History of Psychology :: Historical Social Sciences Psychology Essays

History of PsychologyIn this essay I am looking at where Psychology as a orbit has come from and what affects these early ideas have had on psychology today, Psychology as a whole has stemmed from a number of different areas of study from physical science to Biology,But the first Psychological foundations are rooted in philosophy, which to this day propels psychological inquiry in areas such as language acquisition, consciousness, and even batch among many others.While the great philosophical distinction between mind and body in western thought can be traced to the Greeks, it is to the influential formulate of Ren Descartes, French mathematician, philosopher, and physiologist, that we owe the first systematic account of the mind/body relationship. As the 19th century progressed, the problem of the relationship of mind to brain became of all time more pressing. The word Psychology comes from two Greek words Psyche and Logos. The term ?psychology? used early on described the study of the spirit. It was in the 18th century when psychology gained its literal meaning The study of behaviour. In studies today psychology is defined as the scientific and systematic study of serviceman and animal behaviour. The term psychology has a capacious history but the psychology as an independent discipline is fairly new.Psychology started, and had a long history, as a topic within the fields of philosophy and physiology. It then became an independent field of its own through the work of the German Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of data-based psychology and structuralism. Wundt stressed the use of scientific methods in psychology, particularly through the use of introspection. In 1875, a room was set-aside for Wundt for demonstrations in what we now rallying cry sensation and perception. This is the same year that William James set up a similar lab at Harvard. Wilhelm Wundt and William James are usually thought of as the fathers of psychology, as well as the founders of psycho logy?s first two great ?schools? Structuralism and Functionalism. Psychologist Edward B Titchner said ?to study the brain and the unconscious we should buffer it into its structural elements, after that we can construct it into a whole and understand what it does.? (psicafe.com) Functionalism, an early school of psychology, focuses on the acts and functions of the mind rather than its internal contents. Its most crowing American advocate is William James. William James is the author of ?The Principles of Psychology? a book that is considered to be one of the most important texts in modern psychology.