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421
It begins
Many civilizations begin to question how and why the mind and psyche works the way it does. A prominent culture in the development of the eventual branches of studying the mind are the ancient greeks, men such as Plato, his mentor Socrates, and even before them Thales, began to question and create their own thesis on the human mind. However a Roman man, Galen, an already accomplished surgeon and philosipher summarizes the old worlds view of psychology in his publication Quod Animi Mores Corpor. -
Period: 421 to
Hstory and development
A timeline portraying a summarized history of psychology and how it came to be what it is today. -
Mar 1, 1547
The western world catches up
Psychology as a term was thought to have been first used by a german scholar, Rudolph Goclenius, who used it in his publication "Psychologia hoc est de hominis perfectione, anima, ortu", which led to German scholar, Christian Wolff, using it in his publication (which tried to make distinctions between empirical and rational psychology) somewhere between 1679 and 1754. -
Germany leads the way
Germany and its many philosophers begin expanding psychology as a field of knowledge, however because no one had yet succesfully challenged Immanuel Kant's idea that Psychology would never become a true scinece because it couldnt not be applied to mathematics, it still was not considered a "true" science, many sought to disprove this. One man, Hermann von Helmholtz, a pioneer of physiology, took one of the worlds now most famous psychologists in the world as his assistant: Wilhelm Wundt -
Recognized
Wilhelm soon moved away from von Helmholtz to persue his own studies of psychology, in 1874, he became a proffesor in Zurich, where he published Principles of Physiological Psychology. After this, he was offered a better paying proffesorship in Leipzig, where in 1879, he founded the first ever laboratory dedicated solely to psychological research. Wilhelm died in 1920, after teaching G. Stanley Hall, who had already achieved a PHD under his previous proffesor: WIlliam James -
Across the sea
As psychology was blooming in Germany, so it was in America. A physiology teacher, William James, opened his own laboratory at Harvard University in 1875, however it wasnt used for original experiments in his life span. James also gave lectures at prestigous schools such as Johns Hopkins, where he argued that the human consciousness was not a "phenomenon" and must have an evolutionary purpose. He also authored one of the most influential texts on the matter of all time. -
Something to remember
Receiving his doctorate in 1873, at 23 years of age, Herman began conducting experiments focused on human memory and its ability and capacity for retaining information. In 1885 he published his work, Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology, which cemented his role as a pioneering member of those contributing to experimental psychology. Accepted as a proffesor at the university of Berlin the same year, he moved away to finish his two last writings, both hugely influetial. 1850-1909 -
How big is your IQ?
In 1889, in the Sorbonne, Paris, Alfred Binet and his colleagues jointly founded the first psych laboratory in France. The French government soon asked Alfred to create a way of testing students of the public education system to see if they were intelligent or needed special attention. With another scientist, Theodore Simon, he created in 1905 what has been adapted to be the standard IQ test today: The Binet-Simon Intelligence Test. 1857-1911 -
The big one
Born in the Austrian Empire (now the Czech Republic) in 1856, Sigmund Freud entered high school at the age of nine, in Vienna, to eventually practice nuerology in France. There he began to try and cure his patients with hypnosis, finding it to be inneffective, used different methods which slowly developed into simply "talking the problems out", this genuinely makes Freud the most influential figure in psychology, forming the basis of what psychological therapy is today. Died 1939 -
Behave yourself
John B. Watson, a prominent American psychologist, who founded behaviourism as a psychological school, and strongly believed that conditioning human beings as children (nurture) over letting the environment condition them (nature) was a more responsible way of raising a child. He conducted the controverial "Little Albert" experiment in 1920, in which he conditioned a young child to be fearful of white rodents through repated negative suggestion. He died in 1958 -
The dark age
Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi, a medievel islamic man of many professions (including music and philosphy) is one of the first men to present the idea that sickness of the mind can be connected to sickness of the body, and vice-versa. He formulated that there were to types of severe sadness (now called depression), sadness from loss, or sadness from unknown reasons, and they required different treatment.
