Introduction

The Study of psychology is of great interest to all that seek to understand the meaning of life
and to find explanations to why we do what we do and think the way we think. Are our
behaviour learned or inborn? If it is innate, why the differences in behaviour between
identical twin; if it’s acquired how and when it is acquired. From the great thinkers of Greece,
such as Aristotle and Plato, to present day geniuses mankind seeks to find reasons to explain
himself and understand who he is and his constituents. His quest has given rise to the field of
psychology.

According to Malim (1998) psychology of today reflects the discipline’s rich and varied
history; he observes that the origins of psychology differ significantly from contemporary
conceptions of the field. In order to gain a full understanding of psychology, there is need to
spend some time exploring its history and origins. How did psychology originate? When did
it begin? Who were the people responsible for establishing psychology as a separate science?

Before Psychology:

According to Feldman (2005) some half a million years ago people assumed that
psychological problems were caused by evil spirits. This is true even in most African
traditional beliefs. Feldman (2005) further states that to allow these evil spirits to escape
from a person’s body , ancient healers performed trephining which was the chipping away at
the patient’s skull with stone instruments until a hole is cut though the bone. Feldman (2005)
agrees with Davey (2004) that psychology can be traced back to the ancient Greeks because
of the kinds of questions philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle asked, i.e. questions about
Personality types and the association between the mind and the body. The Greeks started a
tradition of rational thought to try and explain things using logical reasoning. According to
Davey G. (2004) Descartes claimed that there was a separation between the mechanical
bodies which could be investigated though science and spiritual soul which was a gift of God.
During the 17th-century, the French philosopher Rene Descartes asserted that the mind and
body were two separate entities that interact to form the human experience this was what
became to be known as Cartesian Dualism.

The Beginning of Psychology:

According to(Benjamin, 1998) The renaissance which begun in the fourth century and lasted
though the early part of seventh century, it represented a revival of interest in the new
approaches to Arts, Literature, and knowledge including science. It is important because it
marked an end to the dominance of rationalism, a philosophy that sought knowledge through
reason and common sense and established a belief that knowledge could be acquired through
observation and experimentation. According to (Benjamin, 1998) Psychology as an
experimental science grew from the post renaissance developments in philosophy and
physiological studies of the nervous system and sensory mechanism.

Malim (1998) states that the accepted definition of psychology is the scientific study of
behaviour and experience, he further states that psychologists aim to explore questions about
the way human beings and sometimes animals behave and how they experience the world
around them. He further states that psychology as a scientific discipline has a short history
only just over a hundred years.

According to Malim, Birch (1998) psychology finds its roots in philosophy which dates back
to the time of Plato and Aristotle. Lahey (2001) states that earliest origins of psychology are
in the writings of ancient Greek Philosophers about the nature of life, such as the writings of
Aristotle born in 384 BC, Aristotle was interested in learning everything he could about the
nature of life itself. Lahey (2001) further states that Aristotle collected and dissected plans
and animals in an attempt to see how their organs sustained life. Lahey (2001) records
Aristotle writings about life, Aristotle is quoted as having said, “you’ll understand what life is
if you think about the act of dying. When I die, how will I be different from the way I am
right now? In the first moments after death my body will be scarcely different in physical
terms than it was in the last second of life, but I will no longer move, no longer sense, nor

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speak, nor feel nor care. It’s these things that are life. At the moment, the psyche takes flight
in the last breath.” According to Nevid (2007) the ancient Greek philosophers who had the
most profound influence on psychological thought were Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Nevid
(2007) further states that Socrates emphasized the importance of self examination and
personal reflection. He believed the unexamined life is not worth living, Plato on the other
had was of the opinion that we should not rely on our senses to acquire knowledge about the
world since the world is given to us by our senses in an imperfect copy of reality. Nevid
(2007) states also that the notion that our sense are not to be trusted as windows to the truth
denotes with modern psychologists who study how our senses can deceive us in form of
visual illusions. Plato is reported to have believed that to acquire true knowledge one should
rely on thought and reason, not on information that comes to us through imperfect senses.

Aristotle on the other hand believed that knowledge could be acquired by senses through
careful observation. Nevid (2007) states that Aristotle held that the pursuit of knowledge
should be based on experience with the world around us, not on pure thought and reasoning.
This form of thinking became to be known as Aristotelian thinking which influenced the
development of modern sciences which places emphasis on experimentation and careful
observation as pathways to knowledge. According to Nevid (2007), Aristotle maintained that
people should believe in what they can see and touch and he wrote about natural causes of
human behaviour rather than appealing to divine or supernatural explanations.

Nevid (2007) also observes that even as we consider the contributions of the ancient Greek
philosophers there were other systems of thought about human nature taking root elsewhere
around the same time such as African, the Middle East, and Far East, such as Confucius who
became the most influential and respected thinker in Chinese history. Confucius believed
that people have inborn capacity to do good and that evil is a product of a bad environment or
a lack of education not an evil nature, he also believed that people should be governed by
moral principles and that they should cultivate their minds to the utmost.

According to (http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/psychistory_5.htm
retrieved on 22nd Jan 2011), early philosophers relied on methods such as observation
and logic. According to (Benjamin, 2007) during this period there was a school of thought
that the universe was composed of matter in motion; atoms of one object would come into
contact with atoms of another object causing movements or a change in the second object.

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And this view according to him was known as Mechanism because it conceived the universe
as a giant machine. According to (Benjamin 1988), if humans were part of the universe could
they also be viewed as machines? Rene` Descartes viewed both the body and part of the mind
as machines capable of interacting with one another in such a way that not only did the mind
influence the body but also the body was capable of influencing the mind

However today’s a psychologist utilize scientific methodologies to study and draw

conclusions about human thought and behaviour. Physiology also contributed to
psychology’s eventual emergence as a scientific discipline. Early physiology research on the
brain and behaviour had a dramatic impact on psychology, ultimately contributing to the
application of scientific methodologies to the study of human thought and behaviour.

Psychology as a Scientific Discipline:

During the mid-1800s, a German physiologist named Wilhelm Wundt was using scientific
research methods to investigate reaction times. According to Nevid (2007) Wilhelm Wundt
was interested in studying people’s mental experiences and he used a method called
introspection or careful examination and reports of one’s’ conscious experience referred to as
perceiving, feeling, thinking, or sensing at each particular moment in time. Wilhelm Wundt
opened the world’s first psychology lab in 1879 at the University of Leipzig. This event is
generally considered the official start of psychology as a separate and distinct scientific
discipline.

According to (http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/psychistory_5.htm
retrieved on 22nd Jan 2011), Wilhelm Wundt perceived the subject as the study of
human consciousness and sought to apply experimental methods to studying internal mental
processes. While his use of a process known as introspection is seen as unreliable and
unscientific today, his early work in psychology helped set the stage for future experimental
methods.

Structuralism:

According to (Malim, 1998) Inspired by the pioneering work of Fechner and other scientist.
Wilhelm Wundt and his many collaborators found the school of structuralism. He believed

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that psychology should concern itself with the elementary processes of conscious experience.
The structure of consciousness and immediate mental experience could be broken down into
basic elements and compounds in the same way that in chemistry. The elements of conscious
experience were considered to be of two kinds, Sensations- sights, sounds tastes, smells and
touch which arise from stimulation of the sense organ and; Feelings, Love, fear, joy and son
on

According to Nevid (2007) Edward B. Titchener, took Wundt’s teaching and methods of
introspection to the United States and other English speaking countries. Titchener is credited
with the founding of psychology’s first major school of thought. According to the
structuralism, human consciousness can be broken down into much smaller parts. Using a
process known as introspection, trained subjects would attempt to break down their responses
and reactions to the most basic sensation and perceptions.

According to (http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/psychistory_5.htm
retrieved on 22nd Jan 2011), structuralism is notable for its emphasis on scientific
research however its methods were unreliable, limiting, and subjective. Structuralism died
When Titchener died in 1927.

The Functionalism:

Functionalism as a school of thought was propagated by William James during the mid- to
late-1800s. William James emerged as one of the major American psychologists during this
period and the father of American psychology.

According to (Feldman 2005) the main perspective that replaced structuralism as psychology
became to be known as functionalism, which is an approach to psychology that concentrated
on what the mind does the functions of the mental activity and the roles of behaviour in
allowing people to adapt to their environment. Functionalists utilized methods such as direct
observation and believed that consciousness existed as a more continuous and changing
process.

According to Nevid (2007) William James believed that we develop habits such as the
characteristic ways in which we use a folk or a spoon, because they enable us to perform

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more effectively in meeting demands of daily life. Nevid further states that William James
influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution believed that all life forms including
humans have evolved from earlier life forms by adapting over time to demands of their
natural environments and evolution could be explained by natural selection. Which is the
process by which member of a species that are best adapted to the environment are the ones
most likely to survive and pass long their traits to succeeding generations.

Nevid further states that William James extended Darwin’s theory of evolution to Psychology
by advancing the idea that most adaptive behaviour in an individual are the ones most likely
to grow stronger and become habitual while less useful or adaptive behaviours will likely
disappear.

Nevid (2007) also states that William James was also concerned with the streams of
consciousness, the continuous current of thoughts that seem to flow endlessly through our
awareness or consciousness like a river of stream.

Gestalt psychology:

According to Feldman (2005) another important reaction to structuralism was the

development of Gestalt psychology in the early 1900s, Feldman states that Gestalt
psychology is a perspective focusing on how perception is organized instead of concentrating
on how people think. According to Lahey, (2001) Gestalt psychologist felt that human
consciousness could not be meaningfully broken down into raw elements, as structuralists
tried to do. They concentrated on how individual elements as units or wholes. The Credo was
the basic elements that compose our perception of objects produce something greater and
more meaningful than those individual elements alone.

Psychoanalysis:

According to (http://psychology.about.com assessed on 22nd Jan, 2011.) up to this point,

early psychology stressed conscious human experience. An Austrian physician named
Sigmund Freud changed the face of psychology in a dramatic way, proposing a theory of
personality that emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind. Freud’s clinical work
with patients suffering from hysteria and other ailments led him to believe that early

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childhood experiences and unconscious impulses contributed to the development of adult
personality and behaviour.

According to Freud, psychological disorders are the result of these unconscious conflicts
becoming extreme or unbalanced. The psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud,
influenced the mental health field as well as other areas including art, literature and popular
culture.

Behaviourism:

According to Lahey (2001) Behaviourism emerged through the work of a Russian

physiologist named Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov's research on the digestive systems of dogs led to his
discovery of the classical conditioning process, which demonstrated that behaviours could be
learned via conditioned associations. Pavlov demonstrated that this learning process could be
used to make an association between and environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring
stimulus.

According to (http://psychology.about.com assessed on 22nd Jan, 2011.) Psychology changed

dramatically during the early 20th-century as another school of thought known as
behaviourism rose to dominance. Behaviourism was a major change from previous
theoretical perspectives, rejecting the emphasis on both the conscious and unconscious mind.
Instead, behaviourism strove to make psychology a more scientific discipline by focusing
purely on observable behaviour.

An American psychologist named John B. Watson soon became one of the strongest
advocates of behaviourism. This school of thought holds that the subject matter of human
psychology is the behaviour of the human being. Behaviourists claim that consciousness is
neither a definite nor a usable concept.

According to (http://psychology.about.com assessed on 22nd Jan, 2011.) the impact of

behaviourism was enormous, and this school of thought continued to dominate for the next
50 years. Psychologist B.F. Skinner furthered the behaviourist perspective with his concept of
operant conditioning, which demonstrated the effect of punishment and reinforcement on
behaviour.

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Humanistic Psychology:

According to Lahey (2001) during the 1950s another movement that focused on the
unconscious in psychological problems emerged known as Humanistic psychology.
(http://psychology.about.com assessed on 22nd Jan, 2011.) This school of thought is often
referred to as the "third force" in psychology; this theoretical perspective emphasized
conscious experiences.

American psychologist Carl Rogers is often considered to be one of the founders of this
school of thought. According to (http://psychology.about.com assessed on 22nd Jan, 2011.),
Rogers believed strongly in the power of free will and self-determination. Psychologist
Abraham Maslow also contributed to humanistic psychology with his famous hierarchy of
needs theory of human motivation.

According to Lahey, (2001) Humanists see society as being the cause of our self defeating
unconscious minds and the most important aspect of peoples is our view of what we are like,
i.e. self concept, if one thinks he’s intelligent one may enrol for a difficult class and also
humanists believe that society often makes it difficult to have an accurate self concept,

Cognitive psychology:

According to Davey, (2004) from 1950s onward it became apparent that behaviourism could
not account for complex behaviours such as language use and it and it was important to
consider mental processes to explain some psychological phenomena. This gave rise to the
development of Cognitive psychology which was based on the idea that the mind is like a
computer.

According to Davey (2004) Cognitive approach emphasizes the importance of active mental
processing. According to Cognitive psychologists, behaviour is seen as being a result of
information processing in the brain. This approach is used to explain the cognitive processes
of perception, memory and problem solving, and also explaining social behaviour and child
development and the method of study employed is controlled experiment, computer
modelling and neuropsychology

Eclectic approach:

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According to (http://psychology.about.com assessed on 22nd Jan, 2011.), Today, the majority
of psychologists do not identify themselves with a single school of thought. Instead, they
often focus on a particular specialty area or perspective, often drawing on ideas from a range
of theoretical backgrounds. This eclectic approach has contributed new ideas and theories
that will continue to shape psychology for years to come.

Arrival of Psychology as a Study Discipline at Nairobi University:

Psychology started being taught at university level at Nairobi University as a discipline at the
university major in 1988.

Arrival of Psychology as a study Discipline at Egerton University Nairobi

Campus:

Psychology started being offered as a study discipline at Egerton University Nairobi Campus
in 2009.

Conclusion

Psychology’s history as discipline has seen dramatic growth and change since from Wundt’s
lab and it will continue to evolve as new ideas and perspectives are introduced. Recent
research in psychology looks at many aspects of the human experience, from the biological
influences on behaviour to the impact of social and cultural factors.

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References

1. Benjamin, T. L. Jr. (1988) A History of Psychology. New York. USA McGraw Hill,
Inc.

2. Davey, G. (2004) complete psychology, London. Hodder & Stroughton

3. Feldman, S.R. (2005) Essentials of Understanding psychology (6th Ed.) New

York, USA. McGraw-Hill Co. Inc.

4. http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/psychistory_5.htm

5. Lahey, B.B. (2001) Psychology: An Introduction (7th Ed.) New York.

McGraw-Hill Co. Inc.

6. Malim, T. & Birch, A. (1998) Introductory Psychology. NY. Palgrave.

7. Nevid, S. J. (2007) Psychology: Concepts and Application (2nd Ed.)Boston.

USA. Houghton Mifflin Company.

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