Alright, I've been working
all night and this is what I've got (Phew...tired...
):
Psychology, or a form of it, first appeared in the Ebers papyrus written around 1550 BC. The oldest, most important preserved medical document, it contains a description of the condition today known as clinical depression. One thousand one-hundred and sixty three years later, Plato, in 387 BC, suggested that the brain is the mechanism of mental processes. His suggestion was followed by Aristotle's that the heart is the mechanism of mental processes. From there on out, psychology has only become more advanced with time as technology and medical practices continue to develop.
As the root of the word psychology, psyche, means “spirit” or “soul” in Greek, psychology was often thought to be a study of the soul itself. It wasn’t until 1672 that it emerged as a medical discipline in Thomas Willis’ reference to psychology, the “Doctrine of the Soul”, as a part of his anatomical treatise "De Anima Brutorum" ("Two Discourses on the Souls of Brutes") Even then, up until the end of the 19th century, psychology was still regarded as a branch of philosophy.
Other notable early accomplishments/events are Philippe Pinel's release of mental patients from confinement in the first massive movement for more humane treatment of the mentally ill (1793), Franz Gall's theory of phrenology, the idea that a person's skull shape and placement of bumps on the head can reveal personality traits (1808), Ernst Heinrich Weber's theory, now known as Weber's Law, being published (1834), and Carl Wernicke’s publishing his work on the frontal lobe, detailing his theory that damage to a specific area damages the ability to understand or produce language among many others.
Wilhelm Wundt, born on August 16, 1832 in Neckarau, Germany, is thought of as one of the founding fathers, if not the founding father of psychology. He’s also credited with being the first person to be called a “psychologist”. According to Wundt, no one could observe an experience better than the person having the experience therefore introspection was key in the study of psychology. In 1879, he founded a laboratory at the University in Germany in Leipzig specifically to focus on general and basic questions concerning behavior and mental states.
Eleven years later, in 1890, William James, born in New York City on January 11, 1842, published the book Principles of Psychology, a rich blend of physiology, psychology, philosophy, and personal reflection, which laid many of the foundations for the sorts of questions that psychologists would focus on for years to come. It contained "seeds of pragmatism and phenomenology, and influenced generations of thinkers in Europe and America, including Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, and Ludwig Wittgenstein." Both Wundt’s and James’s angles, those that did not involve metaphysics or religious explanations, are what relabeled psychology as a modern science instead of a philosophy and/or theology.
At the same time, another big name was at work. Sigmund Freud was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1856. In 1900, Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, the book that started the whole psychoanalytical rage that still exists today. A year later he published The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, the book in which he first introduced his belief that there were no accidents in life. The term "Freudian Slip", as it's known today, referring to an unconscious slip of the tongue, was also discussed in this book.
He made one of his most shocking and controversial theories, that of psychosexual development, in 1905. He argued that sexuality is the strongest of all drives and that even infants experience a sense of sexual attraction and neediness. Two well known components of his theory include the Oedipal Complex in which he stated his belief that boys become attracted to their mothers and end up identifying with their father to gain her approval and the concept of the id, the ego, and the superego as the driving structure of the personality.
Sadly, he was diagnosed with cancer in 1923 due to frequent cigar smoking and underwent over thirty surgeries over the next sixteen years. In a revolt against his theories, the Nazi party in Germany burned his books in 1933 and, when they invaded Austria in 1938, his passport was canceled and he was forced to flee to England with his family. The emotional, physical, and financial stress resulted in his death only a year later. Freud's name and theories are still alive today however as thousands study his work every day in undergraduate and graduate Psychology classes. Some argue that his theories remain in place today simply because of their inability to be proven wrong while others consider him to be a modern day genius and scholar of the human mind. Either way, clearly, his views and beliefs will be around for many years to come.
After Psychoanalysis came Behaviorism, a theory psychologists such as John B. Watson, Edward Thorndike, and B. F. Skinner championed. Behaviorism argued that psychology shouldn't be labeled as a science of the mind but of behavior. Watson, Thorndike, and Skinner rejected the idea of internal mental states such as desire, goals, or beliefs and chose to believe, instead, that all behavior and learning is a reaction to the environment. In Watson's paper Psychology As The Behaviourist Views It, written in 1914, he argued that psychology "is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science", "introspection forms no essential part of its methods..." and "The behaviourist... recognizes no dividing line between man and brute".
G. Stanley Hall received the first American Ph.D. in Psychology in 1878. Later, he’d found and head the American Psychological Association in 1892 with an initial membership of forty-two. In 1883, the first American laboratory of psychology was established at Johns Hopkins University. New York State, in 1890, passed the State Care Act which ordered indigent mentally ill patients out of poor-houses and into state hospitals for treatment. It also developed the first institution in the United States for psychiatric research. The first psychological clinic was developed at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896, marking the birth of clinical psychology.
Alfred Binet's greatest accomplishment in the field of psychology lead to what we now call the Intelligence Quotient or IQ. Binet developed a test to measure the 'mental age' (MA) of children entering school, MA referring to the child's current ability compared to that of other children of different ages. His test is considered to be the first intelligence test, although the concept of mental age was revised twice before the foundation of IQ testing was established. Three years after Binet's death, in 1914, William Stern, a German Psychologist, proposed that by dividing the MA of a child by his or her chronological age (CA), one could provide an easy to understand "Intelligence Quotient". It was, however, revised yet again, this time by Lewis Terman. Terman expanded the test for American subjects and multiplied Stern's formula by 100. Still used today, the formula is IQ = MA/CA * 100 and the scores are as follows :
• 130+ --> Very Superior - 2.2% of the population
• 120 - 129 --> Superior - 6.7% of the population
• 110 - 119 --> High Average - 16.1% of the population
• 90 - 109 --> Average - 50% of the population
• 80 - 89 --> Low Average - 16.1% of the population
• 70 - 79 --> Borderline - 6.7% of the population
• Below 70 --> Extremely Low - 2.2% of the population
More follows that but it's about the job outlook and such so, altogether, I've got almost a full eight pages.
