PSYCHOLOGY

PSYCHOLOGY. At the turn of the twentieth century, the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus remarked that "psychology has a long past, but only a short history." He was referring to recent scientific interest in the experimental study of the mind and behavior that was characteristic of the "new" psychology. Beginning with a few laboratories in Germany and the America in the late nineteenth century, the field of psychology grew significantly throughout the twentieth century, especially in the United States. Psychological terms have infiltrated everyday language, a huge mental health industry has arisen, and psychological tests have become ubiquitous. Psychology is embedded in modern life. How are we to define this protean field and to explain its rise?

Interest in understanding and explaining human nature and actions is as old as the first stirrings of self-consciousness among humans. Western philosophy has a long tradition of thinking about causes and consequences of human action, both individual and social. Within that general field, psychology has drawn particularly from scholarship on ethics (i.e., moral rules of conduct) and epistemology (theory of the method or grounds of knowledge).

The advent of modern scientific inquiry and methodology in the seventeenth century transformed European culture as it spread to philosophical comprehension and technological practice during the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century, science had become a legitimate and growing profession; the physical world, biology, and society became subject to scientific scrutiny.

Modern psychology as a discipline formed during this period. Psychology's conceptual roots can be found in the experimental laboratories of physiologists, in the medical practices of asylums and clinics, and in the statistical manipulations of mathematicians.

After 1870, college students in the United States gradually became aware of the "new" psychology: William James, a professor at Harvard University, introduced theories of mind and demonstrated empirical findings with a collection of so-called "brass instruments," borrowed from laboratories of physics and physiology. James wrote the classic Principles of Psychology in 1890.

James was associated with the functionalist school, which studied the mind's adaptation to its environment. Habits, consciousness, and the self were understood as adaptive functions, not as structural elements of the mind. The influence of Charles Darwin was evident in the functionalists' interest in evolutionary processes; they investigated the development of mind and behavior in other species as well as humans. Between 1870 and 1910, many students from the United States traveled to Germany to study. Attracted by low travel costs and inexpensive accommodations as well as the reputation of German universities, students were exposed to the ideas and practices of scholars such as Wilhelm Wundt, professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig. A founder of modern psychology, Wundt wrote voluminously on psychology as an independent academic discipline and, in 1879, established the first psychological laboratory.

Conceptually, Wundt espoused a broad view of scientific psychology, ranging from individual psychophysiology and mental chronometry to human language and culture. Different topics needed different research methods. For instance, when measuring the speed of the nervous impulse, accurate mechanical timers gave readings of 1/1,000 of a second; when a colored light was used as a stimulus for a psychophysics experiment, precise introspection provided qualitative judgments about the light's color, intensity, and other characteristics; when religious practices were being investigated, historical and comparative methods of textual analysis were employed.

Wundt and James, both nonpracticing medical doctors, were recognized leaders of the new psychology; in Vienna, another physician, Sigmund Freud, was developing his own system of psychology and psychotherapy, which he called psychoanalysis. His system was spread through an apprentice method of "training analysis" before the psychotherapist began a private practice. Psychoanalysis in America became associated with the medical profession, developing separately from academic psychology.

An American Science

Fresh from their exposure to the new psychology, graduates adapted laboratory techniques and intellectual agendas to the rapidly changing landscape of higher education in the United States. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the research ideal was fused with values of social utility and liberal culture to give rise to the modern university. In 1876, only one university, Johns Hopkins, offered graduate instruction leading to the Ph.D.; by 1900, scores of institutions offered doctoral level studies and degrees.

More than forty psychological laboratories had been established in U.S. colleges and universities by 1900. Experimental work concentrated on sensation and perception, using the reaction-time method where a stimulus was presented to a subject and the speed of response was accurately measured. Professors published their research findings in the American Journal of Psychology beginning in 1887, the Psychological Review beginning in 1894, or other scientific periodicals. The field grew rapidly in American universities and colleges. The American Psychological Association (APA), a professional body dedicated to the advancement of psychology as a science, was formed in 1892, with 26 charter members. Psychologists were also active in the child-study movement and in trying to advance the art and science of pedagogy, newly significant with the rise of universal education. Differences in theory and methods gave rise to schools of thought (structuralism, functionalism, BEHAVIORISM, Gestalt, etc.) that were more apparent to insiders than to the public.

Applications of psychology and psychological theory to education expanded significantly with the spread of mental tests. Starting in 1905, French psychologist Alfred Binet published scales on testing for intelligence in children. Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman subsequently revised the tests and included the ratio of mental and chronological ages, resulting in the "Intelligence Quotient" (IQ). In 1916 the "Stanford-Binet" debuted. Mental tests were widely used in World War I to classify soldiers for general intelligence and occupational specialties. After the war, personnel psychology, particularly in business and industry, became a recognized specialty.

By 1929, at the start of the Great Depression, psychology was firmly institutionalized in higher education. Although the APA reached 1,000 members that year, during the 1930s its dominance diminished as psychologists founded new organizations to pursue their scientific and professional interests. Occupational trends led to a split between academic and applied psychologists, and to marked gender differences, with the majority of females confined to low-status jobs in nonacademic settings.

The "Age of Learning"

By the start of the 1930s, psychology had matured to the point that the discipline generated internally a system of scientific priorities, preferred methods of investigation, and complex reward arrangements. Experimental research was dominated by the use of behavioristic methods in the service of a general theory of learning. In a seminal article in 1913 published in the Psychological Review, "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It," John B. Watson strongly urged psychologists not to look within at unseen mental processes, but to concentrate on observable behavior. Watson had earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1903 with a thesis on rat psychology. Later investigators made the white rat a standard laboratory subject, and Watson's ideas were reformulated into a variety of neo-behavioristic perspectives.

Among the prominent neo-behaviorists was B. F. Skinner (who earned a doctorate from Harvard in 1931), who developed a theory of behavior known as "operant conditioning." In contrast to the "classical conditioning" associated with the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov in which a stimulus is substituted for an already existing response, operant conditioning focuses on a class of emitted responses that are followed by reinforcement. For example, a rat in a "Skinner box" (an apparatus with a lever to obtain food and/or water) presses the lever (the operant) and eats (reinforcement). With each trial, the rat is more likely to repeat the action (response strength). Through a series of ingenious experiments, Skinner demonstrated the scientific utility of his approach in the laboratory before later extending it to the realm of teaching machines, social engineering (with the 1948 utopian novel Walden Two), and an air-conditioned baby crib, all of which engendered controversy.

The Aftermath of World War II

World War II was a watershed for psychology in many ways. The war gave rise to the practice of clinical psychology that was strongly supported by the federal government. New techniques and tools borrowed from other disciplines transformed the intellectual life of psychology. Increased funds were available for scientific research; the number of psychologists grew dramatically; and the APA reorganized to include all areas of psychological activity under a federated governing system.

The academic psychology department remained the basic unit for research, education, and training. The G.I. Bill, a robust economy, and a widespread consensus on the positive value of a college degree helped usher in a "golden age." Psychology grew on the broadening foundation of undergraduate education.

The introductory course exhibited the diversity of psychology while presenting the prevailing orthodoxy of scientific professionalism. A new wave of undergraduate textbooks was written. For instance, Ernest R. Hilgard published Introduction to Psychology in 1953. Firmly based in the research literature, the book attempted comprehensive coverage of topics ranging from the nervous system to personal adjustment. One innovation in format was the use of sidebars to break up the main mass of text and provide additional details on selected topics. Successful textbooks often went through multiple revisions over the course of 30 or more years.

By the early 1960s, employment trends had shifted decisively to nonacademic settings, thus the majority of psychologists found work in hospitals, schools, clinics, corporations, and private practice. That led to increased concern over the professional aspects of psychology, including interprofessional relations with psychiatrists and social workers who were a part of the expanding mental health industry. Some psychologists took their message directly to the general public, contributing to the literature of lay psychology or to the robust market in self-help books. For instance, B. F. Skinner explained his system of operant conditioning to the general public, beginning in 1953 with Science and Human Behavior, and Carl R. Rogers introduced his approach to psychotherapy with the mass-market textbook On Becoming a Person in 1961.

The Rise of Cognitive Psychology

Perhaps the most striking intellectual development of the post–World War II period was the rise of cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology covers the whole range of human mental activity, from sense perception to memory and thought. With deep roots in nineteenth-century research on attention, memory, and language, cognitive psychology developed an institutional focus at Harvard University's Center for Cognitive Studies starting in 1962. In an influential survey of the field, psychologist Ulric Neisser explained in Cognitive Psychology (1967) that the physical stimuli that an object produces "bear little resemblance to either the real object that gave rise to them or to the object of experience that the perceiver will construct as a result." It is this constructive activity that provided the foundation for cognitive psychology.

Closely allied with the study of cognition is mathematical psychology. Curve-fitting, mathematical modeling, and inferential statistics are used to explain experimental results as well as a source for theory construction. By the early 1950s coursework in the analysis of variance became a common feature of graduate training in the United States. Its routine use, standardized and codified in textbooks, meant that psychologists did not have to understand the complexities of statistics to apply them to their work.

Statistics were useful in addressing quantitatively the inconsistencies of individual human behavior. People behaved differently at different times, and what they did in one experimental setting might have little relation to what they did in another. Statistical treatment of group data combined data from many individuals, enabling certain patterns to emerge that were characteristic of the statistical group, even though the actual behavior of any particular member of the group might not conform to the statistical "average."

Mainstream psychology was not without its critics. Some urged turning away from apparent "methodolatry," while others descried the "physics envy" that grew out of attempts to emulate the physical (and precisely measurable) sciences. A movement toward humanistic psychology was prompted by dissatisfaction with behaviorism's narrow methods and the psychoanalytic focus on childhood pathology. This so-called "third force" represented an attempt to place human values at the core of psychological theory and practice rather than mechanical virtues or developmental doctrine.

At the close of the twentieth century, psychology remains a protean discipline dedicated to the pursuit of scientific knowledge as well as a potent profession serving the mental health needs of Americans. Neither a single set of assumptions nor a common methodology unites the work of psychologists. How psychologists prospered by exploiting this diversity is an intriguing area for historical investigation.

History of Psychology

Psychologists and others have exhibited a sustained interest in the history of the field since the rise of the "new" psychology. In his three-volume A History of Psychology (1912–1921), George Sidney Brett traced the philosophical background of modern psychological thought, from the ancient Greeks to his day. Edwin G. Boring, considering Brett's work too philosophical, was motivated to write A History of Experimental Psychology in 1929; Boring argued for the primacy of scientific research, saying "The application of the experimental method to the problem of mind is the great outstanding event in the history of the study of mind" (p. 659). Boring's book became the veritable Bible for courses in the history and systems of psychology. History was also used as a resource for asserting the unity of psychology despite the proliferation of diverse viewpoints.

After World War II, the history of psychology was pursued for two decades mostly as a teaching subject within psychology departments. In the mid-1960s the field became increasingly professionalized with new university programs starting and the APA founding a history division. A specialized journal, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Science (1965), and a society, Chiron: The International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences (1969), provided support for scholars. In addition, professional historians, notably historians of science and medicine, grew more interested in and paid more attention to the history of psychology.

In 1966, Robert M. Young published a scathing review of the literature in the history of psychology and related fields in the journal History of Science. Since that time, scholarship in the history of psychology has steadily deepened. Developments in the late twentieth century included the establishment of the Forum for History of Human Science, a special-interest group of the History of Science Society formed in 1988, and an APA-sponsored journal, History of Psychology established in 1998.

In the pages of an 1893 McClure's magazine, Herbert Nichols, one of the first students awarded a doctorate in psychology from an American university, boldly predicted that "the twentieth century will be to mental science what the sixteenth century was to physical science, and the central field of its development is likely to be America." In broad outline, Nichols's prediction came true. But the road leading from the era of brass instruments and introspection to the age of computers and cognitive science proved to be both long and with many byways. World wars, economic depression as well as prosperity, and the rise of American higher education provided the setting and context for the growth of psychological thought and practice. Psychology today is intellectually multiparadigmatic, professionally pluralistic, and ideologically diverse. Psychologists, more than a quarter million strong in the United States, have had and continue to have a tremendous impact on the culture of modern science.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boring, Edwin G. A History of Experimental Psychology. 2d ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1950. An influential account by a prominent psychologist-historian.

Burnham, John C. "On the Origins of Behaviorism." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 4 (1968): 143–151. The classic statement of the historical problem of behaviorism.

Capshew, James H. Psychologists on the March: Science, Practice, and Professional Identity in American Psychology, 1929–1969. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. A study of the impact of World War II on the profession of psychology.

Danziger, Kurt. Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. A penetrating account of the standardization of methodology and the resultant conceptual and professional power it generated.

Hale, Nathan G., Jr. Freud in America. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971–1995. A judicious and balanced historical narrative.

Heidbreder, Edna. Seven Psychologies. New York: Century, 1933. A sensitive contemporary account of the major schools of psychology.

Herman, Ellen. The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. A nuanced examination of the role of psychology in public affairs and policy from 1940 to 1975.

Hilgard, Ernest H. Psychology in America: A Historical Survey. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987. An authoritative encyclopedic survey.

O'Donnell, John M. The Origins of Behaviorism: American Psychology, 1870–1920. New York: New York University Press, 1985. An analytic narrative focused on the transition from philosophy to psychology.

Smith, Roger. The Norton History of the Human Sciences. New York: Norton, 1997. Psychology is the backbone of this massive and informative synthesis that ranges from sixteenth-century thought to twentieth-century American institutions.

Sokal, Michael M., ed. Psychological Testing and American Society, 1890–1930. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Essays that explore the construction, use, and impact of mental testing.

James H. Capshew

See also Intelligence Tests; Psychiatry.