Historical approaches to Psychology

Inheritable Traits

Sep 12, 1859

Sir Francis Galton, an English mathematician, and scientist brought up the theory that genius or eminence was an inherited trait. He ignored the fact that it could have been(was) the environment to which children were exposed to that made them "geniuses". Galton would directly test the characteristics and abilities of groups of people at a time to evaluate them. These tests were actually the primitive ancestors of modern personality and intelligence tests. Later, his theory was discarded.

Functionalism

Nov 11, 1873

William James first brought functionalism to life when he finished his book "The Principles of Psychology" and taught it on to others in his, and the first ever, psychology class in Harvard University. Obviously, William James was a Functionalist, and what functionalists attempt to do is to study and understand the function, rather than the structure, of consciousness. James believed that thinking, feeling, learning, and remembering, all served one purpose; that of survival.

Structuralism

Aug 4, 1879

First, known way someone ever established modern psychology as a formal field of study was when Wilhelm Wundt started his Laboratory of Psychology in 1879, in Leipzig Germany. Wundt's main interest was structuralism, which is the study of the simplest definable components of the adult mind in hopes of finding how such components fit togeather in such complex forms. Wundt developed a method called introspection to collect information on the mind, and tried to map out its basic structures.

Psychoanalytic Psychology

Feb 8, 1888

Sigmund Freud was a physician who came up with psychoanalytic psychology in 1940. Sigmund believed that there was more to the mind than just its conscious side. He was interested in the unconscious. He believed that it was there that we had our most primitive biological urges that are in conflict with the requirements of society and morality, and he thought that that too was responsible for all the medically unexplainable physical symptoms that troubled patients of clueless doctors.

Gestalt Psychology

Dec 5, 1912

Gestalt psychology arose due to three German psychologists; Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka who disagreed with the principles of structuralism and behaviourism. They had other ideas and came up with Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology studies how sensations are assembled into perceptual experiences. This was was of the first approaches to cognitive psychology.