Many people in ancient times, including many famous scholars, attributed people's words and deeds to a special entity-the master of the soul.
For example, Yuanyang Zhenren, the author of China's ancient wonderful book Huangdi Neijing, put forward that "being born fine; Two spirits fight with each other, which is called god; What comes with longing is called the soul "(see Huangdi Neijing? 6? 1 Lingshu? 6? 1 Ba Shen);
And the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (Plato, 427 BC? 8? 347 BC) pointed out that the soul has three parts: reason, will and lust. Among them, reason is intelligent, plays a guiding role, passion obeys it, is its assistant, and desire occupies the largest part. It is insatiable and must be controlled by reason and passion.
Augustine, 354? 8? St Augustine (430), a Christian thinker in Roman Empire and the main representative of godfather philosophy, further believed that the soul can be approached and understood through introspection of consciousness.
According to the original name of psychology that first appeared in 1590, the word psychology evolved from Greek word psychology and logos.
The former means "soul";
The latter means "telling".
Together, it is called psychology, which is the knowledge of explaining the soul.
Etymologically, psychology, as its name implies, is the study of human psychology or spirit.
Ebbinghaus, 1850? 8? Although people have been studying psychology for quite a long time, strictly speaking, as the famous German psychologist Herman 1909 said, psychology actually "has only a short history".
The reason is that before the middle of19th century, psychology was only included in the matrix of philosophy, and people's psychological phenomena were only described by speculative methods, so its development was extremely limited.
1832? 8? Only at the end of19th century, natural science flourished and scientific experimental methods were widely adopted. Feng Te (1920), a German physiologist and philosopher, established the first real psychology laboratory in the world in 1879 at the University of Leipzig, Federal Republic of Germany. Psychology began to separate from philosophy and gradually developed into a discipline.
Feng Te's psychology is based on German sensory physiology and psychophysics, absorbing some viewpoints of German classical idealism philosophy and adopting the viewpoint of psychochemistry.
Feng Te put forward that psychology or spirit should be regarded as "things", and at the same time, what is thought to actually exist should be regarded as phenomena, and the phenomenon of consciousness should be taken as the research object. He believes that analyzing people's consciousness through the combination of introspection and experiment can explain people's psychology.
This is structural psychology.
Constructivist psychology is the first independent schools of psychology who systematically studies psychological problems by experimental methods after the birth of scientific psychology.
As the first professor in the history of psychology to study psychology formally, Feng Te is known as the father of experimental psychology or psychology because of his outstanding efforts in greatly improving the academic authority of psychology.
Feng Te's Principles of Physiological Psychology, published in 1874, is regarded as an immortal work in physiology and psychology, and its importance is like a declaration of independence in psychology.
Shortly after the establishment of structural psychology, it was opposed by psychologists.
As a result of opposition, on the one hand, structuralist psychology is unfortunately short-lived and has no successors, making it a masterpiece in the history of psychology; On the other hand, because of the different opinions of opponents, it has gradually evolved into a situation in which a hundred schools of thought contend and a hundred schools of thought contend.
At the beginning of the emergence of different schools, they all opposed structuralism, but later the debate became more and more complicated, and finally it evolved into a situation in which all factions were mutually exclusive and had different opinions.
1842? 8? In the United States, Feng Te's contemporary James (19 10) took consciousness as the object, but he applied pragmatism to psychology, focusing on the function of psychology or consciousness when individuals adapted to the environment.
James believes that psychology should be a natural science, and its task is to describe and explain the state of consciousness.
The so-called state of consciousness includes feelings, wishes, emotions, cognition, reasoning, determination, will and so on.
James described consciousness as a continuous state, that is, the so-called stream of consciousness, stream of consciousness or stream of subjective life.
The so-called explanation of the state of consciousness is to study its causes, conditions and direct consequences.
James believes that psychological activity has a purpose, and it always adapts to the environment. Psychology is to study the functional effect of psychological phenomena in adapting to the environment, rather than the structure of psychological phenomena, thus creating functional psychology.
Functionalism had little influence on the development of psychology in the future, and it was replaced by other emerging schools after the 1930s.
Watson, 1878? 8? Under the influence of James, John broadus 1958 intentionally regarded behavior as the result of conscious activities.
Watson declared that man should be studied like any other animal, and human behavior should be studied like phenomena in chemistry, physics, physiology and other natural sciences.
Watson also asserted that nothing can be called consciousness, feeling, perception, representation or will. Therefore, all such words must be completely eliminated from the language describing human behavior.
Watson strongly argues that psychology can only study explicit behaviors that can be objectively observed and measured by others, and experiments should be limited to objectively observing the results of stimulus-response.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Watson founded behavioral psychology, which was all the rage and once dominated the field of psychology.
1886? 8? 3 1884 1959) no longer adhere to the principle of "objectivity". Finally, acceptance consciousness became one of the topics of psychological research and advocated new behaviorism. ? 8? 3 1952), Skinner (burrhus frederic skinner, 1904? 8? In 1930s, behaviorism was criticized for its strict adherence to natural science, and at the same time, it was influenced by the theories of other schools. Some scholars who were originally behaviorists, such as Hull C L (1990), tolman,
Their view is that psychological activities should be taken into account when investigating behavior.
At present, this view has become the dominant idea of modern psychology.
However, human behavior is sometimes dominated by unconscious psychological tendencies.
So people are also dominated by the unconscious.
1856? 8? Sigmund Freud (1939), an Austrian psychiatrist, first put forward this kind of unconscious problem, and further expanded the object of psychological research from the conscious world to the unconscious world.
In the long-term medical practice, Freud divided human psychology into unconscious and conscious parts, and thought that in the unconscious world, most human behaviors were determined by sexual instinct (sexual impulse).
If you want to understand a person's psychology, you can't understand his unconscious world.
Freud attached importance to unconscious analysis, which is contrary to Feng Te's psychology which emphasized conscious analysis. Psychoanalysis came into being from the treatment of mental illness.
The content of psychoanalysis is extremely complicated.
In fact, psychoanalysis is not only one of the most influential theories in modern psychology, but also one of the most influential theories in human culture in the twentieth century.
Freud's name and term psychoanalysis are also familiar to most literate people.
Many beginners of psychology often think that Freud is psychology and that this kind of psychology only involves the treatment of mental disorders, which shows Freud's great influence.
Because Freud's theory is only based on the psychological phenomenon of mental patients, it is inevitable to extend it to the general public. In addition, Freud's theory is often criticized for its lack of social and cultural explanation of human nature variation. Therefore, the theoretical orientation of the successors of psychoanalysis has expanded, including the explanation of ordinary people's behavior in real social culture.
Such psychologists are called neo-Freudians.
Su Lian, 1892? 8? 3 1949), fromm (Eric fromm, 1900? 8? 3 with Karen Horney (1885 1980), Eric Holmberg Eriksson,? 8? 3 1952), Sullivan (Harry stack 1902? 8? 3) Neo-Freudian school, represented by others, rejects Freud's biological viewpoint and attaches importance to the role of society and culture in the occurrence of neurological symptoms and the development of personality.
1887? 8? 3 1967), Kaufka (Kurt Kaufka, 1886? 8? In Germany, max wertheimer, a psychologist one year earlier than behaviorism (1880 194 1) and others put forward gestalt psychology, namely gestalt psychology. ? 8? 3 1943), Kohler (Wolfgang k? 0? 2hler，
They believe that the whole cannot be understood through the combination of piecemeal parts.
It is not the parts of elements that determine the whole;
It's a general rule.
The overall characteristics are basic;
The characteristics of some parts depend on their position in the whole organizational structure.
When the whole is divided into parts, you will not see the whole.
The combination of parts is not equal to the whole;
On the contrary, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The reason is that when integrating consciousness to form consciousness, a layer of psychological organization is added.
Therefore, the psychological organization of perception is the most important.
Take a square composed of four straight lines as an example.
The impression people get from this is not two horizontal lines and two vertical lines of equal length, but a complete square: in addition to four straight lines, a layer of "gestalt" is added.
They also believe that psychological phenomena do not necessarily reflect the fact of physical stimulation.
Physical stimulation exists objectively;
Psychological phenomenon is the individual's response after choosing and organizing it.
The whole is perceived why the shape will determine the mutual correspondence between people and external phenomena.
It can be said that behaviorism focuses on accepting external phenomena (stimuli). On the contrary, Gestalt psychology focuses on the methods of capturing external phenomena.
In 1930s, Nazi forces began to rise in Germany.
At the same time, many psychologists in Germany fled to the United States.
In this way, Gestalt Psychology and Behavioral Psychology spread widely all over the United States, which promoted the development of modern American psychology.
Among them, in interpersonal psychology, Lei Wen (1890? 8? 3 1947), the most active.
Lei Wen studied the theory of group and interpersonal relationship through experiments and put forward group mechanics, which laid the foundation for the rise of experimental social psychology.
In 1950s, in view of the fact that psychoanalysis and behaviorism prevailing at that time were not "people-oriented" in concept, psychology emerged as the third force and a new trend appeared, namely psychology. Based on the needs of normal people, we need to study some complex experiences of human beings different from animals, such as motivation, desire, value, happiness, humor, emotion, life responsibility, meaning of life, love, jealousy, hatred and so on.
1902? 8? Therefore, American psychologist Maslow (1908 1987) and others advocated humanistic psychology. ? 8? 3 1970), Luo Jiasi (carl ransom rogers,
In 1960s, influenced by the research of Gestalt Psychology on perception and the development of computer science, a new schools of psychology was gradually formed in the West, which is cognitive psychology centered on the study of human knowledge.
Broadly speaking, any school in psychology that focuses on studying people's cognitive process can be called cognitive psychology school.
Count, 1896? 8? For example, piagetian school, founded by Swiss psychologist jean piaget (Jean 1980), is regarded as a school of cognitive psychology.
But at present, in the west, it mostly refers to the narrow sense of cognitive psychology-the science that studies people's cognitive process from the perspective of information processing, so it is also called cognitive processing psychology.
Specifically, information processing psychology focuses on the process of receiving, coding, operating, extracting and using information, that is, perception, memory, representation, thinking, speech and so on. It emphasizes the decisive role of people's existing cognitive structure in current cognitive activities. By classifying between computer and human brain, it studies the characteristics of people's information processing at various stages in the abstract level, just like studying the role of computer programs, so as to reveal the laws of advanced psychological activities of human brain.
Therefore, it has become an important research method of cognitive psychology to put some ideas about human cognitive process into computer programs and carry out computer simulation with experimental verification on computers.
It goes without saying that psychology is a science aiming at natural science, which is formed by absorbing the advantages of functional psychology including Feng Te's structural psychology, behavioral psychology, gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis, experimental social psychology, humanistic psychology and cognitive psychology.