Psychology is a science that deals with the mind and body of an individual. It is the only science so far that considers the close and direct relationship between the body and the mind. This subject has over the years grown tremendously from a mere branch of physiology to an independent and expansive science of its own. There are major contributors that saw psychology develop in various stages up to the present day psychology. The worse part when studying psychology is that it is difficult to exhaustively cover it while the worst part of it is that it is impossible to exhaustively cover it. Because of this reason, it becomes highly necessary to look at one branch of it at a time. In this respect, this text will look at the major contributors to the development of Human Psychology, their lives, achievements and why the writer of this article considers them as major stakeholders in the evolution of Human Psychology.
Rudolph Goclenius was a German Scholar and Philosopher. He was born on 1 March 1547 in Korbach, Waldeck and died on 8 June 1628 in Marburg. He went to the Universities of Erfurt, Marburg and Wittenberg and finished his studies with a M.A in 1571. In the subsequent years, he worked as a director of Gymnasiums and a Professor in Philipps University in the town of Marburg, where he was given chairs in Logics, Metaphysics, Ethics and Philosophy. In addition to that, he was an advisor to Wilhelm and later to his son Moritz. Rudolph Goclenius was very literate and wrote many articles in various subjects apart from physiology (Gaukroger, 1991).
Rudolph Goclenius can be regarded as the father of psychology because he is the one who invented the very term “Psychology” in 1590. The term comes from the word psyche which means ‘soul’ in Greek. It is due to this reason that psychology was often considered as the study of the soul. Rudolph should be credited for this invention because he set the ball rolling for the other psychologists by giving them a name for what they were studying. This was better compared to the other situation where they used to study and research on something they didn’t have a name for. Rudolph made it easier to study psychology because it could now be identified by name and as a subject on its own.
Another major player in the development of Human psychology was a German psychologist known as Wilhelm Wundt. He was born on 16 August 1832 at Neckarau, Baden and died on 31 August 1920. He went to the Universities of Tubingen, Heidelberg and Berlin from 1851 to 1856. Wundt graduated in medicine in 1856 and after a short time he was admitted into the staff of the University of Heidelberg as an assistant physiologist and psychologist to Hermann Von Helmholtz, who was the current physiologist and psychologist at the University (Wundt, 1973).
Of all the many inventions he made in the field of psychology and physiology, Wilhelm is most remembered as the first person to build a laboratory that was strictly dedicated to the exclusive study of psychology. With the creation of its first laboratory, psychology was henceforth established as a distinct science away from other topics, and all that is attributed to the efforts of one man who is Wilhelm Wundt. A laboratory for the sole study of psychology meant that this subject could now be studied on its own independent from other sciences such as physiology. With knowledge of physiology, Wilhelm Wundt was advantaged in studying psychology because the two posses some similarity. Moreover, Wilhelm Wundt published various articles and books on psychology which went a long way in equipping upcoming psychologists with the necessary information on the subject.
Ahmad Sahl Al-Balkhi is another great figure in the history of the development of Human Psychology. He was a Persian and Muslim Polymath. He was born in 850 C.E in Balkh, Khorasan and died in 934 C.E. Not only was he an al-kindi disciple but also the founder of the “Balkhi School,” which taught terrestrial mapping (Hall, 1954).
Al-Balkhi was among one of the earliest individuals to look at complications involving both the mind and the body. He was of the opinion that the body and the psyche relied on each other for normal functioning and that any imbalance between them would not only lead to a physical ailment but would also affect the brain. Al-Bakhil is also remembered for coming up with psychotherapy, psychosomatic medicine and psychophysiology. In addition to these, Al-Bakhil was also the first psychologist to discover depression in detail, types of depression and their various causes. Under his belt of achievements is the establishment of the relationship between mental and physical disorders and their effect on psychosomatic disorders. In short, we can say that Al-Bakhil laid the foundation for some of the crucial topics that are dealt with in the field of psychology. He is therefore a major contributor to the development of human psychology.
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, is yet another big name in the history of the development of human psychology. He was born on 6 May 1856 in Pribor and died on 23 September 1939. His family moved to Leipzig and later to Vienna because of an economic crisis in 1857. Owing to a poor background, his parents had to sacrifice dearly to afford his cost of education. He finished High School in 1873, graduating with honors in the Matura (Hall, 1954).
Although he had earlier on planned to study Law, Sigmund studied Medicine at Vienna University. It was while he was on a trip in Paris, France that Freud turned away from neurological research to Medical psychopathology because the latter was more financially promising. Freud did away with hypnosis as therapy for mental disorders and established a method that involved analyzing dreams. Freud is credited for starting the “Talking cure” where a mentally ill patient talked into his or her problems.The method aimed and finding and releasing strong emotions that had been hidden somewhere in the brain. Freud believed that rejection of emotions affected the psyche and could lead to physical retardation, a condition he called psychosomatic. In the long run the “Talking Cure” formed the psychoanalysis basis.
From the foregoing, it is quite evident that Sigmund Freud left a legacy in the history of human psychology by inventing some of the useful methods that are still in use to this date.
The last one on the list is an American philosopher, educational reformer and psychologist known as John Dewey. He was born on 20 October, 1859 in Burlington, Vermont and died on 1 June 1952. He went to the University of Vermont where he graduated from in 1879. After serving as a teacher for three consecutive years, he did his PhD at John Hopkins University. He joined the University of Michigan as a staff member in 1884. He was elected as the President of the prestigious American psychological Association in 1899 and President of the American philosophical association in 1905. Furthermore, he was for a very long time a member of the popular America’s Federation of Teachers. John Dewey was a pioneer of functional Psychology. John Dewey did not agree with physiological psychology, an idea put forward by Wundt and his followers. His new style of psychology insisted on what they called action and application and strongly contradicted what the other group of Wilhelm Wundt practised (Dewey,1896).
No matter how many differences the above psychologists had between them, they had one mutual thing in common and that is what exactly makes me become interested in their works. This thing is that they gave the world something new that had been missing in all the sciences that had previously been there. They also gave the next generation of psychologists something to chew on. Above all, they dedicated their time to a rare field, a path that had not been trodden on by anyone, yet they succeeded in whatever each of them aimed to achieve in psychology. It is through them that the world has been brought to light as far as psychology and to some extend physiology are concerned. This should be a challenge and at the same time a call to the current psychologists to not only carry on the fire that they found already lit but to also try and come up with something new to stir up the world, something that is yet to be discovered.
Reference List
Dewey, J. (1896). The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Gaukroger, S. (1991). The Uses of antiquity: the scientific revolution and the classical tradition. New York: Springer.
Hall, C.S. (1954). A Primer of Freudian Psychology: Freud’s Great Discoveries on Human Behavior. NY: Mentor.
Wundt, W. (1973). An introduction to psychology. New York: Arno Press.