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Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Who is considered the father of psychology? This question does not necessarily have a cut-and-dry answer since many individuals have contributed to the inception, rise, and evolution of modern-day psychology.
We'll take a closer look at a single individual who is most often cited as well as other individuals who are also considered fathers of various branches of psychology. Wilhelm Wundt is the man most commonly identified as the father of psychology. Other people such as Hermann von Helmholtz, Gustav Fechner, and Ernst Weber were involved in early scientific psychology research , so why are they not credited as the father of psychology?
Wundt is bestowed this distinction because of his formation of the world's first experimental psychology lab , which is usually noted as the official start of psychology as a separate and distinct science.
By establishing a lab that utilized scientific methods to study the human mind and behavior, Wundt took psychology from a mixture of philosophy and biology and made it a unique field of study. In addition to making psychology a separate science, Wundt also had a number of students who went on to become influential psychologists themselves. Edward B. Titchener was responsible for establishing the school of thought known as structuralism ,.
Stanley Hall established the first experimental psychology lab in the U. Wilhelm Wundt was a German psychologist who established the very first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in This event is widely recognized as the formal establishment of psychology as a science distinct from biology and philosophy. Among his many distinctions, Wundt was the very first person to refer to himself as a psychologist. He is often associated with the school of thought known as structuralism, although it was his student Edward B.
Titchener who was truly responsible for the formation of that school of psychology. Wundt also developed a research technique known as introspection , in which highly trained observers would study and report the content of their own thoughts. Wilhelm Wundt graduated from the University of Heidelberg with a degree in medicine. He went on to study briefly with Johannes Muller and later with the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz. Wundt's work with these two individuals is thought to have heavily influenced his later work in experimental psychology.
Wundt later wrote the Principles of Physiological Psychology , which helped establish experimental procedures in psychological research.
After taking a position at the University of Leipzig, Wundt founded the first experimental psychology lab in the world. Although another psychology lab already existed— William James had established a lab at Harvard a few years before—James' lab was focused on offering teaching demonstrations rather than experimentation.
After studying with Wundt, G. Wundt is often associated with the theoretical perspective known as structuralism, which involves describing the structures that compose the mind. He died that August at 88 years old. Everything happens within your consciousness, such as emotions, language, learning, perception, problem-solving, and the ability to learn.
Cognitive psychology is still considered a relatively new field of psychological research but is a very popular subfield. Cognitive psychology applications have been used to help with memory and disorders that affect decision-making.
People who have suffered from brain injuries, have learning disorders, or improve their learning ability can benefit from cognitive psychology. Psychologists in this field can help to improve patients with ADHD focus and concentration skills.
Most cognitive psychologists work through research programs and universities doing experiments and research in laboratories. However, some decide on a clinical career in a hospital, rehabilitation center, or private practice. Cognitive psychologists can address any concerns that patients have with cognition, brain injury impact, and degenerative brain disorders.
Cognitive psychology can greatly benefit patients who need to change their patterns of thinking as well. Some people get stuck in patterns of pessimistic thinking or negative emotions.
Cognitive therapy can help alleviate the stress associated with this pattern of thinking. When patients participate in cognitive therapy, they can learn to replace negative thoughts with positive ones and better self-regulate their own emotions and thought processes.
If you have decided that cognitive psychology is something that you want to explore further, there are many ways to find the right person to get started.
You can do a simple web search for Cognitive Psychologists and begin filtering through the limited results you may get. You can also contact the psychology departments of any research hospitals near you. Insurance companies can give you lists of the cognitive psychologists that are in-network for your provider. Mental health care coverage can vary greatly between plans, and you should always check with your insurance provider before scheduling appointments to find out what is covered and what is not.
Enjoy cognitive therapy from the comfort and privacy of your own home through phone, video, or web chat therapy sessions. Although Sigmund Freud is perhaps one of the most influential psychological theorizers and contributors of psychology theories in the history of clinical psychology, however, he is not considered the sole father of psychology; instead, the father of psychoanalysis.
Several founders of psychology worked during the same period that contributed to Freud's professional education and discovery. Many historical psychologists would argue that the following people would make the list of nominees for psychology: Wilhelm Wundt, William James, and Carl Rogers. However, most would say that Wilhelm Wundt is the one truly considered the father of psychology. The field of psychology as science had a late start than many other scientific areas expert study today. In terms of the history of psychology, Scientific psychology, and educational psychology Wilhelm Wundt and William James made these fields groundbreakingly famous, both of whom had published many of the first psychological theories.
Wilhelm Wundt was a German psychologist who contributed significant psychology theories established the first lab for psychology research and experimental psychology. William James was considered the father of American psychology, establishing the first American lab for teaching clinical psychology, experimental psychology, and physiological psychology principles.
Two other psychology fathers, Carl Rogers social psychology and Sigmund Freud psychoanalysis , promoted psychology as a science through their clinical practices with actual patients. In psychology, William James is considered a father of psychology and Wilhelm Wundt, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Rogers because of his influential contribution to educational psychology and scientific psychology within the sphere of western psychology. However, all four psychologists contributed numerous groundbreaking psychology theories.
More specifically, James is considered the father of American psychology. In , William James established the first American scientific lab to teach experimental psychology and psychology research theories. While Wilhelm Wundt proposed structuralism, William James established functionalism theory, which centered its argument around physiological psychology principles.
The theory of functionalism argued that human emotion came about by physiological changes occurring in reaction to external influences. Narendranath Sengupta is most famous for founding the Indian Psychological Association , the first experimental psychology department at the University of Calcutta, and being an integral part of establishing the Psychology and Educational Science division of the India Science Congress Association.
Guardian David Boaz established the first psychology department at the University of Madras. Depending on which expert in the history of psychology you ask, Wilhelm Wundt, William James, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Rogers hold coveted positions among psychology fathers.
Wilhelm Wundt and William James are especially popular for their work in psychology research. While Carl Rogers and Sigmund Freud are more well known for their breakthroughs in clinical psychology. Kusch , f. His scope was vast, his output incredible. Despite his intentions, however, the sheer length of his career some 65 years and the volume of his output make it hard to speak of a coherent Wundtian doctrine.
For philosophers, Wundt is worth studying for two reasons. First, the arguments he made more than a century ago for the legitimacy of a non-reductionist account of consciousness offer both challenges and resources to contemporary psychology and philosophy of mind alike. Should those arguments be found lacking, there remains a second, perhaps more important reason to read him: not understanding Wundt is to tolerate a lacuna at a crucial nexus of the recent history of philosophy.
Not only was he a powerful influence albeit mostly by repulsion upon the founders of Pragmatism, Phenomenology, and neo-Kantianism, it was also Wundt and his pioneering students who developed the empirical methodologies that first granted psychology a disciplinary identity distinct from philosophy. It is these philosophically germane aspects of his thought that this article describes. Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was born on August 16, , in the German town of Neckarau, outside of Mannheim, the son of a Lutheran minister Titchener b: The family moved when Wilhelm was six to the town of Heidenheim, in central Baden Boring After one year he transferred to the University of Heidelberg, where he majored in medicine.
By his third year, his intense work ethic yielded his first publication Boring In , at the age of 24, Wundt took his doctorate in medicine at Heidelberg, and habilitated as a Dozent in physiology.
Wundt became famous at Leipzig. Enrollment in his courses doubled about every 15 years, reaching a peak of students in the summer of Wundt ended up sponsoring Ph. Quote—including reference to Tinker—from Hearst b: Nevertheless, his drive and unflagging intellectual advocacy will arouse admiration in some: even at age 80, he remained involved in academic controversy.
Early nineteenth-century German psychology labored under the looming shadow of Kant and his arguments that a science of psychology is in principle impossible. This fact by itself illustrates the oddity of the situation, from our point of view: why would a psychologist care what a philosopher thought about his practice?
Psychologists were philosophers on the defensive cf. L III: In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science , he argued that empirical psychology cannot be an exact science because the phenomena it seeks to explain are not mathematically expressible Kitcher Thus psychologists found their object declared beyond the limit of possible investigation and their methods vain.
On the other hand, the efforts of J. Herbart to devise a mathematical mental mechanics suggested a possible way forward although in the end it proved equally fruitless. Thus, for those mid-nineteenth-century enthusiasts of mental phenomena, the future of a genuine psychology seemed blocked. At the same time, however, progress was being made in human physiology, especially of the sensory systems.
In , the physiologist, E. Weber, published a startling discovery in his De tactu. His experiments on the sensation of weight had led him to find that there obtains a constant ratio between, on the one hand, a given stimulus and, on the other hand, a second stimulus sufficiently larger for the difference between the two stimuli to be just noticeable, no matter the magnitude of the first stimulus.
Sections 3 and 4 are devoted to a description of its definition, method, and doctrine, while Section 5 concerns its theoretical underpinnings. Hearst b: Let us focus on the first assumption, since it is one Wundt addresses. L III: , ff , i.
Nevertheless, Wundt repeatedly addresses the objections raised against the very possibility of psychological, as opposed to physiological or psychophysical, experimentation. How are we to subject the mind-body complex to physiological stimulation such that the reactions may be given a purely psychological interpretation?
From the physiological point of view, experimentation with stimulus and response are not experiments of sensation, but of externally observable excitations and reactions of nerve and muscle tissue.
For example, a nerve fiber or a skin surface may be given an electric shock or brought into contact with acid, and twitches of muscle fiber are observed to follow. Now Wundt is well aware of the common criticism that self-observation seems inescapably to involve the paradoxical identity described in the previous section of the observing subject and observed object. Since in this case the observing subject coincides with the observed object, it is obvious that the direction of attention upon these phenomena alters them.
Now since our consciousness has less room for many simultaneous activities the more intense these activities are, the alteration in question as a rule consists in this: the phenomena that one wishes to observe are altogether suppressed [i. L III: [ 19 ]. In other words, it is in the controlled conditions of a laboratory that one can, by means of experimenter, experimental subject, and various apparatus, arbitrarily and repeatedly call forth precisely predetermined phenomena of consciousness.
Only in this way is. L III: [ 20 ]. A detailed account of these experiments themselves, however, lies far beyond the scope of this article. Wundt, like most early experimental psychologists, [ 22 ] concentrated his investigations upon sensation and perception; of all psychic phenomena, sensation is the most obviously connected to the body and the physical world Hearst b: Sensations Empfindungen , as the medium between the physical and psychic, are uniquely susceptible to a double-sided inquiry, [ 23 ] viz.
According to Wundt, the representations Vorstellungen that constitute the contents Inhalt of consciousness all have their elemental basis in sensations Empfindungen PP I: Yet, the manifestly composite nature of our representations forces us to abstract such elementary components PP I: cf. PP II: His treatment of quality and intensity are especially important for getting a clearer notion of his notion of psychological experimentation.
The outer sensory stimuli may be measured by physical methods, whereas psychology is given the corresponding. PP I: —3. Sensation can thus be measured with respect to changes in intensity corresponding to changes in strength of stimuli PP I: —6. Wundt writes:. Or: If in our apprehension [ Auffassung ] the intensity of the sensation is to increase by equal amounts, then the relative stimulus-increase must remain constant. This latter statement may also be expressed as follows: The strength of a stimulus must increase geometrically if the strength of the apperceived sensation is to increase arithmetically.
PP I: Now these various formulations [ 27 ] of WL admit, as Wundt says, of three different, and indeed incompatible interpretations; that is, there are three different conceptions of what WL is a law of. Wundt rejects both of these in favor of a third, the psychological interpretation; his arguments are instructive. Against the physiological interpretation Wundt raises the following main point, viz. PP I: —2. In other words, WL. PP I: ; cf. WL is therefore not a law of sensation so much as of apperception.
His interpretation of WL nicely illustrates how, on his view, physiological experiments can yield mathematically expressible results, not about the physical, somatic processes involved in sensation, but about the relationships among these sensations as apperceived , i. Psychology finds consciousness to be constituted of three major act-categories: representation, willing, and feeling; our discussion is limited to the first two.
Now while Wundt is forced to speak of representations and representational acts as distinct, he is nevertheless clear that they are merely different aspects of a single flowing process. As discussed in the previous section, all consciousness originates in sensations. PP II: but merely thought, then it is a so-called reproduced representation. Although consciousness consists in the formation of representations, on the one hand, and of the coming and going of such representations, on the other hand—i.
We are also aware within our consciousness of another activity operating upon our representations, namely of paying them attention PP II: Wundt appeals to an analogy:. This feature of consciousness can be clarified by that common image we use in calling consciousness an inner vision. Thus consciousness is a function of the scope of attention, which may be broader as perception or narrower as apperception [ 34 ]. Apperception, in turn, may either actively select and focus upon a perceived representation, or it may passively find certain representations suddenly thrusting themselves into the center of attention PP II: ; PP II: to the extent that it gives the impression of two separable forms of attention able in principle to subsist together simultaneously that is, apperception focusing upon a point in the perceptual field while that field continues to be perceived.
No: perceptive attention becomes apperceptive attention just as it focuses more strenuously, constricting the perceptive field. Passive apperception may be characterized simply by saying that here the associative form of representational connection is predominant cf.
He does not consider the types of association to be genuine psychological laws, i. We see here the important role played by his so-called voluntarism: [ 36 ] associationist psychologists, according to Wundt, cannot give an account of the subjective activity that immediately characterizes consciousness cf.
Wundt b: , ff. L I: Yet this is not to deny association of sensations altogether. Rather, it is to conceive of association as merely a subliminal process, the products of which, representations, then become the actual objects of consciousness. Apperception operates according to its own peculiar laws PP II: These laws, like those of association, govern acts of combination Verbindung and separation Zerlegung. How do apperceptive laws differ from those of association?
Association everywhere gives the first impetus to [apperceptive] combinations. Through association we combine, e. For this latter representation does not contain the two constitutive representations in a merely external coexistence; rather, in the [representation of the church-tower], the representation of the church has come to adhere [ anhaften ] to the representation of the tower, more closely determining the latter.
In this way, the agglutination of representations forms the first level of apperceptive combination. The more the original associative or agglutinated representations are compressed or displaced, the more they disappear altogether from consciousness, leaving in their stead a single representation whose original composite structure has disappeared. Apperception is not only a synthetic process; it is also governed by rules of separation.
He argues that it is usually the case that. These individual parts and the manner of their connection become distinct only through the separative activity of apperception.
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