History of Psychology: main authors and theories

A brief review of how we have gone from "the science of the soul" to the science of behavior and the mind.

Since the beginning of its history, human beings have elaborated hypotheses and theories about hypotheses and theories about psychological functioning and mental disorders. Despite the predominance of the scientific method, very old conceptions, such as the attribution of illnesses to the action of spirits or the separation between body and soul, still have some influence today.

To speak of the history of psychology it is necessary to go back to the classical philosophers; however, the discipline as we know it today did not develop as such until the works of authors such as Emil Kraepelin, Wilhelm Wundt, Ivan Pavlov or Sigmund Freud became popular in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Ancient Age: beginning of the history of Psychology

The term psychology comes from the Greek words "psyché" and "logos" and can be translated as "study of the soul". During the Ancient Ages it was believed that mental disorders were the result of possession by spirits and demons, and treatments consisted of spells and incantations. and demons, and treatments consisted of incantations and incantations and incantations to which curative effects were attributed.

Between the 5th and 4th century BC, philosophers such as Socrates and Plato made contributions that would be key to the development of psychology, as well as philosophy. While Socrates laid the foundations of the scientific method, Plato conceived of the body as the vehicle of the soul, which is truly responsible for human behavior.

At the same time, the physician Hippocrates studied physical and mental illnesses by means of the inductive method and attributed them to imbalances in the body's humors or fluids. This tradition would be picked up by Rome: the work of Galen, who developed the work of Hippocrates, is one of the best examples of the Greek influence on Roman thought.

Middle Ages: developments and setbacks

In the Middle Ages European thought was dominated by Christianity; this caused clear setbacks in scientific progress. Although the Greco-Roman theories of the humors were still valid, they were again combined with the magical and diabolical: mental disorders were attributed to the commission of sins and were "treated" by means of prayers and exorcisms.

In contrast, in the Arab world, immersed in its golden age, medicine and psychology continued to advance during the Middle Ages. Diseases of the mind" were described such as depression, anxiety, dementia or hallucinations, humane treatments were applied to sufferers and basic psychological processes began to be studied.

There were also relevant developments in Asian psychology. Hindu philosophy analyzed the concept of the self, while in China tests were already being applied in the educational field and the first psychological experiment of which the first recorded psychological experiment was conducted: drawing a circle with a handThe first recorded psychological experiment: drawing a circle with one hand and a square with the other to assess resistance to distraction.

Renaissance and Enlightenment

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, in the Western world, the demonological the demonological conception of mental illness and humanitarianism coexisted in the Western world.. The recovery of the influence of classical Greek and Roman authors played a fundamental role in the latter, which related psychological disorders to physical, rather than moral, alterations.

The word "psychology" became popular during this historical period. The works of philosophers Marko Marulic, Rudolf Göckel and Christian Wolff were especially important in this regard.

The influence of philosophers such as René Descartes, who such as René Descartes, who contributed to the dualistic conception that separated body and soul, Baruch Spinoza, who questioned it, or John Locke, who affirmed that the mind depends on environmental influences. Likewise, the physician Thomas Willis attributed mental disorders to alterations in the nervous system.

At the end of the 18th century, Franz Joseph Franz Joseph Gall and Franz Mesmer were also very influential at the end of the 18th century.The former introduced phrenology, according to which mental functions depended on the size of specific areas of the brain, while Mesmerism attributed physical and psychological disorders to the action of magnetic energies on bodily fluids.

Psychiatry was preceded by alienism, represented mainly by Philippe Pinel and his disciple Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol. Pinel promoted the moral treatment of the mentally ill and diagnostic classifications, while Esquirol promoted the moral treatment of the mentally ill and diagnostic classifications. and diagnostic classifications, while Esquirol promoted the use of statistics to analyze the efficacy of psychological interventions.

19th century: the birth of "scientific psychology".

From the second half of the 19th century the increase in knowledge about brain anatomy made mental processes mental processes were understood to a greater extent as consequences of biology. We highlight the contributions of Gustav Theodor Fechner's psychophysiology and those of Pierre Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke in the field of neuropsychology.

Also the influence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was also very important.. Evolutionism served as an excuse for eugenicists such as Francis Galton and Bénédict Morel, who defended the inferiority of lower class people and those with mental disorders by overestimating the weight of heredity.

In 1879 Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory of Experimental PsychologyThis is why Wundt is often called "the father of scientific psychology", although before Wundt researchers of psychophysics such as Gustav Theodor Fechner had already paved the way for the emergence of this discipline. Granville Stanley Hall was the creator of a similar laboratory in the United States and founded the American Psychological Association.

Psychiatry developed largely thanks to the work of Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum, who studied disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and that of Emil Kraepelin, a pioneer of the current diagnostic classifications based on symptoms and based on symptoms and signs, as well as on their course.

Among the antecedents of current psychology it is also necessary to mention functionalism and structuralism, two very influential schools during the last years of the 19th century and the first stage of the 20th century. While the functionalism of William James studied mental functions, the structuralism of Edward Titchener focused on their contents, such as sensations or thoughts.such as sensations or thoughts.

On the other hand, in this century Jean-Martin Charcot and Josef Breuer studied hypnosis and hysteria, developing research and ideas that inspired Sigmund Freud during the last years of this century. Meanwhile, in Russia, reflexology appeared in the hands of Ivan Pavlov and Vladimir Bekhterev. With these contributions the foundations of psychoanalysis and behaviorism were laid.The two orientations that would dominate psychology in the first half of the twentieth century.

Development in the 20th century

During the 20th century, the main theoretical currents of current psychology were established. Sigmund Freud, a disciple of Charcot and Breuer, created psychoanalysis and popularized verbal therapy. popularized verbal therapy and the concept of the unconscious under the psychoanalytic prism, while authors such as John Watson and Burrhus F. Skinner developed behavioral therapies focused on observable behavior.

The scientific research promoted by behaviorism would eventually lead to the emergence of cognitive psychology. the emergence of cognitive psychologywhich recovered the study of both elementary and complex mental processes and became popular from the 1960s onwards. Cognitive psychology includes the treatments developed by authors such as George Kelly, Albert Ellis or Aaron Beck.

Another relevant theoretical orientation is humanistic psychology, represented by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, among others.represented by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, among others. Humanism emerged as a reaction to the predominance of psychoanalysis and behaviorism and defended the conception of people as free, unique beings, tending towards self-realization and entitled to dignity.

Likewise, knowledge of biology, medicine and pharmacology increased enormously during the 20th century, which facilitated the predominance of these sciences over psychology and influenced the development of interdisciplinary fields such as psychobiology, neuropsychology and psychopharmacology.

The last decades

The development of the science of behavior and mental processes has been marked by the has been marked by the development of neuroscience and the constant dialogue and the constant dialogue with cognitive sciences in general, and with behavioral economics. Similarly, the schools of the current linked to psychoanalysis have lost much of their presence and hegemony, although they remain in good health in Argentina and France.

This has led to the current prevalence of a conception of psychology in which neurosciences and cognitivist psychology (with many contributions from behaviorism). (with many contributions from behaviorism) exchange tools and knowledge in both research and interventions.

However, the criticisms that behaviorism made against mentalistic and subjectivist conceptions of psychology (which are those that treat "the mind" as something separate from the context of a person and those that start from the person's opinions about what is going on in his or her head, respectively), are still valid.

This means that cognitivism, psychoanalysis and all the perspectives belonging to humanistic psychology are harshly criticized, among other things, for working on the basis of very abstract and poorly defined concepts under which very diverse and unrelated meanings can be placed.

In any case, behaviorism is still a minority philosophy in psychology, while cognitivism is a minority philosophy in psychology.while cognitivism is in very good health. However, the vast majority of experimental research in cognitive psychology is carried out on the basis of methodological behaviorism, which leads to some contradictions: on the one hand, mental phenomena are treated as elements located "inside the brain" of the person (mentalism), and on the other hand, this element is studied by creating stimuli and measuring objective responses.