger liver- warriors increased Yang)
Babylonia- one of the greatest of ancient civilizations- influenced the Greeks, Jews, Egyptians and Arabs
were a culture very interested in mathematics astronomy- also wrote down a lot
Believed that disease was caused by Gods insanity by the god Idta
Egyptians invented the belief that insanity was cause by a wandering uterus (later called hysteria-
treatment was fumigation of the vagina
Indian philosophy- Oldest known text is the ancient Vedas- sacred texts around 1000 BC
Veda= knowledge
Knowledge from empirical means was demphasized and intuition and the development of spiritual sensitivity was emphasized
mental illness is caused by false conciousness, inordinate desire and an undisciplined nature
Psychotherapeutic exercise were designed to induce a quiescent spirit and resignation
The Judeo tradition- beginnings of montheism but also a stong emphasis on human responsibility and freedom of choice
Humans were naturally dualistic- flesh which is self-serving and spirit which is divine and unselfish
Strong belief that rewards and punishments are contingent on behavior
this has had profound impact on Western throught
The Greek Philosophers- the period from 600-300 BC was one of the most creative periods inhuman history-
the early Greeks produced remarkable accomplishments in science literature, philosophy and the arts
Who:
1) Pythagoras (570-500 BC) coined the term philo (love) sophia (knowledge)
Pythagoras shifted explanation from the supernatural to mathmatical law (but also started a religious order- the Pythagorans)
He also viwed the brain as the seat of mental life and was one of the firstto use music therapy
Pythagoras' daughter Myia was especially interested in infant development and deevloped
systemtic programs for infant care
Pathagoreans advocated a homeostatic theory of health- balance is everything
2) Zeno- Zeno's paradoxes e.g. suppose an archer releases an arrow at point A and aims it at point B- To get to point B it must first traverse half the way- then it must traverse half the rest of the way and half the rest of that way- Will it ever get to the target?
The paradoxes contain absurdities but showed the necessity of examining even empirically the commonplace.
Early Greek psychologists
The Pythagoreans heavilly influenced the Hippocratic school and probably enables Hippocrates to practice
Hippocrates (460-377BC)
founder of modern medicine- believed that all disease results from imbalances in natural forces
The goal of treatment is restoration of balance
Four humour theory black and yellow bile, blood and phlegm
Classification of mental disorders included mania, melancholia, paranoia and epilepsy
Hippocrates was one of the firt to suggest that dreams are indicators of health or illness
e.g. troubled sleep indicates stomach troubles
Socrates 470-399 B.C.- also influenced by the Pythagoreans-was a well known philosopher who taught using the Socratic method
Constnt probing got him into trouble with the government
He was charged with 1) corrupting youth, 2) denying Grek gods and 3) attempting to establish new gods
Socrates drank the hemlock sentenced to him and described the effects of poison on the body (the Phaedo)
Socrates said knowledge is gained through the analysis of concepts- objective truth is discerned through rational process
Socrates was more ininterested in psychological processes than any other philosopher
Beliefs
1. Self-knowledge is vital to virtue
2) evil results from ignorance so teachers are crucial
3) Socrates thought he was ignorant but wiser than those who didn't know they are ignorant
Socrates was one of the first to formulate a scientific approach to psychology emphasizimg multiple causes of behavior (e.g. moral, social, anatomical and physiological)
Aristotle- 384 -347 B.C.- his father was the physician to the king of Macedon The Foundation of philosophical psychology
Aristotle later became tutor to the king's son Alexander (as in the Great)
He went to Athens and founded his school- the Lyceum (the word peripatetic arose from his habit of walking with his students
In the morning he lectured on logic and metaphysics
In the afternoon ethics, politics and rhetoric
He and his students also conducted research and the atmosphere was more scientific than philosophical
Aristotle was a scientific purist- knowledge was important regardless of its usefulness
He was interested in biology, zoology and anatomy and was a renouned naturalist
But his interest in the mind is what stared psychology
De Anima (One the Soul) was the first book to treat psychology as a systematic philosophy
1) Emphasized the whole organism (not like biology)
2) Focused on the individual (which made it different than political science)
He also rote books on ethics, sleep, insomnia, dreams and logic
Aristotle considered causal knowledge to be the essence of scientific knowledge
Causes
1. Material what a thing is made of (e.g. metal)
2. Motor or efficient cause (that which sets something in motion (e.g. the sculptor)
3. formal cause- definition of essential character (g.g. the sculpture itself)
4. Final cause the aim toward which the thing develops (e.g. beauty of sculpture)
We have recently begun to use Aristotelian logic more extensively in discussing language of causation e.g. necessary and sufficent causes
To Aristotle none of th causes were sufficient- all were necessary
Aristotle was a beliver in vitalism- to him psyche meant "living" not soul
So psyche was the 1-4 cause of humanity. Once a person dies they no longer have psyche and are only matter- not a person
He did believe in an immortal element to humans called Nous- an intellectual force not dependent on the body
Aristotle argued that psyche is present throughout the body but is centered in the heart rejecting Plato's idea that the brain was the central organ
The psyche was comprised of nutritive, sensitive and rational parts
The functions of the psyche are
1) growing (vegetative soul)
2) Sensing- Aristotle believed that the ability to sense distinguished animals from plants
He also believed that common sense may be the sixth sense- common sense serves us to organizes our perceptions in a unitary fashion
3) Remembering- Aristotle did the first studies on the Law of association and systematically studied the effects of similarity, contrast and contiguity for the first time
recall of one object tends to be followed by similar information, contrasting information or contiguous information
He discovered the practise effect, state (emotion) dependent learning and order effects.
4) Desiring and reacting-
The steps are sensing, pleasure-pain, desire and reaction
Pleasure is consistent with nature and pain is inconsistent
Also developed Doctrine of Catharsis which influenced Breuer, Freud et. al.
5. ThinkingHumans are the olny thinking animals
Thinking takes place in images- never without them (this was only questioned in the 1900's)
Galen b 130 was a medical doctor and a philosopher- gained much of his medical knowledge as a physician to gladiators- he was a lifelong anatomist in a time dissection was not allowed
The basic principle of life is pneuma (spirit)
Three classes of beings:
1 plants (can grow)
2. Animals ( can move and grow)
3. Humans can move, grow and reason
Had a cerebrocentric view of human functioning
Extended Hippocratic theory of humans to include temperment (four temperments)
1) more blood= sanguine temperment
2) too much bile=melancholic
3) too much yellow bile = quick to anger
4) too much phlehm= a phlegmatic temperment
still have it (e.g. humourous)
Medieval Mentality C.C.
Reason": What, then would you want to know
Augustine: The very things for which I have prayed
R: Summarize them concisely
A: I want to know God and the soul
R: Nothing else
A; Nothing else at all
Medievil time began around 300 AD with terrible economic decline Fall of the Roman Empire led to feudalism
Medievil times fully enconcsed by 100 AD 300- 1000 also known as the Dark Ages
Renaissance began prroximally 1200 AD but took 300 years to take hold
BUT Black Plague killed 1/3 of the world's population between 1348 and 1350
and Christian church asserted total dominance
Augustine 354-430- First Christian philosopher
Philosophy carried out in the context of christian faith-
wanted to know only God and the soul and used faith to justify beliefs
Medievalists did not want to understand the mind- the wanted to understand the mind in its spiritual context so science and philosophy as we know them did not exist
Scientists were branded heretics (a very dangerous label)
Medievalists believed in a grand synthesis- all knowledge was of God- therefore there could be a unitary explanation of all things if one understood God's views
Natural reason was unecessary and dangerous
Hierarchy in Gods world= God, angels, man, animals matter
in church= pope archbishop, bishop, priest, laymen
society= king, vassal, subvassal, serf
As above, so below= a hierarchical world
Therefore medieval knowledge was priestly knowledge and monastaries were centers of leraning and education- first scholars for the renassance came from the great cathedrals
Who was persecuted- the crusades
1) Jews- first ghettos- but they knew that Jesus was a Jew
but phiolosphers like Maimonedes continued to write
2) Muslims continued to write on psychology e.g. Ibn Sina proposed a taxonomy of seven faculties in hierarchical order (Rational soul, sensitive soul, vegetative soul) based on Aristotles views
High Middle Ages- Christian philosophy- beginnings of the intellectual renaiissance (Greek writes rediscovered- particularly Aristotle)
St. Thomas Aquinas synthesized Aristotle and Christian philosophy (and almost died as a heretic)
re developed Aristotle from a naturalistic based system to a spiritual based system
man can only know the world, not God- God can only be known through inference bu seeing his works in the world
theology and philosophy are separate (which they still unfortunately are today) this was a first
Knowledge should be gained independently of revelation
developed a psychology based on Aristotles "forms" from vegetative to sensitive to locmotive and appetititve to rational soul (=knowledge of universals)
wanted to distinguish souls from animals-
what is found in humans- control of free will- animals do not have this
others continued
Renaissance- began aroud 1300 (though most people date it later)
The first renaissance man was Francesco Petrarch who was a poet but also a classicist and historian
Dissolved by the Scientific Revolution in 1600-
What happened during the Rennaissance- not much in science and philosophy but a lot in art and politics
How did it most affect psychology? The beginning of humanism- secularization of man's place in the universe- thinking became more human centered and lees theocentric
Petrarch began by reopening the classics for study and humanism first meant the application of classical knowledge to currant problems e.g. the works of Plato became known for the first time
Renaiisance philosophers thought that the classics could not be understood without understanding their authors (e.g. you have to understand a person's perspective to understand their science)- Medievalis were looking for God's truth so were less concerned about this
Human beings were placed at the center of God's universe so they should be studied - Mirandola "Who is there that does not wonder at man?" Seneca- "Nothing is admirable except the mind"
There was tremendous faith in personal powers and personal improvement
Lynn White- the Renaiissance was the most "psychicallly disturbed era in human history"
Hamlet- "To be or not to be- that is the question
Michel de Montaigne "Of all creatures manis the most miserable andfrail, and therewithal the proudest and disdainfullest"
Philosophy
1) the body was viewed as a machine (beginnins of dualism)
2) Philosophy of nature- attempt to explain without reference to supernatural but often resorted to majic
e.g., Robert Fludd (scientist) on magnets- a magnet "draws iron to it by a secret virtue, inbred by nature"
difficulty with nature philosophy is that mechanisms weren't often explored- a thing did what it did because of the properties of its nature (tautology)
3) the beginnign of empiricism (Sir Francis Bacon)- Bacon died of pneumonia caught while stuffing a chicken with snow to study the effects of refridgeration- scinece should be eholely inductive- one should gather facts without any hypotheses
Applied psychology began with Niccolo Machiavelli (1469- 1527) who taught how to exploit human nature for one's own ends while avoiding selfishness that could cause self-harm
William of Ockham = faith is divorced from reason
he substituted psychology for metaphysics (study of universals)
Observation of the world is the true test of knowledge although the soul can know itself directly
Ockham's razor (Aristotle's idea)
knowledge of the soul comes only through faith- not through reason
separation of faith from reason enabled science to rebuild
Interestingly women were more equal in parts of the Middle ages- full participants in religion and lived in same sex monastaries
Christianities absorption of Roman philosophy stopped all that
St. Jerome (340) Women= temptationsof the flesh etc. we see the emergence of women as a second class in medieval times.
We did not see love as the basis for relationships until the Rennassance
St Bonaventure- the soul and the body are dualistic
knowledge is derived from observation and meditation (knowledge of God through inner reflection)
Literature in the Rennaissance Aligheri Dante- Divine Comedy First level of Hell is lust etc.
Dante used real people of the time to show the levels of Hell
Geoffrey Chaucer- The Canterbury Tales- the nobility were lectured in this book- The basic story is the one of King Author's knights goes on a quest to find "What do women want?"
William Shakespeare (1554-1616)- especially his morality plays-e.g. Othello= "one who loved not wisely but too well
Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616)
British empiricism
The Scientific Revolution occurring right after the Rennaissance caused
a rebirth in the interest of scientific method
What was the Scientific revolution?
Begun with Copernic’s publication of Revolution of the heavenly orbs in
1543
(Freud called this the first bloe to the human ego)
Galileo supported Copernicus and Newton then adopted a mechanistic view
of the universe in publishing his laws of motion
The idea of man as a machine soon followed (Descartes)
Descartes believed that humans are “beast-machines” with a soul inside-
the soul gives pupose to the body
As a result of the Scientific Revolution scientists emphasized mathematical
models of human functioning and tried to derive laws of nature
Rigorous logic and mathematics were applied to solve problems of human
nature
“Science aims to describe the world as it objectively is, as if no living
creatures existed
Human experience distorts the real world- we create the world with our
minds so subjective analysis is not the way to go
Descartes
His work is divided into two phases-
1)work with scientific and mathematical practices
Descartes wanted to give a physiological account of
mental processes
He believed that most mental processes had a physiological
basis which did not require thought and that physiological processes were
made of corpuscles and atoms
The difficulty was that humans became machines in this
way and Descartes had to answer for what caused us to be human
Descartes believed in the soul and he had to account
for its effect on human functioning
2) work on philosophy
Descartes said the unique function of the human soul
was thinking
Because of this humans differ from animals in experience,
behavior and possession of language
experience- animals lack reflective awareness of their
experience- they experience as we do when our mind is elsewhere
thought makes human behavior more flexible than animal
behavior- animals have preset dispositions for action- humans have automatic
actions but can also respond to novel situations through thought- this flexibility
heavilly influences James’ thinking
Descartes viewed language as unique to humans- language
is critical to human self-awareness
In his Discourse Descartes vows to seek the truth by
doubting everything that could be doubted until he found the truth- he doubted
his experience, his own existence
but he could not doubt that he thinks- because doubting is an act of thinking
(Cogito ergo sum)
I am a thing that thinks- therefore I am
This began a distinction between mind and body= mind-body
dualism
the mind or the soul is a distinct
entity without matter and not occupying space and is completely separate
from the body- it consists of consciousness and may be spiritual as well
Descartes views led to the use of introspection as a means of studying
consciousness
In introspection you look at an object not as what it is but as a object
and examine how it is perceived in consciousness
By creating the notion of mind body dualism Descartes made the study of
the mind possible and allowed psychology to begin
Some of the important folks
1. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Hobbes was less interested in the minds o individual humans (e.g. Descartes)
than he was the behavior of people in groups
Hobbes belief was that man was by nature aggressive so why would they congregate
in groups
BUT social proximity increases internal aggression so what to do?
!! Strong centralized authority was the answer
Hobbes believed a monarchy was essential to government because accession
was clear
John Locke (1632-1704)
First major British empiricist
Rejected Cartesian doctrine of inate ideas and conception of animals as
automatons
Advocated experimental method proposed by Newton
Locke believed that a contract existed between the government and the governed
(this is democracy)- the states power must be limited through checks and
balances
Lockes treatises “Two Treatises on government” were guidelines for the
American Constitution
Locke also believed in the fundamental worth and dignity of the individual
and he advocated respect for fundamental human rights.
Locke basically wrote the current preamble to the Ethical code for psychologists.
Psychologists respect the dignity and worth of the individual
and strive for the preservation and protection of fundamental human rights.
They are committed to increasing knowledge of human behavior and of people’s
understanding of themselves and others and to the utilization of such knowledge
for the promotion of human welfare.
Locke also wrote extensively on education-
He believd minds become filled through education- we are what we are because
of experience
Children dislike the dark because they are taught that- children dislike
school because of caning-
His philosophy was clearly behavioral and his methods to teach and treat
others preceded Watson.
Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”
Locke’s aim was to find the underlying rules for workings of the human
mind
What are the basic elements of concious and their interactions
The basic elements of the mind are ideas which come from experience
There are no inate ideas (disagreed with Descartes)
The mind is blank at birth (tabula raza=Aristotle)
There are two sources of ideas
1) sensations- coming from contact with external objects and
2) reflections (internal operations of the mind which allow us to have
ideas independent of sensations)
Sensations are fallible (cold/hot water experiment)
All ideas are simple or complex- simple ideas are associated to form complex
ideas How
1) Combining a number of ideas into one complex idea
2) Bringing two simple ideas together and seeing their relationship
3) Abstraction- seperating simple ideas from acomplex one
Locke wanted to find the elements of the mind (remember this)
Locke believed that our sensations are interpreted through educations and
operations on the blind have proved this- at first the blind still identify
objects by touch
Locke’s immediate successor was
1) George Berkeley (1685-1753)
A treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
He agreed that all knowledge was gained through experience bt he believed
that the external world depends on perception (esse est percipi)
He believed that nothing exists unless it is perceived (the falling tree
thing)
Berkely argues that the existence of the material world was proof of God’s
existence
There was a young man who said “Gog”
Now doesn’t it seem to you odd
That this great chestnut tree
Simply ceases to be
When there’s no on about in the quad
Reply:
Dear Sir:
It really is not at all odd
I’m always about in the quad
And the graet chestnut tree
never ceases to be
In the mind of yous faithfully,
God
Berkeley wrote other very well received essays
An essay Towards a New Theory in vision laid the groundwork for vo Helmhotz
work 150 years later
British Associationism- wanted to analyze how the components of the mind
come together not the components themselves
David Hume (1711-1776)- was a pneumatic philosopher- pneuma is the Greek
world for vital life force- believd humans should be considered part of
the world of human nature and studied by the methods of natural science
A Treatise of Human Nature
senso ergo Sum= I sense therefore I am
impressions come from sesantions
ideas come from impressions
simple ideas become complex through three principles of association
1) resemblance
2) contiguity
3) cause effect re;ationships
David Hartley (1705-1757)
Hartley was a minister but couldn’t accept churches philosophy so became
a doctor- he gave a physiological approach to asscoaitionism and anticipatd
the field of physiological psychology
Observations on Man- the perfectionof our mental faculties depends on the
perfection of the white medullary substance of the brain....Poisons, opiates...all
plainly affect the mind by first disordering the medullary substance
James and John Stuart Mill
James believed it was his job to fill John’s head with as much info as
possible (tabula raza)
Started Greek and Latin at age five and at age 11 published his first serious
writing on the struggle between Roman patricians and plebians when he was
eleven
Met his wife in 1830 and married her in 1849 after her husband died
published in 1869 The Subjection of Women which was an important document
to support woman’s right
Was one of the first to define psychology as “the science of the elementary
laws of the mind”
Titchener used this later
18th century Nativists
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
There is a priori knowledge (that is innate knowledge)
and a posteriori knowledge (that is knowledge gained through experience
e.g. we learn to speak a particular language but the ability to learn is
a priori
True science must proceed with concepts developed a priori and that is
why most of psychology is not true science
Also developed the categorical imperaive in regards to duty
Early studies of the nevous system
The brain was clearly shown to be the seat of mentl functioning by the
1700's (e.g. Cabanin experiment)
Moreover, as we know, Scientists had begun human dissection and fairly
good anatomy boos
were available so scientists becgan to study the brain from a medicla standpoint
The Spinal Cord
Robert Whytt (1714-1766) was the first to describe the functions of the
spinal cord (though many of the conclusions were wrong)
Others followed up with this
1) Magendie discovered the difference between sesory and otor nerves
2) Bell also discovered this and intuited that since nerves intervene between
external events and perception they influence the quality of the perception
Hermann Ludwig Von Helmholtz (1821-1894)- work on sensory physiology was
his greatest contribution
Some of his work started with Benjamin Franklin’s observation and electricity
A man named Galvani took the electricity in clouds and connected it to
frogs legs and saw that it made them twitch- Galvani went on to suggest
that electricity is actually inherent in the frog
and he was the firs to suggest that neural circuits had a electrical component
(galvanic skin response)
Later Du Bois-Reymond measured the electric charge as it went up the frogs
legs (used a galvanometer)
What Helmholtz did first was measure the speed of the nerve impulse
1) First he dissected a frogs leg, took out a nerve and stimulated it
2) Then he invented a myograph that could measure the length and duration
of the contraction associated with the nerve impulse-
3) the time between stimulation of the nerve and muscle contraction was
the speed of the impulse-he calculated that speed at 43 meters a second
Then he trained humans to press a button when they felt a stimuli
Reaction times were longer for distal areas eg. Toes than proximal areas
But what about the brain- first studies in Phrenology
Franz Joseph Gall- founded the field of phrenology which said that human
characteristics can be inferred from brain characteristics
considered himself an anatomist and a scientist first
Personality and intelligence can be divided into 42 functions
6 domestic
10 selfish
5 moral
4 literary etc.,
Each of the powers is located in a specific area of the brain- well developed
areas case bumps- less well developed can cause indentations
Therefore measuring the brain can speak to the human’s nature
Johann Spurzheim was a follower of Galls and with others took Phrenology
to big business
Other scientific studies
Localization of function in the brain
Flourens (1794-1867)- Flourens was a surgeon who used ablation to study
structure and function
Studies six units of the brain
1) cerebral hemispheres
2) cerebellum
3) corpora quadrigemina
4) medulla oblongata (vital knot) systems responsible for basic life functions
5) spinal cord
6) nerves
Performed the ablation himself instead of waiting for “nature”
Found that
1) the cerebral lobes were the seat of all voluntary activity (animals
only had reflexes without them) including will, memory and judgment
we are also blind and deaf so we “see” and “hear” with
the brain
2) Deeper ablations of the cerebellum produced corresponding deficits (movement)
The unity of the brain was its “grand principle”
He learned this by studying stroke recovery where some parts of the brain
took over from other parts
What about humans?
The case of Phineas Gage- 1848- damage to the frontal lobe produced behavioral
disarray= ‘frontal lobe syndrome”
The localization of speech
Pierre-Paul broca (1824-1880)
the case of Tan (Leborgne)- introduced the term “apheme” to describe him
= expressive aphasia
Produced 25 more cases where EA was caused by lesions to the left frontal
lobe
Went on to discuss left/right differences that persist in argument today
(e.g., the left is more advanced and intellectual- the right more mystical)
this is the beginning of the “bicameral brain” debate
Wernicke (1848-1905) Wernicke’s aphasia= right temporal lobe
Brain stimulation research
First attempts made in 1860 Franz von Leyden injected sodium chloride onto
the brain- others tried hot wax and lard
First electrical stimulations around that time to animals and wounded soldiers-
researchers were able to localize different muscle group movements by stimulating
different parts of the brain
David Ferrier was the most important in this early group (1843-1928) (West
Riding Lunatic Asylum to National Hospital for the Paralyzed and Epileptic)
First localized motor and sensory functions in animals
Through Ferrier’s work we were able to see that the amount of representation
of different body parts in the motor cortex is proportional to their function
rather than their size = the motor homonculus= the cortical representation
of the body
What else did Ferrier do?
1) localized vision in the occipital cortex
2) localized audition in the temporal lobe
Hughlings-Jackson colaborated with Ferrier (Jacksonian epilepsy- which
showed the conceptual organization of the brain)
jackson came up with the idea of higher cortical centers ruling lower more
primitive centers- when higher inhibition is removed we have Phineas Gage.
Electrical stimulation of humans
Roberts Bartholomew was the first to stimulate human brains (poor Mary)
in 1874
1) first determined that the brain itself had no feeling-
Bartholomew lost his position and home as a result of this work but it
led to further exploration of the human brain
Now anytime the brain was open for surgery was an opportunity for experimentation
1918- the first stereotaxic devices for surgery were developed-
Wilder Penfield began performing his famous surgeries on epileptics- Penfireld
and Rasmussen The Cerebral Cortex of Man- described motor and sensory experiences
of these patients under local anesthesia- found localization of speech,
memories hallucinations and dreams
The causdate nucleus was identified as the reward center in 1924 (Pachon
and Delmans- Marsalet)
Olds & Milner replicated this in 1954
Identification of neurons
Camillo Gogi (1834-1926)- 1970's staining techniques made it possible to
see cell bodies, dendrites and axons (individual neurons) (staining techniques)
Ramon Cahal- discovered the synapse- individual neurons are not directly
connected
2/1/2001
Darwinian theory (1809-1882)- Thomas Henry Huxley (Darwin’s bulldog)
role the Beagle from 1831-1836 and discovered “Darwin’s finches on the
Galapagos islands saw commonalities but each one’s beak was suitable for
different types of foraging
What was Darwin’s argument?
1) there is a constant struggle for existence as animals outgrow their
food sources
typically they compete with the same sex for access
to the other sex also
2) nature constantly produces variant forms within and between species-
come of which are better suited for survival than others
3) Because of this those with unsuitable traits will eventually not reproduce
and disappear
Darwin wrote his theory in 1842 but did not publish until 1858 when forced
to do so because someone else was publishing the same thing
How did Darwin affect psychology
1) encouraged the develoment of comparative psychology
2) developmental psychology “A biographical sketch of an Infant
3) emphasis on survival , growth and shaping forces of the environment
Psychology was directly proceeded by the field of psychophysics=
this is the study of the relationship between properties of a stimulus
as measured by objective instruments and subjective impressions of a stimulus
The first studies in psychophysics were on thresholds- what are the upper
and lower limits of perceoption e.g. hearing ranges from 20hz to 20,000
z
Another way to do this is difference threholds- the point at which a subject
can detect a stimulus difference 50% of the time- some areas of the body
are mor insensitive than others
These studies allowed scientists to begin quantifying mental processes
They also led to the formulation of the first laws in psychology regarding
the relationships between stimuli and perception of stimuli.
Ernst Weber (1795-1878) b. the third of 13 children-
was a student and then a professor at Leipsic- worked in anatomy physics
and biology and did his thesis on the anatomy of sympathetic nerves-
was chair of the anatomy department
His classic in psychology was the Sense of Touch
Used threshold technique to map the cutaneous sensitivity of the human
body and found differences in sensitivity (e.g. tongue vs back)
Also found that sensitivity is less when two points are presented
simulateously rather than successively Coined the term JND to explain these
differences
This work showed that the world experienced by the subject does not necessarily
correspond to the world presented by the experimenter
Weber went on to examne JND’s with weight (what is the amount of weight
that must be added before asubject notices a difference.
He developed the first mathematical model to explain this difference
ΔR=K
R
R= the amount of existing stimulation
ΔR= the amound of stimulation that must be added to produce a jnd
K= a constant
this allowed us to quantify perceived differences in relation to scaled
stimulus values
Psychological processes could now be quantified
Gustav Fechner (1801-1878)- took over Weber’s work, was an M.D. and a physicist
was a monist- the body and soul are one
One turning point =1839 when he suffered partial blindness and a result
of studying the sun’d afterimages- Severe emotional disturbance followed
He improved and went back to University
Fechner’s idea was that everything in the universe was either inert (night
view) or all things have a psychic component (the day view)
Under the pseudonym Dr. Mises he wrote extensively about the day view
Fecner published extensively under this pseudonym (e.g. on the comparitive
anatomy of humans and angels and on human imortality
He is remembered though for his classic work Elements of Psychophysics
In 1850 Fechner had the thought that there must be a discernible quantitative
relationship between sensations and stimuli- he did not know about Webers
work at the time but he was soon to discover it
Fechner integrated Weber formula into a new formula
S = k log R
S is the mental sensation and R is the stimulus magnitude
the strength of a mental sensation is a constant logrithmic function of
the stimulus
This formula predicts a number of well known phenomena
e.g. response compression = Equal increments in a physical scale are experienced
as a diminishing series- e.g. the dfference between 100 and 200 watts is
seens as greater than 200-300 watts in a 123 bulb.
Fechner called this formula Weber’s Law in deference to Weber but now Webers
original law is called that and this law is called Fechner’s law
Other Fechner contributions
1) The method of limits= JND’s
2) The method of constant stimuli (the method of right and wrong)
comparison stimui are paired with stardard stimui in a random fashion to
avoid response bias
3) The method of average error- the subject manipulates a comparison until
it matches a standard
Wundt at Fechner’s funeral “We shall not look upon his like again”
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894)
was an M.D. who paid for school by being an army surgeon=
all movements can be understood using phsyical- not supernatural principles
Helmholtz also believed in the unit of science= Psychology was to be firmly
grounded into psysiology and physiology in chemistry and physics.
Accomplishments
1 Classic Handbook of Physiological optics - which covers the physiology
of vision, psychological topics such as depth perception, illusions and
color vision and methdological topics in optics
2 Helmholz believed that sensory experiences are at least in part learned
through exposure to stimuli- e.g. we learn what round is by seeing and feeling
a ball
We also learn things like depth perception in this manner- our depth perception
is conditioned by interactions with the environment (e.g. ethnocentrism)
most of this stuff s still in intro books
3) Young-Helmholtz theory of color vision- Young postulated that there
were three primary colors (red, yelow and blue) and that hterewere three
types of receptors for receivig these colors
Wundt- (1832-1920)
Wundt’s early teachers regarded him as “lazy, inattentive and porly fitted
for anything but an undemanding career. He had a very troubled chidhood-
was a dreamer
Working with his brother straightened him out and he got an M.D. in 1855
but discovered he wasn’t interested in practicing medicine and began work
under Dubois
He then moved to Helmholtz’s ladb and was his assistant for eight years
Wundt wanted to establish a lab where introspection was used to study human
consciousness (the university was afraid this would lead to nervous breakdowns)
In 1862 he taught a couse called “Psychology as a Natural Science” and
shifted his research interests from physiology to psychology
He published Principles of Physiological Psychology in 1873 and in 1874
accepted an appointment at the University of Leipsic
In his appointment letter the dean said “ I hope that your call to the
university will one day be viewed as a begining in the history of German
philosophy, especially of psychology and epistomology
Wundt was extremely productive He taught two courses a semester and averaged
two publications a month!
In 1879 established the psychological lab at Leipsic and in 1881 established
the first psychology journal Psychological Studies (but changed to Philosophical
Studies)
Wundt directed 180 doctoral thesis and continually updated his Principles
He ended his career with ten years of study in sociocultural psychology
Volkerpshologie
During this time he was also elected to parliament and was quite a socialite
But he also had a considerable history of depression, responded poorly
to criticism and did not play well with peers-
However he was a consummate teachers and patient with students (within
the masterstudent relationship
Walter Dill Scott “When he began his work psychology was thought of as
a branch of Philosophy. His work changed it into an experimental science
PhilosophyWundt rejected monism and Cartesian dualism
1)He believed in double aspect monism- mantal and physical processes are
interdependent
2) Breadth of vision- Wundt specified what psychology was by increasing
its breadth. He taught in anthropology, logic, linguistics, philosophy
and physiology)
Frank Angell “For depth and range of learning , for capacity for generalization,
for power of scientific imaginatin, he was the ablest man I ever met”
This opened the field to ethics, physiology, cognition etc.,
3) Wundt emphasized a volutaristic psychology (psychological causality)-
ideas are the stuff of psychis causality regardless of their physiological
origins
Therefore we should study voluntary actions
What was Wundt’s definition of psychology?
Psychology is the sciences that investigates the “facts of consciousness
Psychology has two tasks
1) discover the elements of consciousness
2) discover the combinations that elements undergo and the laws that regualte
combinations (psychic compounds)
1. Elements= pure sensations e.g., blueness, sweetness)
2. Sensations are elements of consciousness
3) Perceptions combinations of sensations
and
4) ideas- combinations that come from memory and previous associations
1) Associations are passive combinations of sensations e.g. rote memory
shool house garden long see harvest
2) active combinations are apperceptions e.g. memory with real awareness)
Goethe “Spring has come in all its glory. A spring thunderstorm, that
had been threatening the whole day long, passed angrily over the hills”=
characterised by intelligent direction and inner unity
The tridimensional Theory of Feeling- said feelings should not be overlooked
because they are involved in other psychological processes such as cognition
Three fundamenal dimensions of feelings
1) pleasure and pain
2) strain and relaxation
3) excitation and quiescence
Under Wundt’s direction psychology gained status as a separate university
discipline
Who were his students
1) Emil Kraeplin who learned experimental methodology and applied it to
mental disorders
2) Lightner Witmer- established the first psychological clinic in America-
proposed thatthere be a new disciplince called clinical psychology
3) E. B. Titchener
4) Hugo Munsterburg
5) Worked with James and G Stanley Hall
Gestalt Psychology-
One of the first entirely separate schools of psychology- challenged structuralism
and later functionalism and behaviorism
Emerged in reaction to opposition to structuralism
Kohler “ Is the human mind to be regarded as a domain of indifferent facts?
Or do intrinsic demands, fittingness, and its opposite, wrongness, occur among
genine characteristics of its contents?
Gestalt= shape or form- used usually refer to the notion that the whole
or form may be more than the sum of its parts- not holisteic
this of course is inconsistent with sructuralism
First Gestalt psychologists were interested in perception (probably because
of psychophysics and for the same reasons as Wundt)
Gestalt psychology was able to broaden as the rest of psychology broadened
(again an improvement over structuralism)
Gestalt psychology based:
1) in the philosophy of Ernst Mach (a positivist)- Mach was interested in
describing the properties of spatial and auditory forms (e,g., squares or
melodies) Analysis of Sensations
He felt that these basic perceptual wholes had form quality that differed
from their elemental qualities-
his position was that sesations are organized into consciousness to create
form quality (Gestaltqualitaten) that is unique fromand even independent of
their elements
This is true of simple objects (e.g. chairs) and complex objects (e.g. humans)
More importantly it is form quality which persists (even after memories
of sensations are lost)
The whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts
Other philosophers/scientists
1 Max Planck (physicist) -obsession with measurement for its own sake destroys
scientific progress- what are the processes underlying a measured effect
2) Albert Einstein (good friends with Wertheimer)- what is the observer’s
frame of reference- in what context is the measurement taken
2) the experimental method of Christian von Ehrenfels
von Ehrefels was also a philosopher but had beeen trained by students of
Brentano’s and Freued
He agreed with Mach’s ideas about Gestaltqualitaten and applied this to
the study of music
He noted that musical pieces played in different keys or using different
instruments retain the essential form of the melody
So he extended Mach’s philosophical views to the lab (contribution one)
He also trained Max Wertheimer (contribution two)
Max Wertheimer (1880-1943)- Wertheimer studied under Stumpf but took his
degree with Kulpe (which is not suprising given the popularity of the Wursburg
laboratory)
Emigrated to NY in 1933 because of the Nazis and took a position at the
Ne Wchool for Social Research (this emigration included 11 NOBEL LAUREATES)
Wertheimer began his research by studying a stroboscope (this is akin to
a picture flipbook)
In a stroboscope a figure appears to be moving even when it is not- how
can this be so
Wertheimer consulted a physicist to help (who offered him the use of a tachistoscope)
but MORE IMPORTANTLY introduced him to Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler-
Both these men had taken their Ph.D’s with Stumpf
These three began the Gestalt Psychology movement
Wertheimer conducted a number of perception experiments using a tachistoscope
in which what was perceived was clealy not the presented stimuli
1) the phi phenomenon- when light is shown through two narrow slits at 50
millisec intervals it appears to move from one slit to the other-
longer intervals it is seen as continously on-
again THE WHOLE IS GREATER THaN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS- in fact in this case
the whole can’t be reduced to its parts- people don’t even see the parts
Vittorio Benussi demonstrated this tactically through his JND “flea studies-
When two points on the skin are stimulated in rapid succession it appears
as if the stimulus is actually jumpting from one point to the other-
there must be some internal mental process causing this (=Gestalt production)
Other researchers demonstrated the phi phenomenon tactilly- to the point
where the jump was no longer jnd- subjects actually felt the jump from wrist
to arm
In all cases the perceptual gestalt had properties the sensations did not
(e.g. the stimuli that did not move actually appeared to move)
1912- the formal beginning of Gestalt psychology= Wertheimers publication
of Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement
Gestalt Psychology argues that our meaningful experiences are not built
mechanically out of separate elements held together by association
Kohler (1887-1967) “We will do more lively things. We will study behavior.”
Took his Ph. D. from Stumpf
was interested in animal behabior and pub. The Mentality of Apes in 1924-
showed insight learnign in apes- learning is not trial and error
Worked at The University of Berlin where his anti Nazi activities were noted
One biographer” It shows us once more what a human being can be”
protested firing of Jews and beginning of classes with Nazi salute
was good friends with physicist Max Planck and had studied with him
Planck had been forced to wi tness the execution pf his own son- a member
og a Hitler resistance group
resigned in 1934 and emigrated to Swartmnore College
published Gestalt Psychology in 1929 as an attack on behaviorism- felt that
behaviorism was guilty of atomism and entrenched in psychophysics methodology
Kurt Koffka- 1886-1941) took his Ph.D. from Stumpf, then worked with Kulpe
before joining Wertheimer and Kohler
Wmigrated to U.S and to Smith College in 1927
1935 pub Principles of Gestalt Psychology
was the first to write in English about Gestalt Psychology
Other psycholologist used illusions to study Gestalts (e.g. Danish Phenomenologist
Edgar Rubens)
Class Exercise _ Do the T illusion
What did they show us
1) Diffrent figure ground relationships lead to different perceptions
2) These perceptions emerge as wholes- not separate elements
3) Our perceptions are active- we are not passive recipients of sensations
Gestalt Principles of Perception
1) Our perceptions of everyday experience are organized actively according
to identifiable principles
Kohler, Koffka and Kohler wrote books on this
What are those principles?
1) similarity- Equal and similar goups form groups or wholes
2) Proximity Elements that are proximal (close together) tend to be grouped
3) Closure and
4 Good Gestalts (continuation)- We will fill in missing parts of a configuration
to make it whole
5.. Figure-ground- the thing that stands out is the figure
What do we know about such experiments
1) Perceptual experiences are dynamic not static
2) They are organized not chaotic
3) They are predictable not erratic
Law of Pragnanz- perceptual organization tends to be as good as possible
under the prevailing conditions- we see our world in an orderly and economic
way
The world of sensory experience is made not of things but of dynamic forms
These basic findings have been abstracted to more complex phenomenon
e.g. the Zeigarnik effect- Subjects remember tasks they have not been able
to complete better that those they have been able to complete
This is true of animal subjects too
There are many practical applications of this (e.g. cliff-hanger shows or
conversational silences
Gestalt Psychologists on Thinking
Reproductive vs. productive thinking-
productive results in new ideas and insights
Wertheimer said that blind drills ad repititions are not creative thinking-
He studied Einstein Gallileo and others
famous 1+2+3 problem solved by Carl Frederisck Gauss
Productive thinking results from the search for structural truths rather
than piecemeal truths
Productive thinking is based on the capacity to recognize structural features
and envision structural reorganization
Developmental Psych
Koffka- view from without and view from within
1) early learning is sensorimotor- the burnt child shuns the flame- more
than a reflex is leaned
2) imitation- we have an inate capacity to discern relevant relationships
3) ideational learning- we learned the concept and apply it incorrectly-
e.g. the functinal naming of objects= flutterby
Koffka says we learn the affect at the same time as the stimuli- affect
is embedded in stimuli
Kohler- A method is good if it is adapted to a given sugject matter and
it is bad if it lacks regard for this material, or if it misdirects research=
no structuralism and psychophysics
Gestalt psychologists were the first true crossdisciplinarians-
were pioneers in the use of the phenomenological methid (use of interview
and open-ended questionnairres
No dichotomy between basic and applied research
No machine model of the mind and no mind-body problem= isomorphism
Experienced order in space is always structurally identical with a functional
order in the distribution of underlying brain processes
experience and the brain are the same
What did gestalt psych do
1) systematic approaches to subdivisions of psychology (e.g. motivation
and social psych)
2) research discoveries themselves
3) force against other paradigms
Kurt Lewin(1890-1947
broadened Gestalt Psych
influenced by WW1 experience 9e.g. boudary, zone)
1930 emigrated to Cornell and than to Iowa then MIT
emphasized the interdependence of the person and the environment B = f(p.e)
Key concept = life space= every psychological fact that is relevant in a
person’s life
1) physical
2) personal
3) biological
4) social
life space expands as we develop
Who cannot give an account of 3000 years remains in the darkness of experience
1. Valences positive or negative features of objects in the life space
we may be caught between valences
conflict theory
Needs are assocated with tension- Zeigarnik
Lewin’s work with group dynamics and integration
2nd generation gestalt
Solomon Asch
von Restorff isolated items are learned better than homogenous ones
1) shift from part to whole
shift from structure to process
objective science to epistemic science
shift from scientific metaphor from knowledge as a building blosck to knowledge
as a network
shift from truth to approximate description
History of modern clinical Psychology
History has typically been unkind to the mentally ill-
After the Greco-Roman Enlightenment they were treated as possessed for the
most part
e.g. Martin Luther- the mentally ill are “godless people, possessed by the
devil.” Because they have no souls they are doomed to hell
Most historical treatments of the MI treat them as subhuman and they are
the first to go when community problems arise
Witchcraft became specifically associated with MI in the Dark Ages
Demonology (the Dark Ages, 200 A.D.) Followed the decline of the Greek
and Roman empire). Several operative factors including:
1. Gain in influence of the church
2. Papacy was declared independent
of the state
3. Missionaries, through the
establishment of monastaries replaced
physicians as healers- particularly of those with mental disorders.
A. Related development was treating the mentally
ill as possessed by the devil (13th century until now)
Operative factors/premises appeared
to include:
1. Withcraft is
caused by the devil
2. 1484 papal
bull by Pope Innocent VIII encouraging identification
of witches. This marked the beginning of the Inquistion.
1510 Malleus Maleficarum
(Hammer of the witches a guide
to witch hunts became the textbook on witches) was
published. Subjected accused to torture, convicted to life
imprisonment and
unrepentent to execution. Specified that sudden
loss of reason was a symptom of demon possession which
shoud be “treated”
by burning. Estimates of 500-800,000 men in Europe,
mostly women and children died because
of this.
Three sections
1) Proof of the existence of witches
(disbelief was punishable by death)
2) Characteristics of witches (described
delusions, hallucinations and melancholia)
3) Examination of witches and means
to obtaining confessions
3) The best known American witchcraft
trials were in Massachusetts in 1692-
hundreds of people falsely accused and imprisoned- 20 killed
Witchcraft was not the only explanation for mental illness
at this time. In larger cities laws were being passed
to “confine” the mentally ill. The laws did not mention
witchcraft. First lunacy trials were actually held in Britain the 1200's.
During that time it was established that:
1. Trials could be conducted
under the Crown’s right to protect the
mentally impaired.
2. A judgment of insanity allowed
the court to become guardian of the
lunatic’s estate.
3. Issues in the trials included defendent’s
orientation, memory, daily life etc.
4. Causal explanations included
physical illness or emotional shock.
The Masturbatory Insanity Hypothesis
Theory based causal explanation
The beginnings of contemporary thought:
The return to somatogenic theories in the early 1500's (coocurred with the
reemergence of a scientific or professional class. Autopsies were again
allowed)
Some major advances/figures in this time:
1) Willam Griesinger- German physician- any diagnosis of mental disorder
must specify a physical cause.
Emil Kraeplin was his student. Kraeplin devised a classification system
of mental illness in 1883.
Discovered certain symptoms-which he called syndromes
tend to cooccur.
Each syndrome has its own distinct genesis, symptoms,
course and outcome
Two types of syndromes:
Dementia praecox-schizophrenia-
caused by a chemical imbalance
Manic-depressive
psychosis- irregularity in metabolism
Kraeplins idea
of classifying symptoms in this way is the basis for
our current classification scheme DSM-IV
Using Kraeplin’s scheme we may not be able to cure disease
but we can predict their course.
2) The discovery of the nature and origin of syphilis
In 1825 general paresis was given disease status- the
syndrome included steady deterioration of mental and physical
capabilities as well as delusions of grandeur and paralysis
1857- It was discovered that some people who had general
paresis had previously suffered from syphilis (a venereal
disease) The search for a cause was on and included seawater
(sailors) liquor and tobacco (men).
1860's-1870's Louis Pasteur established the germ theory
of disease
Disease is caused by infection of
the body by minute organisms
1897- Richard von Krafft-Ebing inocualted paretic patients
with material from syphlitic sores. The paretic patients
did not develop syphilis which proved they had been infected
earlier.
1905-The specific organism causing syphilis was discovered
For the first time a biological cause had been discovered for a form of
psychopathology!!!!!
Psychogenesis (late 1700's until now) started in Austria and France
The psychogenic view- mental disorders are caused by psychological dysfunctions.
Came about as a result of the wave of “Hysteria” in that time
Proponents included:
Franz Mesmer- hysterival disturbances are caused by disturbances in the
magnetic fluid of the body.
Used hypnosis or mesmerisn to achieve cures
This led to the study of hypnosis-Jean Charcot- scientifically showed how
suggestion can lead to the amelioration of symptoms.- led
to an increased interest in nonphysiological explanations
of physiological problems.
Charcot “ But in such cases it is always a matter of sex- always X4
Freud published his work first on male hysteria which was unknown at the
time
Freud (1856-1939)
first of eight children of a wool merchant
knew seven languages and graduated with a degree in medicine from the University
of Vienna
also took psychology from Brentano
Started out doing research on the physiology of voice and speech at the
Univerity of Vienna
He met Breuer (physiologist) there
Josef Breuer- The case of Anna O. Led to the “cathartic method”
Breuer’s work was an immediate precursor to Freuds.
Breuer was working with Anna O at the time (Bertha Pappenheim)
Pappenheim coined the term ‘talking cure” also called it “chimney sweeping)
Freud published a book with Breuer Studies in Hysteria Anna O was the first
case study in psychoanalysis
Freud was having financial difficulties so he began a residency at Vienna
General Hospital- there he worked for a brief time in the Department of Nervous
Diseases
1n 1885 was appointed as a privatdozent in neuropathology and also worked
for five months with Charcot in Paris- Paris convinced him that the basis
for hysteria was psychological rather than physiological
Early methods included electrotherapy and hypnosis
Freud didn’t use the term psychoanalysis till 1905
Freud developed the method of free association when he became disillusioned
with early techniques
Wrote The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900
his entire volume of wriing fills 23 volumes
Came to lecture at Clark University in 1909 (G. Stanley Hall)-
this put psychoanalysis into the mainstream
Met James there and was impressed “ I have always wished that I might be
as fearless as he was in the face of approaching death”
Books began to be burned by the Nazis in 1933- he exiled himself to London
and died of jaw cancer in 1939
General characteristics of Freud’s thoughts
1) deterministic
2) belief in the continuity of the animal kingdom
3) role of unconcious influences
4) developmental emphasis
5) motivational emphasis
5) Emphasis on applied psychology
Themes of research
1) First theory was seduction thery (Fliess)
2) Life’s major goals and its frustrations
A) The pleasure principle dominates psychological processes
pleasure results from satisfaction
of needs but we are continually frustrated by this
Three major sources of suffering 1)
our own body 2) the outer world, 3) other people people find a “modicum of
happines in temporailly escaping unhappiness
How to avoid suffering 1) hedonism
2) withdrawal from the world, 3) intoxication 4) religion, l5) loving, 6)
mental ilness,&) enjoyment of art
Theory of personality development
The interpretation of Dreams
The psychopathology of everyday Life (slips of the tongue)
Motivation and unconcious processes
(Oedipus)
rational purposes may serve unconcious motives
Theory of Anxiety
1) Objective anxiety
2) neurotic anxiety
3) moral anxiety
Defense mechanisms
Psychosexual stages
Freud and Social Psychology Civilization and its Discontents
Jung
Archetypes
Intraversion/Extraversion
personal vs. collective unconscious
Alfres Adler- emphasized social nature of personality
inferiority complex
overcompensation
style of life= goal directed behaviors
Karen Horney
1) Development of asylums.- Asylums began to appear in the fifteenth century
as leprosariums began to be converted to refuges for the confinement of the
mentally ill.
-Inmate were a mixture of beggars and MI (Paris in the
1500's had 100.000 people, 30,000 of whom were beggars)
-The only treatment was to get them to work
2) The priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem (founded 1243) was handed over to
Henry VIII for the sole purpose of treatment of the mentally ill in 1547.
-origin of the word “bedlam”
-bigtime tourist attraction with good ticket sales
Viennese equivalent had special rooms where inmates could
be “viewed”
3) First mental hospital in America was in Williamsburg in 1773. Its
first keeper had formerly headed the public gaol.
4) One of the most famous is the Central Ohio Lunatic Asylum (1877)
comes of the more famous cure
1) the water cure
2) the whirling cure
3) bloodletting
Pioneers in the treatment of MI or the beginning of the appearance of “moral
treatment) -The appearance of institutions did not guarantee humane treatment.
(e.g. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) The father of American psychiatry-believed
that mental disorder was caused by an excess of blood on the brain and treated
by bloodletting- also believed that lunatics can be cured by frightening them):
1) Phillippe Pinel (1745-1826) Considered the father of humanitarian treatment
of MI
learned from Joseph Daquin “to look at a madman and be
amused is to be a
moral monster”
A. 1793 was put in charge of La Bicetre in Paris and
is credited with removing chains there (and its a good
thing for him that he did!)
B. Used the egalitarian tone of the French Revolution
in his treatment- reason may be restored to individuals
through comforting cousel and purposeful activity.
C. Stopped physical abuse and was the first to
speak out against the rape of women in asylums.
D. The Wild Boy of Aveyron “nature vs. nurture controversy”
Rousseau stated that the “natural state” is one of harmony
and beauty. His assistant Gaspar Itard
undertook “Viktor’s” rehabilitation. Established
a precedent for rehabilitation of the retarded. Johan
Guggenbuhl took up the efforts in the early 1800s.
2. William Tuke established York’s Retreat York’s Retreat with the
Quakers in 1796 in respone to conditions he saw at York Asylum in England.
(Both Friend’s Hospital (the Friend’s Asylum for the Use of Persons Deprived
of the Use of their Reason and the Hartford Hospital were patterned on this
model)
A. Moral treatment was advocated- close contact
with atendees, purposeful activity, personal responsibility,
focus on “normal living”
B Case record analysis indicates that treatment was primarilly
psychotropic and that < 1/3 of patients were discharged
as improved or recovered.
3) Dorothea Dix championed the cause of MI throughout the world. Is
credited for the founding of 32 state institutions in the US and others abroad
(chastisement of the Pope caused him to build one). She appears to have
done this in response to some of the conditions she saw at existing privately
supported hospitals such as York’s Retreat. This resulted in the building
of large asymums where patient-staff ratios and training were much less-
It also resulted in administration by physicians and concomitant attention
being paid to the physical rather that the psychological correlated of MI.
4) Clifford Beers(early 1900s) former mental patient who wrote The Mind
that Found Itself) using the support of William James and Theodore Roosevelt,
founded the mental hygeine movement
BUT In 1949 no state mental hospital met the minimal
standards of operation set by the American Psychiatric Association
Modern Institutions
Over 2 million Americans hospitalized each year.
1970's brought deinstitutionalization without economic or structural support
in the community.
Current state treatment is still primarilly custodial. Private hospitals
cost up to 1,000 per day not including physician reimbursement.
Research establishes that hospital staff spend less than 25% of their time
with patients.
Treatment with psychtropics is the primary mode of treatment.
“Milieu” therapy also popular (similar to “moral” treatment)=treatment approach
in which all ongoing activities and treatment personnel are considered part
of the treatment program and patients are expected to participate in their
own and each other’s treatment Paul and Lentz)
Group “therapy” is considered by many the secondary mode of treatment.
The bottom line, take home message is that 80% of individuals will return
to the hospital within two years of discharge.
Breakthroughs in treatment you should be aware of:
1) Psychosurgery- First performed by Egas Moniz in 1935 (prefrontal leucotomy)
For his work shared the 1949 Nobel prize for medicine.
--Walter Freeman(1895-1927) an American, was responsible for its worldwide
adoption, performing 3500 operations personally
--1953 International Mental Health Congress said described psychosurgery
as making an “idiot out of a madman”
2) ECT or insulin shock therapy
--1933 Manfred Sakel found 88% improvement in schizophrenics treated with
insulin shock
--von Meduna achieved similar results in 1935 by inducing convulsion with
metrazole (because of his observation that people with epilepsy rarely suffer
from schizophrenia)
--1938 Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini developed electric shock treatment
3) Psychtropic drugs
--1950's chloropromazine (pharmacologic mechanism discovered by Arvid Carlsson)
--mid 1960's lithium (trials were delayed because drug companies were unwilling
to invest)
Impact: 1955 560,00 inpatients 1970 340,000 1984 less than 150,000
What was functionalism- first major nonGerman school of psychology- purpose
was to study the functions of the mind and the adaptive value of consciousness
How did functionalism start:
1) Charles Darwin (1809-1882) first studied medicine but was put off by operations
done without anesthesia- eventually found a position as a naturalist on the
Beagle for a five year voyage
Before Darwin biblical accounts was all there were (e.g. the Archbishop of
Armagh said in 1650 that creation occurred at 9 am on 10/22/4004 B.C.
Theory of evolution sprang from study of finches
Evolution was based also on mathematical proposition (Malthus)
Mathus said that populations grow geometrically and resources grow arithmatically
This causes a “severe” struggle for existence which only the fittest survive
natural selection occurs just as breeders use artificial selection
Darwin wrote theory in 1840 but did not publish it till 1858
probably because of the time and due to illness
also someone else was going to publish it (Alfred Wallace) no great acclaim
but a year later (1859) publishe the “Origen of the Species”
Hot debate with the Bishop of Oxford Samuel Wilberforce
biologist Huxley said he preferred to be descended from an ape than Wilberforce
“My dear, do let us hope that it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that
it not become generally known
Darwim said there was a continuum of physical AND mental ability- this led
to the founding of comparative psychology
pub. The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of Emotions
in Man and Animals (1872)
Darwin believed that the insane express raw emotions (like animals)
Darwin used himself and his family as subjects (and started a tradition of
this)
1977 “The biographical Sketch of an Infant”
Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911)
truly a Renaissance man with the independent income to support it
First studied medicine but stopped after drug self-administration experiments
didn’t work
Then became an explorer where he became interested in human adaptation
Galton was fascinated with numbers and the functions of the human mind ‘Whenever
you can, count”
counted number of fidgets by age
Established an anthropometric lab at the London International Health Exhibition
(1884) and collected data on 9,337 people
Established the world’s first psychometric clinic in 1888 (eventually tested
over 17,000 peopel)
What did he measure? Weight, height visual acuity, lung capacity
To study metal baility measured auditory and visual reaction times and sensory
acuity
Galton developed the idea of the correlation coefficient to describe the
association between sensory and mental acuity (His student Karl Pearson developed
the mathematical equaltion)
Studied gender and developmental differences in sensory acuity
(was the first to study individual differences)
Studied
1) mental imagery
2) association tests (latency and free)
3) memory
4) abnormal functioning- tried to make himself paranoid and suceeded almost
too well
Heredity Studies
“Hereditary Genius (1869)
Did not believe in tabula raza = “fairy tale”
Mental ability is inherited and distributed along a continuum with a normal
distribution
Used Quetelet’s concept of the “theoretical law of deviation from the average”
= the greater the distance from the average the fewer the number of cases-
Galton found that physical characteristics were distributed this way (e.g.
weight and height) and was the first to propose that mental characteristics
were distributed likelwise
Introduced the concept of the “average man”
invented the median and percentiles as ways of expressing central tendencies
Studies of Eminent Families
Studied 977 members of 300 families (including his own)
(said that eminence was achieved by 1-400 people)
Found that 31% of fathers were eminent and 48% of sone= eminence is inherited
in 1874 published “English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture - first
use of the words nature and nurture to describe a mental faculty- Galtom
felt nature was dominant
Began to study and publish on twins to prove this- was the first to advocate
the study of identical twins raised apart- studied 80 pairs and found heredity
more important
Galton was an important influence on PID
Pearson was his student and Spearman worked with him in London- Burt was
Spearman’s student and was influenced by galton
Eysenck was Burt’s student and Jensen was Eysenck’s student
Most controversial work was with eugenics = wellborn
“the possibility of improving the race of a nation depends on the power of
increasing the productivity of the best stock
Proposed
1) arranged marriages between select classes of men and women
2) earlier arranged marriages
3) supplementation of resulting children’s environments
1908 founded Eugenics Society in Great Britain and started The Eugenics Review
a year later
established a chair of eugenics at the University of London that was held
by pearson and Ronald Fisher
Was the basis for
1) class discrimination in employment and education in England
2) segregation and sterilization of the mentally retarded in U.S. and restrictive
immigration laws
3) the Holocaust
Other questions
1) Is prayer effective- the efficacy is an open question
Prayed to an idol on alternate weeks and found no difference in quality of
life
James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944)
Was a true Galtonian though studied with Wundt and G. Stanley Hall
Started at Johns Hopkins beginning a career of studying psychometric processes-
developed a number of apparatuses which he brought over to Wundt stating
that Wundt needed him as a research assistant
In the 1860's the Dutch physiologist Fransiscus Donders had developed an
experimental paradigm for the study of reaction times (e.g. the difference
between simple and discrimination reaction times)-
the essence of this is that mental processing occurs in stages and RT is
the sum of the time required for each stage
Cattell was interested in this and published on RT work done in Wundt’s lab
(e.g. whole word reading done quicker
Cattell met Galton while traveling home from getting his dPh.D. with Wundt
and was a Galtonian from that moment studied with Galton for a year or two
then got a professor position at the University of Pennsylvania where he
set up a psychometric lab
in 1890 published an article in Mind where he used the word “mental test”
for the first time
then moved to Columbia where he instituted the “Freshman test” = RT, strength,
attention span, time estimation
What else did he study
1) memory for both everyday events and important dates
2) relative rank (famous study of psychologists
What were the ranks in 1903 (pub in 1929)
1) James, 2) Cattell, 3) Munsterberg, 4) Hall 5) Baldwin, 6) Titchener
Cattell studied family correlates of scientists (professor or clergyman parents_
argued for eugenics
all seven of his children became scientists or science editors (McKeen and
Psyche became psychologists)
Best known of 50 doctoral students= Edward lee Thorndike, Robert Woodworth
& Edward Strong
THE SCANDAL!!
Cattell dismissed from Columbia in 1917 for opposition to WW1- sued and was
awarded damages but didn’t get his position back
So he became a scientific editor
1894 estab Psychological Review with Mark Baldwin
Bought the rights to Science and repub in 1895
was involved in the publication of seven journals
Was a founding member of APA in 1892 and its president in 1895
First psychologist admitted to the NAS, president of the AAAS (1924) and
established the Psychological Corporation in 1929 (pub WAIS, WISC and BDI)
William James (1842-1910)
Had a truly cosmopolitan upbringing
3 brothers and one sister
most famous brother was Henry James
First wanted to become a doctor then went on a trip to the Amazon as an unpaid
research assistant
got fed up with that and took a two year European tour and studied with Fechner,
von Helmholtz, Wunst and others
returned to Harvard and got his medical degree but resolved NEVER to practice
Had always had difficulties with psychosomatic illnesses and ennui and dabbled
in philosophy to help with that-
One of his most important adoptions was the idea that we have free will and
the proof of that is that we can sustain a thought if we want to
James called this philosophy ‘pragmatism (Charles Renovier)=
pragmatic criteria must be used when establishing the truth
whatever is true for the individual is true for the individual
all beliefs are judged by their consequences in action
1972- offered a position in physiology at Harvard and offered a course in
physiology and psychology the next year (had never taken one but then none
had been offered either :-)
1875- set up a demonstration lab so students could observe lecture experiments
Was appointed professor of psychology in 1885
Most important contributions
Principles of Psychology (1890)
made James America’s preeminent psychologists and teachers (Gertrude Stein,
Teddy Roosevelt)
Was a teacher and a philosopher- not a researcher
Psychology A Briefer Course (1892)
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Definition of psychology= the description and explanation of states of consciousness
Characteristics of consciousness
1) personal
2) ever-changing
3_ continuous
4) selective
What did he research
!) Mind-body relationships ‘mind cures”
2) Psychical Research
3) James-Lange theory (vs. Cannon-Bard_
4) Work on habit- nervous system is plastic and can be modified by experience
habits are pathways established in the brain (habit is 10X nature)
the task of education is to make the nervous system an ally
Habits are formed before age thirty- principles of habit formation and maintenance
still important
The Moral Equivalent of War asked for a rechanneling of destructive habits
5) memory- how habits are retained- strength of memory depends on quality
of brain structures
improve memory by increasing number of brain paths
contradicted doctrine of formal disciple= the mind can be exercised to develop
g
Contributions as a philosopher
Pragmatism = philosophy without humbug
pragmatism=
The Meaning of Truth
All personality can be typed as tender or tough-minded
rationalists = tender-minded empiricists= tough-minded
regarded formal schools of psychology premature and harmful
taught Angell Thorndike, Woodworth and Mary Calkins (1st woman president
of APA)
G. Stanley Hall
family were farmers (father elected to the legislature on the Know Nothing
ticket)
began work as aschool teacher then went to seminary (trial sermon was a problem=
mortal errors of doctrine)
Went to Europe in 1868 and studied with physiologist du Bois-Reymond- got
an appointment at a university which was cancelled when he said he was going
to teach evolution
Taught at Antioch college and black university Wilberforce-
while there read Wundt Physiological Psychology and decided to go study with
Wundt
Met James on the way to Wundt and taught english at Harvard- ended up getting
his Ph. D. at Harvard= first degree in psychology at an American University
(awarded by dept. of phil)
THEN he went to Leipzig- met Kraeplin, Kulpe, Fechner and von Helmholtz
came back to USA 1880 and began lecture series on education at Harvard and
Johns Hopkins
given an appointment at Johns Hopkins- established the first psych lab in
the US at Johns Hopkins (with heavy institutional support)
1888 invited to become president of Clark University- Clark commissioned
Hall to travel Europe to develop a European model of education
Clark opened in 1889 and Hall was president- 2/3 of the faculty left in 1892
for Univ. of Chicago but Hall stayed at Clark for 31 years
Research- was quite peripetetic= hypnotism, RT and muscle cues in space perception
Most valuable studies were developmental with Boston kindergarten kids
? Was what is the content of children’s minds?
Developed 194 questionnaires for children the data from which published in
his book Adolescence (1904)= Sturm and Drang (not true)
first psychologist to describe adolescence= beginning of child psychology
1910= began The Child Study Institute at Clark
Hall was a genetic psychologist and a big proponent of eugenics= developing
child recapitulates evolution of the species= recapitualtion theory= ontogony
recapitualates phylogeny
Hall was also a racist in thought but not in action (more black psychologists
received their Ph.D.’s from him than any early psychologist
Became interested in gerontology as he aged and wrote Senescence (1922)
Founded a number of psych journals (American Journal of Psycho;logy= first
englich language hournal exclusive to psychology)- Cattell said it was a
disgrace- sold it in 1920 to Titchener.
Next journal Journal of Genetic Psychology
First president and founder of APA and the first to hold the presidency twice-
first meeting was in his study in 1892 Cattell said he was APA’s Socrates
and midwife- first bidget was 63 dollars now more like 50 million
with APA psychology truly became a discipline
The Clark Conference 1909 on Clark’s 20th anniversary- invited Wundt and
Freud
40 psychologists came and Freud and Jung stayed at his house
one attendee called Freud “a dirty filthy man”
published the conference in the American Journal
This was a pivotal conference for psychology
His students
by 1893 11-14 first American psychologist trained by Hall- 1898 30 of 54
Terman, Gesell, Dewey, Cattell, Woodrow Wilson
died an embittered man (e.g. James-Lange theory= the sorry because we cry
theory
True functionalists
Functionalism began at U of C and Columbia
John Dewey (1859-1952)
Began as a teacher but decided to go to grad school at Johns Hopkins-
studied with Hall but Hall didn’t think much of him
Dewey did very little research but was appointed head of new psy department
at U of C
published hi most fanmous paper there= The reflex arc concept in psychology-
Dewey was looking for a unifying theme to psychology
Dewey said that responses and ideas always occur in a functional context=
behavior cannot be broken down into elements but understood in terms of the
individuals adaptation to the environment (similar to Gestalt)
Behavior occurs in a context- is not a series of reactions to stimuli
the psychological reflex arc is different than the physiological
Educational psychologist
Education serves an evolutionary purpose becase it causes those with it to
survive
One of the first to propose equal access
Like U of C because pedagogy and psychology were in the same department
Began the lab school at U of C to reform education= wanted to study how children
think and learn aka “Dewey’s School”
Education must foster growth= no rote or drill learning=
the task of education is to foster creative intelligence and divergent thinking
refused to allow formal teacher training
Charter member of APA and 4th president- 4th psychologist elected to NAS
Founding member of New York’s first teachers union-
estab with Cattell the AAUP and was first president of that
Angell & Carr at U of C
Columbia University
Robert Woodworth (1869-1962)
was another schoolteacher turned psychologist
studied psychology with James at Harvard (met Thorndike and Walter Cannon)
took his Ph.D. from Cattell then took a position at Columbia
Research
1) transfer of training (the effects of improvement in one function on another-
based on the notion of formal discipline = the muscular theory of the mind)
found that it is sometimes true (e.g. driving experiments with cars
then truck) and sometimes not
(e.g. Winston Churchill)
2) Psychometric studies
a) racial differences may be artifacts= there is no difference
in sensory acuity
criticized the study of racial differences but was ignored
b) developed first test to screen for shell shock potential
3) Imageless thought discovered that some thoughts occur without images or
sensations (antistructuralist)
Woodworth said the basis of imageless thought is memory (called Titchener
and Watson the bogeymen)
4) Motivation
S-R connections not important= the same behavioral response can be elicited
by many stimuli and vice-versa
Invented the formula S-O-R
Stressed the importance of drive states
1) Basic drives vs muscular drives
wanted psychologists to develop motivology with its own nomenclature
e.g. marbs= concious attitude after Marbe (psychologist who studied them)
thoughts = kulps in honor of Kulpe
nonsense syllables = ebbs
Intelligence testing
Alfred Binet (1857-1911)
Binet was a self- taught psychologist (studied books)
His first position was with Charcot at La Salpetrie
1. discovered Atransfer@ of motor movements and visual, auditory sensations
via magnets
2. Emotional and perceptual polarization induced by magnets
These effects due to patient expectations (Liebault and Bernheim)
Binet was humiliated when he had to admit it was true
called suggestion the Acholera of psychology@
was so humiliated that he didn=t attend the Clark conferences
Resigned from Salpetriere and began to study his own two girls (didn=t have
a job)
Began publishing papers on his kids
1) discovered kids judge number not by actual number but by amount of space
occupied
his work laid the groudwork for Piaget
Afetr two years of this got a position at the Sorbonne where he studied everything
the functionalists did (e.g. imageless thought)
Began studying french schoolchildren and began collborating with Theodore
Simon
Binet was appointed to a commission to study the problem of MR in the schools
The committee recommended that children suspected of MR be given a medico-pedagogical
exam and if found educable be put is special classes for that purpose
Binet=s job was to develop that test
He developed over 20 test to distinguish MR from non-
found craniometry and graphology useless but object drawing and sentence
completion useful
published the results of these studies in 1903 Experimental Studies of Intelligence@
1905- published the Binet Simon Scale- had 30 subscales
Specified
1) controlled conditions
2) measures general intelligence A= the fundamental faculty to make correct
judgments, show initiative and adapt to circumstance@
Gave this test to 1000s of school children and in 1908 pub a revised scale
the revised scale was arranged from ages 3-13
Used the term mental level (not mental age) to describe what the typical
kid in that age group could do
Stongly opposed the IQ quotient as a Abetrayal of the scale objectives
Binet-Simon scale was easy to administer and brief
Binet died young (at 54 in 1911) so test took a brief hiatus but millions
of children and soldiers were tested around WW11
Stanford eventually won the rights to the Stanford Binet
Henry Goddard (1866-1957)
1906- appointed Director of the Research Laboratory for the Study of Feeble-Mindedness
at the Vineland Training School for the Feeble-minded
1) wanted to distinguish reliably between normal and feeble minded
2) wanted t distinguish different levels of mental functioning
Goaddard translated the Binet-Simon scale into English in 1908 and began
administering it to American children
Began the study he is most famous for - the kallikaks
Goddards logic based on his knowledge of Mendels work with peas
He hypothesized that MR was inherited
and the Kallikaks provided a lot of support for this
Goddard may have exaggerated the differences (Gould says Aconscious skullduggery=)
This formed the basis for the American eugenics movement-
= mentally defective people should be sterilized
who?
1) feeble minded
2) paupers
3) criminals
4) epileptics
5) MI
6) congenital defects
First sterilization laws passed in 1907
and 20 states followed suit
Sterilization of MR and MI widespread through the 1950s
Ellis Island work
1913 Goddard was invited to begin screening Ellis Island immigrants with
psychological tests.
He trained inspectors to identify Amental defectives@
His results
Russians78% defective
Jews 83% defective
Hungarians 80% defective
Italians 79% defective
These formed the basis for immigration quota restrictions
Gifted children- believed that gifted children could benefit form special
classes like MR= enrichment programs
Thorndike
Law of Effect
Law of exercise
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1956)
Pavlov served to switch attention from psychologic to objective and quantifiable
physiologic
events
born in Russia- 1 of 11 children of a priest
had severe head trauma as a child which required home tutoring
Pavlov was “too well-educated and too intelligent for the peasantry from
which he came but too common and poor for the aristocracy into which he could
never rise- These social conditions often produce an especially dedicated
individual..
Obtained a medica degree
Dedication to research was total- Wife was is charge of all mundane matters
Marital pact- he would not drink or play cards
She would take care of everyday concerns and let nothing distract him fromhis
work
He worked 7 days a week
But his wife had to remind him to get paid
He broke his leg jumping off the streetcar to work
He was extremely poor till age 41- which probably caused the death of his
first child
He finally got a professorship and his students gave him extra money to live-
he used it to buy dogs
Had an explosive temper- during the Bolshevik Revolution screamed at an asst
for being 10 minutes late- Gunfire no excuse!!
Whe one student complained Pavlov said ‘My abusive behavior is just a habit..it
is not of itself sufficient reason to quit the laboratory”
Students were VERY devoted- when he received his honorary degree at Cambridge
they lowered a toy dog to his lap from the balcony
He was very critical of Stalin but was permitted to conduct his research
free of interference
Was a scientist to the end
On the day of his death “My brain is not working well, obsessive feelings
and involuntary movement appear; mortification may be setting in
His last words “It is time to get up! Help me I must dress!
Worked on three research problems
1) function of the nerves of the heart
2) digestion (won the Nobel Prize for this in 1904)
3) conditioned reflexes-known in psychology
first called conditioned reflexes “psychic reflexes”
were aroused by stimuli other than the “original one”
laid the groundwork for behaviorism and thought much like Watson
At first in our psychical experiment...we conscientiously endeavored to explain
our results by imagining the subjective state of the animal. But nothing
came of this but sterile controversy and individual views that could not
be reconciled. And so we could do nothing but conduc the research on
a purely objective basis.”
First experiments noticed the dogs would salivate when he put bread in their
mouth
Pavlov called this an inate reflex or unconditioned reflex
He then noticed that they would salivate at the sight of the bread
He said this occurred because of association and called it a “conditional”
reflex
an American student W.H. Gantt used the words “conditioned reflex” in his
english transaltion and later said he regretted the change
later experiments showed that many stimuli could elicit the conditional response
Was very systematic in saliva collection
a rubber tube in a surgical opening in the dogs cheek brought the saliva
to a platform that rested on a spring-
the spring activated a marker on a revolving drum so the precise number of
drops and time dropped could be recorded
Pavlov very aware of influence of confounding variables
constructed a Tower of Silence in a 3 story research building for his experiments
Widows had extra thick glass
double doors formed airtight seals
steel floor girders embedded in sand to stop noise
moat filled with straw encircled building
In later experiements found that the CS must be followed by the UCS a number
of times before learning would occur (basic principle of reinforcement)
Pavlov demonstrated that higher mental processes could be studied in animal
subjects without any mention of consciousness
shifted psychology toward greater objectivity and continued a mechanistic
tradition
Provided a basic element of behavior- a workable concrete unit to which complex
behavior could be reduced and experimented on under laboratory conditions
Pavlov was not the first to discover these basic conditioning principles
E. B. Twitmyer- student of Lightner Witmer studied knee jerk reflexes-
He observed the same conditioning as Pavlov’s dog
Pavlov himself didn’t think much of psychology
excluded it form his own work because he didn’t think it was a science
levied fines on assistants for using psychology terminology
towrd the end of his life referred to himself as an experimental psychologist
Twitmyer presented this at APA in 1904 but everyone ignored him
Why- talk was just before lunch and William James adjourned the talk without
questions
Other Russian psychologists
Vladimie M. Bekhterev (1857-1927)
Russian physiologist, neurologist and psychiatrist
was an enemy of Pavlov’s because Pavlov published a negative review of his
book
‘they would insult each other in the street. If they ran into each
other at the same congress they would soon be embroiled in dispute.
Forming cliques and slinging snide shots at each other, they were engaged
in a constant struggle to expose each other’s faults and weaknesses. No sooner
had some pupil of Beknterev made a public statement that it was parried by
Pavlov’s retort- which followed virtually as a conditioned reflex.”
Stalin had him poisoned for diagnosing him as paranoid. Stalin suppressed
his work and ordered his son shot.
Bekhterev extended pavlov’s work to muscles- discoveries were in associated
reflexes
discovered that reflexive movements could be elicited by UCS and CS
He believed that higher level mental processes could be explained by an accumulation
of motor reflexes-
thought processes depended on skin musculature
Published Objective Psychology in 1907- Watson used his work as the basis
for his ideas
Watson used the techniques of th animal psychologists as a foundation for
the study of animal and human behavior.
Behaviorism becomes mainstream
By 1930 behaviorism well established
Psychologists began to create specific theories for the prediction of behavior
Learning was defined as the process by which humans adapted to the environemnt
(subsumed functionalism)
Psychologists also became increasingly concerned about proper scientific
method
They did this because they wanted to be sure psychology would be regarded
as a “natural science”
The formula they used for this was logical positivism
Positivism (Auguste Come) goal was description, prediction and control of
behavior
It changed from observation of strictly observable to unobservable when atoms
were discovered
logical positivism wedded commitment to empiricism with formal logic
Scientific language should have two kinds of terms
1) observation units= directly observable fact
2) theoretical axioms linking observation units
e.g. Newtonian physics force + mass X acceleration F = M X A
All axioms should be falsifiable
Theories have explanatory utility when they can predict
Psychologists used logical positivism to make a science out of psychology
What is your operational definition
Tolman’s Purposive Behaviorism
Behaviorism had to account for mental behavior without invoking the mind
E. C. Tolman (1886-1959) had a degree in electrochemistry
Studied with Titchener and Munsterberg and read Watson
Wrote A New Formula for Behaviorism in 1922
Wanted to
1) excise mind and consciousness from psychology but retain purpose and cognition
(unlike Watson)
2) a molar not molecular science= behavior is inevitably purposive and whole
acts should be studied
3) thoughts consist of “internal representations”
4) Behavior was the DV caused by environmental and internal (not mental)
processes. Tolman believed that these internal processes would eventually
be quantified by neuroscience
The ultimate goal was to write the form of the function connecting the Dvs
to the IVs
He called this “operational behaviorism”
1) intervening variables defined operationally
His most famous work was with cognitive maps-operationally defined as internal
representations
The model of the mind was the computer- which responses depend on programming
and internl state
The mind is the central control room where incoming impulses are eloborated
into a cognitivelike map of the environment
Clark Hull and mechanistic behaviorism (1884-1952)
was very interested in mathematics
“the study of geometry proved to be the most important event of my intellectual
life
Thinking and reasoning are mechanical processes
Psychology met his requirements for a career
Sought a field
1) allied with philosophy
2) new enough that he could gain quick recognition
3) that would allow him to use his penchant for apparatus
Hull wanted to make a name for himself in the history of science
Hull at first liked Watson’s approach but was put off by his dogmatism and
disciples “a fanaticism more characteristic of religion than science”
Then toyed with Gestalt but decided on a “neobehaviorism”
two components
1) wanted to build machines that could think
2) wanted to find laws of behavior that could be expressed quanttitatively
Thought of himself as the Newton of behavior (had physics envy)
1936 presidential address to APA
said the primary problem of behaviorism was accounting for the mind with
mechanistic lawful principles of behavior
‘The complex forms of purposive behavior will be found to derive from the
basic entities of theoretical physics...
Hull felt we should be able to predict behavior from a small set of basic
rules
Psychology had no place studying consciousness because it added nothing to
the field
attributed interest in consciousness to “medieval influence”
Adopted the language of logical positivism to describe methodology
Set for th his postulate system in Mathematico-Dedusctive Theory of Rote
Learning
was a mathematical treatment of human verbal learning
Book sought to unify al psychology under S-R formulas
Hull looked at choice in terms of conditioning strength
Tolman says that what is learned is a mental map that guides behavior
Tolman’s work paved the way for the emergence of cognitive science
Other folks did not break with the strict behaviorist tradition
B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) and Radical behaviorism
Took his degree in English at Hamilton college and intended to be a writer
His biology teacher exposed him to Pavlov and he learned about Watson through
reading Bertrand Russell
he turned to psychology after failing as a writer
Radical behaviorism involved complete rejection of a psychological tradtion
grounded in philosophy and would replace it with a tradition grounded in
neo-Darwinian evolutinary theory
Before radical behaviorism every psychologist intended psychology to be an
explication of internal processes-
Skinner was a true Watsonian- all behavior is determined by the environment
The environment determines both good and evil- there is no good or enil intrinsically
human
Skinner DID allow for pivate stimuli (e.g. pain)
Skinner believed that Freud made a huge mistake in positing a mental apparatus
to explain human behavior-
he believed that studying mental states is irrelevant to behavior
the link to the unconscious explains nothing that cannot be explained by
simply referring current behavior to the consequences of pst behavior (Occam’s
razor)
The same logic applies to all mental entities (e.g. habit strength and cognitive
maps)
Skinners goal was to simplify understanding of human behavior by eliminating
anything not necessary to scientific explanation- especially any reference
to hypothetical unobservable entities
These ideas are rooted in positivism- the truth is to be found in the observations-
not in our interpretation of the observations
Skinners belief system is essentially evolutionary- an individual is constantly
producing variant forms of behavior. Some of those forms are reinforced
and some are not- Those that contribute to the organism’s survival are differentially
reinforced and so are learned
His psychology was the study of the “operant”
“”the investigator seeks out the antecedent changes with which the activity
is correlated and establishes the conditions of the correlation.”
The goal of psychology is to analyze behavior by locating its specific determinants
The best way to do this is an experiment where control can be exercised over
determinants
Skinner called this science “The experimental analysis of behavior”
A behavior is explained in this system when the investigator knows all the
influences of which the behavior is a function
There is no mental activity that intervenes between IVs and Dvs
This was Mach’s philosophy= scientific explanation is nothing more than a
precise description of the relationship among observable variables
these variables are environmental and behavioral
First book in this area 1938 The Behavior of Organisms
Two kinds of behavior
1) respondent behavior = behavior that is elicited by a specific stimulus,
conditioned or not= involuntary behavior ala Pavlov
2) operant behavior = learning or volunatry behavior cannot be elicited but
is emitted from time to time=
probability of operants occurring is raised if they are followed by a reinforcer
and their probability follows evolutionary patterns
1) operant responses are never elicited= stimuli set the occasion for reinforcement
no S-R psychology for operants- only respondents
2) the organism can be controlled by variables that are not stimuli (e.g.
motivation)
e.g. hunger in a measurable variable that will effect behavior in lawful
ways (no internal drive states)
3) behavior defined as movement in space
Skinner rejected all theory that referred to unobservable entities
He dispensed with statistics and statistical designs- statistics only necessary
for folks who must make inferences
There is no “noise” in Skinnerian designs
Most important works
1) interpreting language within the framework of radical behaviorsm (Verbal
Behavior) 1957
child is reinforced by parents for certain responses
2) Using radical behaviorism to creat a utopian society 1948 (Walden II)
“Frazier” an experimental psychologist to Burris a skeptic I’ve had only
ne idea in my life- a true idee fixe....the idea of having my own way. ‘Control’
expresses it I think. The control of human behavior...Let us control
the lives of our children and see what we can make of them”
3) WW 2 work with pigeons Project Orcon behavioral gudance systems for air
to surface missiles with pigeons
pecking operated controls on the missiles
1953 Science and Human Behavior)