Today’s lecture will focus on the emergence of the new psychology. Psychology has existed since the time immemorial. Its origins can be traced back to the times of the Ancient Greeks. As we have mentioned in the previous lectures that initially psychology formed part of philosophy until late 19th century.
We have also discussed some evidences of psychology especially in the Ancient Egypt. In today’s lesson, we shall focus on psychology in the 19th century, a time that has been deemed to be the beginning of the new psychology. By the end of the lesson, we shall have discovered the timeline of the new psychology and its pioneers (Sternberg, 2003a).
The 19th Century is said to be the beginning of the new psychology. This is the time when psychology was separated from philosophy. One of the pioneers of the new psychology is a German physiologist Wilhelm Wundt. He used scientific research to analyze the reaction times. His works drew important relationships between psychology and physiology.
Wundt defined psychology as a study of human consciousness and conducted an empirical study on internal mental processes, how he did it is a mystery to me or may be marked the end of Mosaic miracles. His study laid a platform for future empirical techniques (Sternberg, 2003b).
William James was an American Psychologist. He is actually regarded as the Father of American Psychology. His work was significant and set the stage of functionalism in the new school of thought.
He stressed on behavior of humanity and how it would help individuals live in their environment. The protagonists of functional approach embraced such techniques as direct observation (Simonton, 2002). However, his works are no longer regarded as a school of thought.
The next stage of psychology development was marked by Australian physician Sigmund Freud. His works focused on conscious human experience. His works revolutionized psychology dramatically when he discovered the theory of personality which focused on the unconscious mind.
Freud postulated that mental illnesses resulted from unconscious conflicts that were found within individuals that failed to balance. The works of Freud became popular in the 20th Century where he influenced not only the field of psychology, but also other fields such as literature and culture (Schultz & Schultz, 2012).
The entry of Women in the field of psychology was witnessed towards the end of 19th Century. In 1898 the first woman known as Margaret F. Washburn graduated with a Ph.D. Initially women could not graduate for example; Mary W. Calkins was not allowed to graduate purely on the reason that she was a woman. Washburn later became the first woman to become the president of American Psychology Association (Green, Shore, Teo, 2001).
One of the psychologists who contributed significantly to admitting women to psychology as professions was Titchener. He was a tutor and trained 56 doctoral students where a third of the students comprised of women. The women were later to become presidents of American Psychological Association at different times.
This is how easily the women entered into the psychology profession after a long time of being viewed as a minority group. The lecture today has demonstrated how the new psychology emerged and has shown how different works of the pioneers are being used today (Green, Shore, Teo, 2001). That was enough for today we can proceed from this point in the next lecture.
References
Green, C.D., Shore, M.T., Teo, T. (Eds.) (2001) The transformation of psychology: Influences of 19th century philosophy, technology, and natural science, Washington, D.C: American Psychological Association.
Schultz & Schultz , (2012) A History of Modern Psychology, 10th ed. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Simonton, D.K. (2002) Great psychologists and their times: Scientific insights into psychology’s history, Washington, DC. : American Psychological Association
Sternberg, R. D. (Ed.) (2003) Psychologists defying the crowd: Stories of those who battled the establishment and won, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Sternberg, R.D. (Ed). (2003) The anatomy of impact: What makes the great works of psychology great, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.