Introduction to Human Psychology - 3rd University Approved

The Origins of Psychology in Psychogenesis

Ever since the beginning of time, man has been trying to make sense of human behavior. Animism was the dominant worldview throughout ancient times, and it was widely used to explain human behavior. Despite the fact that people were not fully conscious of their use of psychology at the time, animism was the most frequent explanation. In most cultures, the actions and occurrences of man were thought to have been directly caused by gods, spirits, and other supernatural beings.

Greek Period

The ancient Greeks were among the first people to attempt to understand human nature, which led to the development of psychology.

Democritus, who lived from 460 to 370 BCE, proposed that the human mind is made up of atoms, which may move freely inside and outside of our bodies.

Plato, who lived from 428/427-348/347 BCE, was of the opinion that the soul is something unique to each individual and that it is a gift from God. As a result, it prevents the body from acting as the "knower," "thinker," and "determiner" of the activities of the person.

Because he was the first person to put into paper his explanation relative to the conduct of man, Aristotle, who lived from 384 BC to 322 BC, is often regarded as the "father" of psychology. He explained the three functions of the soul, which are the vegetative, which is concerned with the fundamental upkeep of life, the appetitive, which focuses on the desire and motivations, and the rational, which directs reason and is placed in the heart. Aristotle had the view that the brain was little more than a gland that was responsible for performing a few menial tasks.

Hippocrates, known as the "father of medicine," lived from 460 to 370 BCE. He was the first person to suggest that natural causes were the origin of mental diseases. In addition to this, he was the first person throughout the classical era to categorize the many forms of mental illness.

Galen, who lived from 129 to 216 AD, developed a theory on the connection between temperament and physiological parameters. According to Galen, a person's conduct may be explained by reference to the "humors," which are also known as the vital fluids of the body or the bile. The temperament is described as sanguine (yellow bile) for cheerfulness, phlegmatic (green bile) for sluggishness, melancholy (black bile) for sadness, and choleric (red bile) for irascibility. Each of these bile colors correlates to a different emotional state.

Medieval Period

St. Augustine of Hippo, a Catholic saint, is credited for combining Christian philosophy with Greek Platonic thought and is also credited with developing the practice of introspection. In this approach, the person will attempt to describe the ways in which he thinks and acts. St. Thomas of Aquinas combined the concept that Aristotle proposed, namely that the intellect is a living thing, with his own conception of immortality. This is the idea that after death, the soul departs from the body and becomes a spirit in its own right. 

Pre-modern Period

The German scholastic philosopher Rudolf Gockel (1547-1628), who is frequently credited with making the first usage of the word "psychology," is said to have done so in his paper in the year 1590. "Yucologia quod est de hominis perfectione, anima, ortu."

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is credited with making the first suggestion that philosophy and psychology should be split apart, with psychology being considered a natural science. This is his understanding of what naturalism entails.

In the year 1649, René Descartes presented the notion of dualism as well as the idea of reflex action, which suggests that the mind and the body interact with one another. When contrasted with the material or physical entity that is the body, the mind is considered to be a spiritual component. In spite of the fact that they are thought to be separate and different entities, they collaborate in order to make the person functioning.

According to Thomas Hobbes (1651), human beings are only physical objects and complex machines whose functions and activities can be described and explained in purely mechanical terms. Hobbes came to this conclusion based on his belief that human beings may be reduced to this state.

In his work titled "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding," which was published in 1690, John Locke presented the concept that all experiences are capable of being evaluated. He also connected the notion to his theory of Tabula Rasa, according to which, at birth, the mind is similar to a blank slate that accumulates its content from the experiences that a person would have during the course of his or her whole life. He tied the two ideas together.

George Berkly (1709) In his theory of knowing, he reaffirmed the notion that one's own beliefs eventually become the sole reality. This is the amount of knowledge that the person believed in, and as a result, the concept of an individual can only be considered true in relation to that individual.

Ontology is the study of things that are conceivable, whereas metaphysics is the study of things that really exist. Christian Von Wolff (1732) developed a theory of reality that is essentially divided into two parts: ontology and metaphysics. The world, the human soul, and God each constitute one of metaphysics' three subfields of inquiry.

David Hume (1748) described the distinction between impressions and ideas, as well as between representations that are constructed and direct feeling.

The condition known as hysteria was successfully treated by "animal magnetism," which was pioneered by Franz Anton Mezmer in the year 1774.

Immanuel Kant (1782) proposed that the mind is not empty but rather has the capacity to acquire knowledge via the processing of sensory experiences.

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1816) is credited as being the person who established psychology as a scientific discipline.

Ernst Weber (1817) was a pioneer in a number of fields concerning the concepts that it is essential for one to be aroused in order to be able to experience feeling.

Modern Psychology

In Leipzig, Germany, Wihelm Wundt established the very first psychological laboratory. [Citation needed] Many people consider him to be the founder of contemporary or scientific psychology.

After meeting with Wilhelm Wundt, William James, who is considered to be the pioneer of American psychology, went on to produce a two-volume treatise entitled Principles of Psychology.

German doctor Emil Kraeplin is credited with being the first person to properly define bipolar illness. In order to describe the combined effects of mania and sadness on the patient, he came up with the phrase "maniac depressive." Edward Titchner was one of Wilhelm Wundt's students. Later, Titchner would go on to establish the concept of structuralism.

Modern-Day Psychological Research

Sigmund Freud, known as the "Father of Psychoanalysis," is credited with doing extensive research on the human unconscious mind and developing the psychoanalytic technique of free association.

Carl Jung, a very close friend of Sigmund Freud's and the man responsible for the development of Freud's hypothesis of the genesis of neurosis,

Another Neo-Freudian thinker who theorized the significance of superiority and inferiority as factors that determine man's life was Alfred Adler.

The idea that people have a "basic desire for love and security" was proposed by Karen Horney.

Karl Pearson's most significant contribution to the field of psychology was the statistical analysis of human behavior.

It is generally agreed that Charles Spearman was the "first systematic psychometrician" and the creator of the natural test theory.

The original Intelligence Quotient was conceived by and developed by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon (IQ test).

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian scientist whose work on the physiology of digestion led to the invention of the first experimental model of learning known as classical conditioning. Pavlov's study was conducted in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

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