The ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China, India, and Persia all engaged in the philosophical study of psychology. In Ancient Egypt the Ebers Papyrus mentioned depression and thought disorders.^[18] Historians note that Greek philosophers, including Thales, Plato, and Aristotle (especially in his De Anima treatise),^[19] addressed the workings of the mind.^[20] As early as the 4th century BC, the Greek physician Hippocrates theorized that mental disorders had physical rather than supernatural causes.^[21] In 387 BCE, Plato suggested that the brain is where mental processes take place, and in 335 BCE Aristotle suggested that it was the heart.^[22]

In China, psychological understanding grew from the philosophical works of Laozi and Confucius, and later from the doctrines of Buddhism.^[23] This body of knowledge involves insights drawn from introspection and observation, as well as techniques for focused thinking and acting. It frames the universe in term of a division of physical reality and mental reality as well as the interaction between the physical and the mental.^{[citation needed]} Chinese philosophy also emphasized purifying the mind in order to increase virtue and power. An ancient text known as The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine identifies the brain as the nexus of wisdom and sensation, includes theories of personality based on yin–yang balance, and analyzes mental disorder in terms of physiological and social disequilibria. Chinese scholarship that focused on the brain advanced during the Qing dynasty with the work of Western-educated Fang Yizhi (1611–1671), Liu Zhi (1660–1730), and Wang Qingren (1768–1831). Wang Qingren emphasized the importance of the brain as the center of the nervous system, linked mental disorder with brain diseases, investigated the causes of dreams and insomnia, and advanced a theory of hemispheric lateralization in brain function.^[24]

Influenced by Hinduism, Indian philosophy explored distinctions in types of awareness. A central idea of the Upanishads and other Vedic texts that formed the foundations of Hinduism was the distinction between a person's transient mundane self and their eternal, unchanging soul. Divergent Hindu doctrines and Buddhism have challenged this hierarchy of selves, but have all emphasized the importance of reaching higher awareness. Yoga encompasses a range of techniques used in pursuit of this goal. Theosophy, a religion established by Russian-American philosopher Helena Blavatsky, drew inspiration from these doctrines during her time in British India.^[25]^[26]

Psychology was of interest to Enlightenment thinkers in Europe. In Germany, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) applied his principles of calculus to the mind, arguing that mental activity took place on an indivisible continuum. He suggested that the difference between conscious and unconscious awareness is only a matter of degree. Christian Wolff identified psychology as its own science, writing Psychologia Empirica in 1732 and Psychologia Rationalis in 1734. Immanuel Kant advanced the idea of anthropology as a discipline, with psychology an important subdivision. Kant, however, explicitly rejected the idea of an experimental psychology, writing that "the empirical doctrine of the soul can also never approach chemistry even as a systematic art of analysis or experimental doctrine, for in it the manifold of inner observation can be separated only by mere division in thought, and cannot then be held separate and recombined at will (but still less does another thinking subject suffer himself to be experimented upon to suit our purpose), and even observation by itself already changes and displaces the state of the observed object."

In 1783, Ferdinand Ueberwasser (1752–1812) designated himself Professor of Empirical Psychology and Logic and gave lectures on scientific psychology, though these developments were soon overshadowed by the Napoleonic Wars.^[27] At the end of the Napoleonic era, Prussian authorities discontinued the Old University of Münster.^[27] Having consulted philosophers Hegel and Herbart, however, in 1825 the Prussian state established psychology as a mandatory discipline in its rapidly expanding and highly influential educational system. However, this discipline did not yet embrace experimentation.^[28] In England, early psychology involved phrenology and the response to social problems including alcoholism, violence, and the country's crowded "lunatic" asylums.^[29]

Beginning of experimental psychology

Thumb — Wilhelm Wundt (seated), a German psychologist, with colleagues in his psychological laboratory, the first of its kind, c. 1880

Philosopher John Stuart Mill believed that the human mind was open to scientific investigation, even if the science is in some ways inexact.^[30] Mill proposed a "mental chemistry" in which elementary thoughts could combine into ideas of greater complexity.^[30] Gustav Fechner began conducting psychophysics research in Leipzig in the 1830s. He articulated the principle that human perception of a stimulus varies logarithmically according to its intensity.^[31]^: 61 The principle became known as the Weber–Fechner law. Fechner's 1860 Elements of Psychophysics challenged Kant's negative view with regard to conducting quantitative research on the mind.^[32]^[28] Fechner's achievement was to show that "mental processes could not only be given numerical magnitudes, but also that these could be measured by experimental methods."^[28] In Heidelberg, Hermann von Helmholtz conducted parallel research on sensory perception, and trained physiologist Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt, in turn, came to Leipzig University, where he established the psychological laboratory that brought experimental psychology to the world. Wundt focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components, motivated in part by an analogy to recent advances in chemistry, and its successful investigation of the elements and structure of materials.^[33] Paul Flechsig and Emil Kraepelin soon created another influential laboratory at Leipzig, a psychology-related lab, that focused more on experimental psychiatry.^[28]

James McKeen Cattell, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University and the co-founder of Psychological Review, was the first professor of psychology in the United States.^[34]

The German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, a researcher at the University of Berlin, was a 19th-century contributor to the field. He pioneered the experimental study of memory and developed quantitative models of learning and forgetting.^[35] In the early 20th century, Wolfgang Kohler, Max Wertheimer, and Kurt Koffka co-founded the school of Gestalt psychology of Fritz Perls. The approach of Gestalt psychology is based upon the idea that individuals experience things as unified wholes. Rather than reducing thoughts and behavior into smaller component elements, as in structuralism, the Gestaltists maintained that whole of experience is important, and differs from the sum of its parts.^{[citation needed]}

Psychologists in Germany, Denmark, Austria, England, and the United States soon followed Wundt in setting up laboratories.^[36] G. Stanley Hall, an American who studied with Wundt, founded a psychology lab that became internationally influential. The lab was located at Johns Hopkins University. Hall, in turn, trained Yujiro Motora, who brought experimental psychology, emphasizing psychophysics, to the Imperial University of Tokyo.^[37] Wundt's assistant, Hugo Münsterberg, taught psychology at Harvard to students such as Narendra Nath Sen Gupta—who, in 1905, founded a psychology department and laboratory at the University of Calcutta.^[25] Wundt's students Walter Dill Scott, Lightner Witmer, and James McKeen Cattell worked on developing tests of mental ability. Cattell, who also studied with eugenicist Francis Galton, went on to found the Psychological Corporation. Witmer focused on the mental testing of children; Scott, on employee selection.^[31]^: 60

Another student of Wundt, the Englishman Edward Titchener, created the psychology program at Cornell University and advanced "structuralist" psychology. The idea behind structuralism was to analyze and classify different aspects of the mind, primarily through the method of introspection.^[38] William James, John Dewey, and Harvey Carr advanced the idea of functionalism, an expansive approach to psychology that underlined the Darwinian idea of a behavior's usefulness to the individual. In 1890, James wrote an influential book, The Principles of Psychology, which expanded on the structuralism. He memorably described "stream of consciousness." James's ideas interested many American students in the emerging discipline.^[38]^[14]^[31]^: 178–82 Dewey integrated psychology with societal concerns, most notably by promoting progressive education, inculcating moral values in children, and assimilating immigrants.^[31]^{: 196–200}

A different strain of experimentalism, with a greater connection to physiology, emerged in South America, under the leadership of Horacio G. Piñero at the University of Buenos Aires.^[39] In Russia, too, researchers placed greater emphasis on the biological basis for psychology, beginning with Ivan Sechenov's 1873 essay, "Who Is to Develop Psychology and How?" Sechenov advanced the idea of brain reflexes and aggressively promoted a deterministic view of human behavior.^[40] The Russian-Soviet physiologist Ivan Pavlov discovered in dogs a learning process that was later termed "classical conditioning" and applied the process to human beings.^[41]

Consolidation and funding

One of the earliest psychology societies was La Société de Psychologie Physiologique in France, which lasted from 1885 to 1893. The first meeting of the International Congress of Psychology sponsored by the International Union of Psychological Science took place in Paris, in August 1889, amidst the World's Fair celebrating the centennial of the French Revolution. William James was one of three Americans among the 400 attendees. The American Psychological Association (APA) was founded soon after, in 1892. The International Congress continued to be held at different locations in Europe and with wide international participation. The Sixth Congress, held in Geneva in 1909, included presentations in Russian, Chinese, and Japanese, as well as Esperanto. After a hiatus for World War I, the Seventh Congress met in Oxford, with substantially greater participation from the war-victorious Anglo-Americans. In 1929, the Congress took place at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, attended by hundreds of members of the APA.^[36] Tokyo Imperial University led the way in bringing new psychology to the East. New ideas about psychology diffused from Japan into China.^[24]^[37]

American psychology gained status upon the U.S.'s entry into World War I. A standing committee headed by Robert Yerkes administered mental tests ("Army Alpha" and "Army Beta") to almost 1.8 million soldiers.^[42] Subsequently, the Rockefeller family, via the Social Science Research Council, began to provide funding for behavioral research.^[43]^[44] Rockefeller charities funded the National Committee on Mental Hygiene, which disseminated the concept of mental illness and lobbied for applying ideas from psychology to child rearing.^[42]^[45] Through the Bureau of Social Hygiene and later funding of Alfred Kinsey, Rockefeller foundations helped establish research on sexuality in the U.S.^[46] Under the influence of the Carnegie-funded Eugenics Record Office, the Draper-funded Pioneer Fund, and other institutions, the eugenics movement also influenced American psychology. In the 1910s and 1920s, eugenics became a standard topic in psychology classes.^[47] In contrast to the US, in the UK psychology was met with antagonism by the scientific and medical establishments, and up until 1939, there were only six psychology chairs in universities in England.^[48]

During World War II and the Cold War, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies established themselves as leading funders of psychology by way of the armed forces and in the new Office of Strategic Services intelligence agency. University of Michigan psychologist Dorwin Cartwright reported that university researchers began large-scale propaganda research in 1939–1941. He observed that "the last few months of the war saw a social psychologist become chiefly responsible for determining the week-by-week-propaganda policy for the United States Government." Cartwright also wrote that psychologists had significant roles in managing the domestic economy.^[49] The Army rolled out its new General Classification Test to assess the ability of millions of soldiers. The Army also engaged in large-scale psychological research of troop morale and mental health.^[50] In the 1950s, the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation collaborated with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to fund research on psychological warfare.^[51] In 1965, public controversy called attention to the Army's Project Camelot, the "Manhattan Project" of social science, an effort which enlisted psychologists and anthropologists to analyze the plans and policies of foreign countries for strategic purposes.^[52]^[53]

In Germany after World War I, psychology held institutional power through the military, which was subsequently expanded along with the rest of the military during Nazi Germany.^[28] Under the direction of Hermann Göring's cousin Matthias Göring, the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute was renamed the Göring Institute. Freudian psychoanalysts were expelled and persecuted under the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazi Party, and all psychologists had to distance themselves from Freud and Adler, founders of psychoanalysis who were also Jewish.^[54] The Göring Institute was well-financed throughout the war with a mandate to create a "New German Psychotherapy." This psychotherapy aimed to align suitable Germans with the overall goals of the Reich. As described by one physician, "Despite the importance of analysis, spiritual guidance and the active cooperation of the patient represent the best way to overcome individual mental problems and to subordinate them to the requirements of the Volk and the Gemeinschaft." Psychologists were to provide Seelenführung [lit., soul guidance], the leadership of the mind, to integrate people into the new vision of a German community.^[55] Harald Schultz-Hencke melded psychology with the Nazi theory of biology and racial origins, criticizing psychoanalysis as a study of the weak and deformed.^[56] Johannes Heinrich Schultz, a German psychologist recognized for developing the technique of autogenic training, prominently advocated sterilization and euthanasia of men considered genetically undesirable, and devised techniques for facilitating this process.^[57]

After the war, new institutions were created although some psychologists, because of their Nazi affiliation, were discredited. Alexander Mitscherlich founded a prominent applied psychoanalysis journal called Psyche. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Mitscherlich established the first clinical psychosomatic medicine division at Heidelberg University. In 1970, psychology was integrated into the required studies of medical students.^[58]

After the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks promoted psychology as a way to engineer the "New Man" of socialism. Consequently, university psychology departments trained large numbers of students in psychology. At the completion of training, positions were made available for those students at schools, workplaces, cultural institutions, and in the military. The Russian state emphasized pedology and the study of child development. Lev Vygotsky became prominent in the field of child development.^[40] The Bolsheviks also promoted free love and embraced the doctrine of psychoanalysis as an antidote to sexual repression.^[59]^: 84–6^[60] Although pedology and intelligence testing fell out of favor in 1936, psychology maintained its privileged position as an instrument of the Soviet Union.^[40] Stalinist purges took a heavy toll and instilled a climate of fear in the profession, as elsewhere in Soviet society.^[59]^: 22 Following World War II, Jewish psychologists past and present, including Lev Vygotsky, A.R. Luria, and Aron Zalkind, were denounced; Ivan Pavlov (posthumously) and Stalin himself were celebrated as heroes of Soviet psychology.^[59]^{: 25–6, 48–9} Soviet academics experienced a degree of liberalization during the Khrushchev Thaw. The topics of cybernetics, linguistics, and genetics became acceptable again. The new field of engineering psychology emerged. The field involved the study of the mental aspects of complex jobs (such as pilot and cosmonaut). Interdisciplinary studies became popular and scholars such as Georgy Shchedrovitsky developed systems theory approaches to human behavior.^[59]^: 27–33

Twentieth-century Chinese psychology originally modeled itself on U.S. psychology, with translations from American authors like William James, the establishment of university psychology departments and journals, and the establishment of groups including the Chinese Association of Psychological Testing (1930) and the Chinese Psychological Society (1937). Chinese psychologists were encouraged to focus on education and language learning. Chinese psychologists were drawn to the idea that education would enable modernization. John Dewey, who lectured to Chinese audiences between 1919 and 1921, had a significant influence on psychology in China. Chancellor T'sai Yuan-p'ei introduced him at Peking University as a greater thinker than Confucius. Kuo Zing-yang who received a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, became President of Zhejiang University and popularized behaviorism.^[61]^: 5–9 After the Chinese Communist Party gained control of the country, the Stalinist Soviet Union became the major influence, with Marxism–Leninism the leading social doctrine and Pavlovian conditioning the approved means of behavior change. Chinese psychologists elaborated on Lenin's model of a "reflective" consciousness, envisioning an "active consciousness" (pinyin: tzu-chueh neng-tung-li) able to transcend material conditions through hard work and ideological struggle. They developed a concept of "recognition" (pinyin: jen-shih) which referred to the interface between individual perceptions and the socially accepted worldview; failure to correspond with party doctrine was "incorrect recognition."^[61]^: 9–17 Psychology education was centralized under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, supervised by the State Council. In 1951, the academy created a Psychology Research Office, which in 1956 became the Institute of Psychology. Because most leading psychologists were educated in the United States, the first concern of the academy was the re-education of these psychologists in the Soviet doctrines. Child psychology and pedagogy for the purpose of a nationally cohesive education remained a central goal of the discipline.^[61]^: 18–24

Women in psychology

1900–1949

Women in the early 1900s started to make key findings within the world of psychology. In 1923, Anna Freud,^[62] the daughter of Sigmund Freud, built on her father's work using different defense mechanisms (denial, repression, and suppression) to psychoanalyze children. She believed that once a child reached the latency period, child analysis could be used as a mode of therapy. She stated it is important focus on the child's environment, support their development, and prevent neurosis. She believed a child should be recognized as their own person with their own right and have each session catered to the child's specific needs. She encouraged drawing, moving freely, and expressing themselves in any way. This helped build a strong therapeutic alliance with child patients, which allows psychologists to observe their normal behavior. She continued her research on the impact of children after family separation, children with socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and all stages of child development from infancy to adolescence.^{[citation needed]}

Functional periodicity, the belief women are mentally and physically impaired during menstruation, impacted women's rights because employers were less likely to hire them due to the belief they would be incapable of working for 1 week a month. Leta Stetter Hollingworth wanted to prove this hypothesis and Edward L. Thorndike's theory, that women have lesser psychological and physical traits than men and were simply mediocre, incorrect. Hollingworth worked to prove differences were not from male genetic superiority, but from culture. She also included the concept of women's impairment during menstruation in her research. She recorded both women and men performances on tasks (cognitive, perceptual, and motor) for three months. No evidence was found of decreased performance due to a woman's menstrual cycle.^[63] She also challenged the belief intelligence is inherited and women here are intellectually inferior to men. She stated that women do not reach positions of power due to the societal norms and roles they are assigned. As she states in her article, "Variability as related to sex differences in achievement: A Critique",^[64] the largest problem women have is the social order that was built due to the assumption women have less interests and abilities than men. To further prove her point, she completed another experiment with infants who have not been influenced by the environment of social norms, like the adult male getting more opportunities than women. She found no difference between infants besides size. After this research proved the original hypothesis wrong, Hollingworth was able to show there is no difference between the physiological and psychological traits of men and women, and women are not impaired during menstruation.^[65]

The first half of the 1900s was filled with new theories and it was a turning point for women's recognition within the field of psychology. In addition to the contributions made by Leta Stetter Hollingworth and Anna Freud, Mary Whiton Calkins invented the paired associates technique of studying memory and developed self-psychology.^[66] Karen Horney developed the concept of "womb envy" and neurotic needs.^[67] Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein impacted developmental psychology with her research of play therapy.^[68] These great discoveries and contributions were made during struggles of sexism, discrimination, and little recognition for their work.

1950–1999

Women in the second half of the 20th century continued to do research that had large-scale impacts on the field of psychology. Mary Ainsworth's work centered around attachment theory. Building off fellow psychologist John Bowlby, Ainsworth spent years doing fieldwork to understand the development of mother-infant relationships. In doing this field research, Ainsworth developed the Strange Situation Procedure, a laboratory procedure meant to study attachment style by separating and uniting a child with their mother several different times under different circumstances. These field studies are also where she developed her attachment theory and the order of attachment styles, which was a landmark for developmental psychology.^[69]^[70] Because of her work, Ainsworth became one of the most cited psychologists of all time.^[71] Mamie Phipps Clark was another woman in psychology that changed the field with her research. She was one of the first African-Americans to receive a doctoral degree in psychology from Columbia University, along with her husband, Kenneth Clark. Her master's thesis, "The Development of Consciousness in Negro Pre-School Children," argued that black children's self-esteem was negatively impacted by racial discrimination. She and her husband conduced research building off her thesis throughout the 1940s. These tests, called the doll tests, asked young children to choose between identical dolls whose only difference was race, and they found that the majority of the children preferred the white dolls and attributed positive traits to them. Repeated over and over again, these tests helped to determine the negative effects of racial discrimination and segregation on black children's self-image and development. In 1954, this research would help decide the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, leading to the end of legal segregation across the nation. Clark went on to be an influential figure in psychology, her work continuing to focus on minority youth.^[72]

As the field of psychology developed throughout the latter half of the 20th century, women in the field advocated for their voices to be heard and their perspectives to be valued. Second-wave feminism did not miss psychology. An outspoken feminist in psychology was Naomi Weisstein, who was an accomplished researcher in psychology and neuroscience, and is perhaps best known for her paper, "Kirche, Kuche, Kinder as Scientific Law: Psychology Constructs the Female." Psychology Constructs the Female criticized the field of psychology for centering men and using biology too much to explain gender differences without taking into account social factors.^[73] Her work set the stage for further research to be done in social psychology, especially in gender construction.^[74] Other women in the field also continued advocating for women in psychology, creating the Association for Women in Psychology to criticize how the field treated women. E. Kitsch Child, Phyllis Chesler, and Dorothy Riddle were some of the founding members of the organization in 1969.^[75]^[76]

The latter half of the 20th century further diversified the field of psychology, with women of color reaching new milestones. In 1962, Martha Bernal became the first Latina woman to get a Ph.D. in psychology. In 1969, Marigold Linton, the first Native American woman to get a Ph.D. in psychology, founded the National Indian Education Association. She was also a founding member of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science. In 1971, The Network of Indian Psychologists was established by Carolyn Attneave. Harriet McAdoo was appointed to the White House Conference on Families in 1979.^[77]

21st century

This section may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. (September 2024)

Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, named one of Time Magazine's "Best Doctors in the United States" is a lecturer, psychologist, and writer. She is known for her vast modern contributions to bipolar disorder and her books An Unquiet Mind^[78] (Published 1995) and Nothing Was the Same^[79] (Published in 2009). Having Bipolar Disorder herself, she has written several memoirs about her experience with suicidal thoughts, manic behaviors, depression, and other issues that arise from being Bipolar.^[80]

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett views psychology through a Black lens and dedicated her career to focusing on the anxiety of African American women. She founded the organization Rise Sally Rise which helps Black women cope with anxiety. She published her work Soothe Your Nerves: The Black Woman's Guide to Understanding and Overcoming Anxiety, Panic and Fear^[81] in 2003.^[80]

In 2002 Dr. Teresa LaFromboise, former president of the Society of Indian Psychologists, received the APA's Distinguished Career Contribution to Research Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture Ethnicity, and Race for her research on suicide prevention. She was the first person to lead an intervention for Native American children and adolescents that utilized evidence-based suicide prevention. She has spent her career dedicated to aiding racial and ethnic minority youth cope with cultural adjustment and pressures.^[82]

Dr. Shari Miles-Cohen, a psychologist and political activist has applied a black, feminist, and class lens to all her psychological studies. Aiding progressive and women's issues, she has been the executive director for many NGOs. In 2007 she became the Senior Director of the Women's Programs Office of the American Psychological Association. Therefore, she was one of the creators of the APA's "Women in Psychology Timeline" which features the accomplishments of women of color in psychology. She is well known for co-editing Eliminating Inequities for Women with Disabilities: An Agenda for Health and Wellness^[83] (published in 2016), her article published in the Women's Reproductive Health Journal about women of color's struggle with pregnancy and postpartum (Published in 2018), and co-authoring the "APA Handbook of the Psychology of Women" (published in 2019).^[84]