PSYC1001

- HISTORY
PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS AND HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY

What is history?
Thinking about brain functions
How do we gain knowledge?
Important ideas in Psychology
History of modern Psychology
History of thinking about Mental Health

Psychology: The scientific study of brain, mental processes and behaviour and the relations
between them. It is a network.

Study of the brain, mind and behaviour
1. Brain: Neuro-biological processes that generate mental processes and states
2. Mind: Individual sensations, perceptions, memories, thoughts, dreams, incentives,
emotions and all subjective experiences
3. Behaviour: A wide variety of actions by men (and animal) that can be observed

Is there a solid difference between mind, brain and behaviour?
- Hard to define intelligence or being intelligent because of the lack of consciousness,
intention, purpose in actions or behaviour.

Psychology is about general rules, not about individual cases:
- we like to know the principles, laws of the mind, brain and behaviour
- these principles help us (also) to understand problematic cases
- still individual cases can help us understand the more general principles or initiate
research to understand the general principles

Ways to gain insight
- in the mental states: experiments, observation, tests, etc.
- in the role of genes and environment: twin studies, nature vs nurture
- at the brain in action: neuro-imaging, electrophysiological measurements

What do psychologists do with knowledge?
after observation, they describe and analyse, trying to understand and explain it.
if you think you understand it, one can predict future behaviour (if wrong, go back to the
design table). If right, you have ways to control and influence behaviour

Why study Psychology?
1. Describe human (and animal) behaviour
2. Understanding and explain behaviour
3. Predicting future behaviour: pre-existing frame of reference of how people are; we
can predict because of personal space
4. Control and influence behaviour

History of Psychology
History of psychology starts with Wilhelm Wundt (1832 1920), establishing the first
psychological laboratory in Leipzip in 1879.
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1. George Santayana (1863 1952, Harvard): Those who do not know history are
doomed to repeat it.
2. Alhazen or Ibn Al-Haytham (965 Basra,Iraq 1040 Cairo, Egypt)
3. Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: no man can surpass his own time, for
the spirit of his time is also his own spirit
4. Victor Hugo (1802 1885): Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come
5. Franz Josef Gall (1757 1828): phrenology
6. Spurzheim (1755 1832): math bump or language bump
7. Jean Pierre Flourens (1794 1867): tested Galls ideas of localisationism by lesions in
living animals (rabbits, pigeons)
- removing cerebral hemispheres (perception; judgement gone)
- removing cerebellum (problems with motor coordination)
- removing brain stem ( you die)
8. Phineas Gage (1848 iron rod through his head change in personality) This led to
the study lobotomy
9. Paul Broca (1824 1880) and Brocas area
Patient Tan lost speech and motor function but language comprehension was
intact
10. Karl Wernicke (1848 1905)
His patient talked but made no sense speech intact but language comprehension
gone
11. Noam Chomsky (1928 now): Language is an innate faculty of the human mind
12. William Molyneuxs Problem/Question (1688)
13. Aristotle (Greek; 384 322 BC): The Tabula rasa idea; knowledge through
perception
14. John Locke (1632 1704; empiricist): Nothing is in the mind which was not first in
the senses)
All knowledge is delivered by our senses, so experience derived from perception.
One is born without innate ideas.
15. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 1872; materialist): You are what you eat
16. Bishop George Berkeley (1685 1753; immaterialist; subjective idealism): Objects
cannot exist without being perceived
17. Ren Descartes (interactionalist) (nativist): I think therefore I am
You can doubt everything except your own existence
Emmanuel Kant (Germany): the human mind knows objects: it is innate!
18. Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801 1887): father of psychophysics
The central idea: We are a product of evolution in a physical environment so why
shouldnt our brain, as a product of this process, not obey physical rules ?
19. Ernst Weber (1795 1878): Webers law
20. Karl Popper (1902 1994): show it to be false
Falsifiability or refutability = a statement, hypothesis, theory needs to be opened to
be tested in the sense that it potentially can be proven to be false
21. Thomas Kuhn (1922 1996)
- no obvious science/non-science demarcation
- not just progress
- paradigm shifts; paradigms are not just a common theory but part of a world view
- hard to change, and only changes if anomalies show up that are hard to explain by
the current paradigm
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22. Edward Titchener (1867 1927): a student of Wundt, based on introspection,
structuralism to the USA
23. William James (1842 1910): Functionalism (USA)
24. Max Werthemier, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Khler: founders of Gestalt psychology
(Europe)
Kurt Koffka: The whole is other than the sum of its parts
25. Ivan Petrovich Parlov (Russia, late 19th century): psychic secretion that resulted in
classic conditioning
26. John B. Watson: The behaviour of a person is the product of all one has learned in
the past
27. Edward Lee Thorndike: Thorndikes puzzle box
The idea being that if an action has a positive effect its frequency will increase. (and
vice versa). This kind of learning was the advent of operant conditioning or
instrumental learning.
28. Burrhus Frederic Skinner (Behaviourist): designed the skinner box; general principle
is shaping behaviour.
Behaviorists showed little interest in what happened in the brain. They looked at
stimuli one can observe and the behavioural outcome of that (stimulus response
aka S-R)
29. Sigmund Freud: psycho-analytic (psychodynamic) theory on personality and
Pyscholpathology
Psychology moved into mental health by Sigmund Freud
Freud and hypnotherapy: hypnotic regression, mostly patients with hysteria,
recalling traumatic events, reliving the emotions would help relieving them from
their hysteric symptoms. Freud thought that hypnosis would still block repressed
painful memories.
The neo-Freudiants (Anna Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler [Jung and Adler moved away
strongly from Freuds ideas], Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Erik Erikson)
30. Hyronymus Bosch: Cutting the stone (1494)
31. Hippocrates: Mental illness has it cause in natural occurrences in the human body;
an imbalance in (one of) the four essential fluids in our body. Pathological problems
in the brain! (so no role for demons and other supernatural forces)
32. Franz Mesmer & animal magnetismand the advent of Hypnosis: psychology
becomes more clinical
33. Lightnet Witmer (1867 1956): (seemed to have) introduced the term clinical
psychology
- applied work on learning disabilities
- taught a young person who had problems with spelling that made him establish the
first psychological clinic (1896)

Why study history of Psychology?
- because our memory is far from perfect
- interference by time, discussion, other information
- perception can be deceptive
- stored information is never perfect, it can disappear
- THE history is more or less a consensus between scientists we believe are smart and
trustworthy
- Presentist bias: The tendency to discuss and analyse past ideas, people and events in
terms of the present.
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Zeitgeist = spirit of the times
- German word = Time spirit or ghost

Trepanation: Some tools (Incas in Peru) (as far back as 6500 BC in France)
(is a surgical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull, exposing
the dura mater to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases. )
Trypanon = a borer turned by hand or with a string
Ancient times: Brain vs Soul
- Heart was the seat of the soul (Hegemonikon)
- Feelings, thinking etc. came from the heart not the brain
- Heart stayed in body. The Liver, kidneys, lungs, stomach were placed back or stored
in jars, next to the body
- The brain was discarded
Excerebration: removing the brain before mummification (via nostrils and an iron
hook)

The Edwin Smith Papyrus
- it is about head wounds of soldiers
- brain lesions lead to distal symptoms
- left side of the brain controls right side of the body and vice versa
- the brain is responsible for speech
- touching the brain can lead to epileptic seizures
This tells us that the seat of the soul was clearly different than the source of our behaviour.
Led to the conclusion that specific functions are localised in the brain.

Description of the Ventricles (Herophilus of Chalcedon, around 300 BC)
- Lateral ventricle (left and right)
- The third ventricle in the center
- The fourth (discovered later) below
Gave rise to the 3 cell doctrine

3-Cell Theory / Doctrine
- Cell 1: collection of information from senses
- Cell 2: cognition/ thinking
- Cell 3: memory

Nature versus Nurture (What is in there and what needs to be learned)
Nature: most knowledge is present at birth
Nurture: you learn and that is how it gets into your brain

Nativism versus Empiricism
- philosophical views: how dependent we are on experience when acquiring
knowledge
- rationalism sees a role for reasoning as a source to gain knowledge with parts being
innate

Body versus mind
- (monism) materialism: everything is tissue (reductionism)
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- (monism) subjective idealism: the world only exists in my mind
- (dualism) both mind and body exist but need to talk to each other (interactionism)

Some belief that the mind doesnt exist as an independent separate entity. If there is
something like a mind, it is created by neural activity and as such understanding the matter
means that you understand the mind. Every mental activity can be reduced to
neurobiological activity (neuro-reductionism or materialism).

Tabula Rasa (Latin) = blank slate
When we are born, is our brain empty? no knowledge, no ideas ? and we have to learn
everything ?

Rationalism of Plato (nativisim)
- not just passive registering but an act
- some information is innate and we can reason on it
- perception doesnt help to find real knowledge about the world, doesnt give
reliable information
- it cant be only perception because it is in the brain but we have to get it out using
our ratio (thinking and reasoning)

Monism versus Dualism
Monism
- Materialism
There is only the body, all reality is of a physical nature. Only the body exist. The
mind can be explained/reduced to biology and biochemical activity (aka
Reductionism)
- Mentalism (aka immaterialism or subjective idealism)
Reality only exists in the mind. Without mind, reality might not even exist (so the
physical world would be irrelevant)

The other monist approach is mentalism (aka immaterialism or subjective idealism). Reality
only exists in the mind. Without mind, reality might not even exist (so the physical world
would be irrelevant). It is complicated but see it as the representation of the world that is
seen as most important. (for example: the falling tree and the presence or absence of
sound). A famous immaterialist was Bishop George Berkeley (to be is to be perceived).

Rene Descartes was a dualist. He believed there is both a body (matter) and mind and they
existed independently (so mind is NOT made by matter). The problem though is that they
need to interact and he thought that one structure in the brain would fit very well: the
pineal gland. That is where the mind talked to matter and vice versa.
Back to nativism versus empiricism. The mainland philosophers (Descartes but also
Emmanuel Kant) were mostly on the nativist side but saw a strong contribution to nurture
(empiricism).

This position is best represented by Noam Chomksy. He stated Language is an innate
faculty of the human mind. This is very nativist. He believed that we are all born with the
ability to learn language. WHICH language is dependent where you grow up (Vietnam,
Brazil, Italy, etc.). That is of course a role for the environment (=nurture).

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Dualism
- Interactionism
Body and mind both exist but they need to talk to each other, interact with each
other
Where do they interact?
Descartes: must be the pineal gland


The Wild Boy of Aveyron, Victor.
- Name given to a boy found roaming the woods of Aveyron in Southern France in
1799
- He behaved like a wild animal and gave all indications that he had been raised by
wild animals, eating off the floor, making canine noises, disliking baths and clothes.
He also could not speak.
- He was taken in by Dr. Jean Marc Itard who had developed a reputation for teaching
the deaf to speak. However, after years of work, Itard failed to teach Victor to more
than a few words.

Genie and the Critical Age Hypothesis of language acquisition
- spent 11 years imprisoned life in a room no bigger than 10 by 14 feet

Webers law
- the change in a stimulus that will be just noticeable is a constant ratio of the original
stimulus (just noticeable difference)

Weber and Fechner: Psychophysics, finding physics-like laws in the brain
Finding laws the brain uses, like we have laws in the physical world

Scientific terminology
Fact: based on direct observation
Theory: an idea as to how these facts can be explained
Hypothesis: how you can predict new facts based on what we already know
Test/experiment: how do we test this in a methodologically sound way

An example: Clever (Kluger) Hans
Subliminal Perception
- Research has repeatedly shown that subliminal messages can affect mood and bias
memory retrieval but cannot trigger complex behaviour

Kuhns Revolution: A new paradigm emerges
Old Theory: well established, many followers, politically powerful, well understood, many
anomalies
New Theory: few followers, untested, new concepts/techniques, accounts for anomalies,
asks new questions

But how should scientific progress work? Karl Popper was clear. You proof someone to be
wrong. A good scientist defines his theory such that it can be tested. You cant say all
swans are black. This cant be tested because you might miss one when searching for all
swans (your only proof is to find them all!). But you CAN say that not all swans are black by
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just finding one that is not black.

Thomas Kuhn. I realized that we didnt discuss his theory in too great a detail. But, the best
to keep in mind is that he didnt believe that scientific changes (revolutions) work like
Popper suggested. His ideas are in a way best represented by what Max Planck said: A new
scientific theory does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the
light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that
is familiar with it. There is an establishment that will be very reluctant to give up their
position even if the evidence that they were wrong is growing or overwhelming. A new
generation will grow and slowly the old theory will be taken over by a new theory (see
the MIT conference and the book by Ulric Neisser).

Popper vs Kuhn (externally sourced)
Popper argued that all science is based on hypotheses that must be tested to destruction.
Sound evidence which does not fit with the hypothesis must logically cause it to be rejected.
However, the other side of the same coin is that no hypothesis can ever be said to be
proven. Over time, the body of evidence consistent with a successful hypothesis builds up to
the extent that it becomes regarded as a theory, for example the theory of General
Relativity, or Tectonic Plate theory.

Thomas Kuhn provided a different view of how scientists work. He introduced the concept
of normal science to cover the situation where scientists work on various topics within a
central paradigm. In contrast to Popper, the Kuhnian view is that wrong results (i.e. those
which are in conflict with the prevailing paradigm) are considered to be due to errors on the
part of the researcher rather than findings which damage the consensus view.

However, as conflicting evidence increases, a crisis point is reached where a new consensus
view is arrived at and this generates a so-called paradigm shift. Simply, Kuhn says scientists
are human and have human prejudices. Advocates of the man-made global warming
hypothesis promote Kuhns view and repeatedly cite consensus as evidence. Simply, they
proclaim that the number of experts who hold an opinion is evidence that the opinion is
correct. But opinions are formed by many things including personal prejudices so
consensus is no help to persons who wish to discern the expert opinions that most closely
match physical reality. Poppers philosophy of science is more useful for those who want to
decide between competing scientific opinions.

Building blocks of our mental world

- The search of the primitive experiences that constitute thought
- The mental elements Structuralism
- Introspection as a technique to look into the brain
- The brain puts information together such as auditory sensations, visual (color, form),
tactile (pressure, temperature, pain), time (temporal events) synthesis, also known
as apperception

Two movements that had problems with structuralism:
1. Functionalism (USA William James)
Problem with structuralist approach is the Stream of consciousness. You cant just
freeze/divide current thoughts to analyse them to little building blocks. Simply
because there is a continuous arrival of new thoughts that must interfere
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The important question is not structure but the function: what do you use it for?

2. Gestalt movement (Germany Wertheimer and colleagues)
Perceiving is not just sensations but a creative process of organising in/by the brain
Gestalt psychologists really meant something deeper: The whole exists
independently of its parts e.g KANIZSA triangle
Simplified representation: you cant understand architecture by studying a brick


Gestalt Laws: (famous: Wertheimer, Koffka and Kohler)

Parallel movements
- stimuli you can observe and responses that you can observe

Intermezzo (note: Fechner and Weber)
- learning by reinforcement
- learning by punishment
- any process through which experience at one time can alter an individuals
behaviour at a future time

Psychophysics:
The central idea: We are a product of evolution in a physical environment so, why
shouldnt our brain, as a product of this process, not obey physical rules?
A famous concept in psychophysics is JND which stands for Just Noticeable Difference.
This is the smallest difference between stimuli that you can perceive.

The cognitive revolution: 1950 1970
- information theory (Broadbent)
- human problem solver (Newell & Simon)
- psycholinguistics (Chomsky)
- cognitive psychology (Neisser)

The emergence of cognitive science
- 1950s 1970s
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- 3 main influences:
(applied) research on human performance, under pressure of WWII
developments in computer science, in particular artificial intelligence
developments in linguistics

Cognitive neuroscience
- newest movement
- neuroscience and cognitive science (psychology) started working together
- the focus is on the neurobiological/neurophysiological substrates that underlie
cognition and mental processes

The behavioural Model
- changed through condition (so based on Behaviourism) e.g systematic
desensitization

Humanistic Theory
Unconditional positive regard empathy, accept clients feelings and actions as this will
make them open and honest, which is necessary for growth (which a therapist should see as
a desired result)

Currently:
We are more and more aware that there is no such thing as a single cause/influence for a
problem: biological, behavioural, cognitive, emotional, social and even cultural.