Introduction to Psychology

Week 2
History and Perspectives of Psychology

IQRA UNIVERSITY KARACHI CAMPUS.

 Welcome!!
History and perspectives
of Psychology
 LEARNING OUTCOME

Origin of psychology

With understanding of the origin / basic outline of history of

the Psychology, students will be ready to understand how to-
day’s major perspectives have evolved.

Students will be able to differentiate between seven perspec-

tives of Psychology.
Last class quick revision
The Historical Origins of
psychology
 Beginning of Psychology
• Supernatural Elements: Before the age of scientific inquiry
all good and bad manifestations beyond the control of hu-
man kind were regarded as supernatural.
 Early Demonology
• DEMONOLOGY:
• The doctrine that a semi autonomous or
completely autonomous evil being such
as the devil may dwell within a person
and control his or her mind and body is
called demonology.
Trephining
• People thought that psychological
problems are caused by evil spirits
• To allow those spirits to escape
from a person’s body the ancient
healers chipped a hole in patient’s
skull with crude instrument.
 The Early Greek Philosophers
• ANIMISM:
Looking at all of nature as though it is alive
• ANTHROPOMORPHISM:
The projection of human attributes onto
nature

BOTH WERE INVOLVED IN EARLY ATTEMPTS TO

MAKE SENSE OF LIFE
Humans have always needed to predict,
understand and control nature. Animism,
anthropomorphism, magic, religion,
philosophy and science are all efforts to
satisfy those needs.
 The First Philosophers
• The Greek philosophers were the first in history to give natural
explanations to understand nature.
• Philosophy began when natural explanations (logos) replaced
supernatural ones (mythos).
• The first philosophers were called cosmologists because they
sought to explain the origin, the structure and the processes
governing the cosmos (universe).
• PHYSIS: the one substance or element from
which everything else is derived.
 Thales (625-547 B.C.)
• Referred to as the first philosopher.
• Possessed great knowledge of geometry
• Emphasized natural explanations and minimized supernatural
ones.
• Concluded that physis is water
• Developed methods of navigation based on stars and planets.
 • The most important thing about Thales was
that he offered his ideas as speculations and he
welcomed criticism.
 Philosophical thought
• Atomists
– Empedocles
– Hippocrates

• Sophists
– Protagoras
– Gorgias

• Greek Philosophers
– Socrates
– Plato
– Aristotle
The Atomists
• he atomists theorized that nature consists of two fundamental
principles: atom and void.
• atoms come in an infinite variety of shapes and sizes, each
indestructible and surrounded by a void where they collide with
the others or hook together forming a cluster. 
• Clusters of different shapes, arrangements, and positions give
rise to the various macroscopic substances in the world.
The Sophists 
• The word means wise and informed.
• Group of teachers and philosophers from Greek colonies who
flocked to Athens
• They made a living out of teaching the citizens.
• They emphasized on man and his place in society.
• People have to learn to live together and good and bad must
always be considered in relation to a person’s need.
Major Greek Philosophers
SOCRATES
• 469 BC to 399 BC-Athens
• Most famous Greek philoso-
pher
• Never wrote a single line  

• Spent his life time in market

places talking with people he
met there.
• Unlike Sophists he believed that the ability to
distinguish between right and wrong lies in people’s
reason and not in society.
• Believed that individual experience is important….
“know thyself”
• “The life which is unexamined is not worth living”.
• Believed in a single, all powerful God
Plato (427 B.C.-347 B.C.)
• Wrote his dialogue in defiance of the arrest
and death of his teacher, Socrates.
• Socrates is Plato’s mouthpiece.
• Concerned with justice, virtue, character
and the human soul.
• Founded “The Academy” in Athens, Greece
• Encouraged students to become their own
authority – 
• think for self.
• The only good life or life worth living is a life reasoned by
your own mind.
• Don’t let other’s ideas and opinions change your life and
mind!
• Examine your life, history, and ideas, 
• once you self examine, then you are ready for knowledge.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
• Son of a physician
• Attended “The Academy”
• Became one of Plato’s foremost
student
• Left “The Academy” when Plato
died
Wrote on Physics…
• Universe is eternal, finite and spherical
• Earth is the center of the universe
• World is composed of 4 elements (earth, fire, water, air)
• Real objects are composites of Form and matter
• ALSO KNOWN AS FOUNDER OF MODERN SCIENCE
Developed Rules of Logic…
• Inductive 
• This dog needs lungs, therefore all dogs need lungs
• Deductive 
• All dogs have lungs, therefore this dog has lungs
• Aristotle favored deductive reasoning
• His death marked the end of the Golden Age of
Greece, which had started about 300 years ago with the
philosophy of Thales.
• After his death philosophers either began to rely on
the teachings of past authorities or they turned their
attention to questions concerning models for human
conduct.
The Dark Ages
• Little or no progress in science / philosophy /literature
• Christian church : powerful
• Believers vs heretics
– Church owned vast properties
– Pope could make or break kings
• Influence of Islam
• Aristotle’s work preserved in Islamic teachings and universities
The Golden Era of Islam:
The Muslim Philosophers
• 400 to 1000: dark ages
• Only for the western world
• Muhammad was born in Mecca in 570
• Islam spread in speed (30 years after Prophet Mohammad’s death)
• This expansion brought the Muslims in contact with ancient works long
lost to the Western world
• Arab’s translation of the original texts
• The Arabs made great strides in Medicine, science and mathematics
• Ibn Sina (980-1037)
• Abu Hamid Muhammad Al Ghazali (1058-1111)
• Abu’l Walid Muhamad Bin Ahmad Ibn Rushd (1126–1198)
• Abu Bakr Mohammed Bin Yahya Al-Saigh Ibn Bajjah (1095–
1138)
• Muhyid-Din Muhammad Ibn Ali (Ibn Arabi) (1164–1240)
• Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
Renaissance: The Beginnings of
Modern Science & Philosophy
• Dated from 1450 to 1600.
• Means “rebirth”
• During this period the tendency was to go back to the more
open-minded method of inquiry.
• Europe switched from being God Centered to being
Human-Centered.
• Attention was diverted from the heavens, to humans living in
the world.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
• Descartes: Mind – Body Dualism
 Major British Empiricists 
• John Locke (1632 – 1704)
• George Berkeley (1685 – 1753)
• David Hume (1711 – 1776)
• John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873)
An empiricist is anyone that believes that knowledge is derived from experience.
-inner experience
-sensory experience
Early Approaches to Psychology
 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)
• The Founding Father of Modern Psychology
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)
• First Psychology Laboratory
• Formal beginning of psychology in the late 19th
century.
• In Leipzig, Germany Wilhelm Wundt established
the first experimental laboratory devoted to
psychological phenomenon. In 1879.
• His aim was to study the building blocks of the
mind and considered psychology to be the study of
conscious experience.
Wundt approach which focuses on uncovering the fundamental
mental components of consciousness, thinking and other kinds of
mental states and activities.

Introspection: A procedure used to study the structure of mind in

which subject are asked to describe in detail what they are
experiencing when they are exposed to a stimuli.
Structuralism
• Structuralism is generally thought of as the first school of thought in
psychology.
• This outlook focused on breaking down mental processes into the most
basic components.
• Major thinkers associated with structuralism include Wilhelm Wundt and
Edward Titchener.
• The focus of structuralism was on reducing mental processes down into
their most basic elements. 
• The structuralists used techniques such as introspection to analyze the in-
ner processes of the human mind.
Structuralism as a school of psychology sought to
analyze the adult mind (the sum total of experience
from birth to the present) in terms of the simplest
definable components and then to find how these
components fit together to form more complex
experiences
Edward Titchener (1867-1927)
• Born in England
– Went to Oxford and became interested in Experimental Psychology
– Translated the third edition of Wundt’s Principles of Physiological Psychology into Eng-
lish.
– Went to study at Leipzig with Wundt
• Titchener attempted to classify the structures of the mind, like chemists classify
the elements of nature into the periodic table.
• Titchener said that only observable events constituted science and that any
speculation concerning unobservable events has no place in society.
• The main tool that Titchener used to try to determine the different components of 
consciousness was introspection.
• Titchener had very strict guidelines for the reporting of an
introspective analysis. The subject would be presented with an
object, such as a pencil. The subject would then report the
characteristics of that pencil (color, length, etc.). The subject
would be instructed not to report the name of the object (pencil)
because that did not describe the raw data of what the subject was
experiencing.
• Titchener's theory began with the question of what each
element of the mind is?
• He concluded from his research that there were three types of
mental elements constituting conscious experience:
• Sensations (elements of perceptions)
• Images (elements of ideas)
• Affections (elements of emotions).
Functionalism
Instead of focusing on the mental processes
themselves, functionalist thinkers were instead
interested in the role that these processes play.
William James 
• Born in NYC (1842)
• Went to medical school at Harvard (1864)
• Created psychology demonstration laboratory at Harvard (1875)
• Published Principles of Psychology (1890)
– Psychology: Briefer Course (1892)
• James' approach to psychology was less concerned with the composition of
the mind, and more concerned with examining the ways in which the mind
adapts to changing situations and environments. 
Gestalt Psychology
 Gestalt psychology
• The whole is different from the sum of its parts.

• Our perception or understanding of objects is greater and more

meaningful than the individuals elements that make up our
perceptions.
• Gestalt psychology was founded by German thinkers Max
Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka and focused on
how people interpret the world.
• According to Gestalt psychology, the whole is different than
the sum of its parts.
• Based upon this belief, Gestalt psychologists developed a set
of principles to explain perceptual organization, or how smaller
objects are grouped to form larger ones. These principles are
often referred to as the "laws of perceptual organization."
• Major Gestalt Psychologists
• Max Wertheimer
• Wolfgang Kohler
• Kurt Koffka
Psychoanalytic theory
-Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
• Founder of psychoanalysis
• Proposed the first complete theory
of personality
• A person’s thoughts and behaviors
emerge from tension generated by
unconscious motives and unresolved
childhood conflicts
• The aim of psychoanalysis therapy is to release
repressed emotions and experiences, i.e. make the
unconscious conscious.
• Psychoanalysis is commonly used to treat depression
and anxiety disorders.
• It is only having a cathartic (i.e. healing) experience
can the person be helped and "cured".