History Of Psychology

Psychology became an independent field of its own through the work of Wilhelm Wundt. He was the first one in history to be called a 'psychologist'. Wundt set out decidedly to establish a new science. As founder he took it as his right to define the first standard in psychology, Structuralism. Structuralism The idea is that conscious experience can be broken down into basic conscious elements.

The second standard of psychology was 'functionalism'. As its name implies, the primary interest in this approach is in the function of mental processes, including consciousness. While not the creation of any single scholar, William James was unmistakably its most famous promoter.

Watson emphasized the study of observable behavior, rejecting introspection and theories of the unconscious mind. He originated the school of psychology known as behaviorism, school of psychology that seeks to explain animal and human behavior entirely in terms of observable and measurable responses to environmental stimuli. The American psychologist John B. Watson, who insisted that behavior, is a physiological reaction to environmental stimuli, introduced behaviorism in1913.

Gestalt Psychology, founded by Max Wertheimer, was to some extent a rebellion against the molecularism of Wundt's program for psychology, in sympathy with many others at the time, including William James. In fact, the word Gestalt means a unified or meaningful whole, which was to be the focus of psychological study instead. Gestalt psychology is based on the observation that we often experience things that are not a part of our simple sensations. The original observation was Wertheimer's, when he noted that we perceive motion where there is nothing more than a rapid sequence of individual sensory events.

Sigmund Freud was the first psychoanalyst. Many of his insights into the human mind, which seemed so revolutionary at the turn of the century, are now widely