History of Psychology

History of Psychology Since the early days of the world, humans have been used to understanding the nature of the mind and examining its functioning. Such references can be found in every ancient Chinese, Egyptian, Babylonian, civilization. Psychology has been the subject of philosophy for more than five thousand years. The use of Sinhala language psychology derives from the English word “psychology” which is thought to have evolved from the Greek word “psychology”. The use of these Greek words is a combination of the words “mind” and “logo.” The Greek word “psych” means “soul, spirit” or “spiritual”. The word “badge” can be interpreted as a spoken word. Accordingly, the full meaning of “psychology” can be taken as “the subject of the use of the soul.” The Indians called the mind a more complex and elaborate idea. Like the Greeks, they did not exclude the mind, but described the body, mind, and the universe as one phenomenon. But even after the nineteenth century, psychology was still advancing academically. By the end of the 19th century, however, there were a number of definitions to define what psychology was. The first American psychologist, William James, gave a formal definition of “psychology.” That is, “psychology is the science of mental life.” He describes this in his book, Principles of Psychology. But in the early 20th century, with the emergence of a new school of psychology, the “Behavioral Pattern,” James’s view became obsolete. The concept of “mental life” is not an organized concept. Behavioral Psychology Founder Watson stated that “psychology is the subject of the study of the actions and manifestations of trained and unskilled human behavior.” His theory that “psychology is the study of behavior” is still unchanged in the world of psychology. Nevertheless, the role of psychology is to study both the human mind and behavior. Accordingly, the definitions put forward by various psychologists of different ages suggest that psychology is a very broad and complex subject. Philosophical basis The history of psychology can be divided into four periods: Greek, medieval, pre-modern, modern and contemporary. Modern psychology is based on the concepts put forward by thinkers and philosophers of all ages. There are two main categories of people: philosophers and doctors involved in the development of modern psychology. Philosophers are the philosophical foundation of psychology, and doctors are the therapeutic foundations of psychology, and “modern psychology” is the result. From time immemorial, the Greeks examined the nature of the soul, while the Greek philosophers studied the nature and function of the soul. Thales (624-546 BC) was the philosopher who became the “father of philosophy” in Greek philosophy. Another philosopher of this age, Pythagoras, first declared that “the soul is immortal.” The philosopher Heraclitus thought of the soul as a mixture of glory and revelation. Plato was the most important philosopher of the Greek period. According to him, the world of phenomena is diverse. Accordingly, the world of models is feminist and the spirit is in the representational world. According to Plato, the soul was from the world of forms before the advent of the supernatural world. Plato further states that the human spirit influences the qualities and attributes that man needs. Plato’s teacher, Socrates, believed that the soul was immortal and that “wisdom is virtue, virtue is wisdom.” One of Plato’s most famous pupils, Aristotle, accepted the human soul as rational. Meanwhile, St. Augustine, who lived in the third century, occupies an important place. He focused on the functioning and perception of the sensory system. It has been suggested that human perception is different from other animals in that it allows humans to understand beyond their senses. Saint Aquinas was another important philosopher of the Middle Ages. He advanced St. Augustine’s teaching. He stated that the sensory system consists of four parts: kinetic, preference, cognitive and spontaneous. Their weakness was that they developed important concepts in psychology. The pre-modern era is considered to be between the lower and the nineteenth centuries. In this age of science, art and the Renaissance of Europe, philosophers and thinkers produced many subjects for theoretical knowledge of scientific psychology and provided therapies by scientists. Francis Bacon was one of the thinkers of this century. He was the first methodologist in modern science to introduce emotional logic to the world. He is also the founder of modern research psychology. Another important thinker who contributed to the advancement of psychology during this period was Ren Decker. For the first time, he made the study of the mind a separate domain of psychology, using the term “mind” instead of “soul”. He was a renowned intellectual among philosophers and began the tradition of intellectual philosophy. In the seventeenth century, John Locke pioneered the empirical philosophical tradition against the intellectual tradition. He compares the human mind to a pure tabula (tabula rasa) at birth and shows that all knowledge is based on experience. Structuralism and Functionality, pioneering teachers of modern psychology, have developed this line of thinking in the development of human cognition, both sources of empathy and cognition. At this point, Barclay’s idea was that “man is purely a mental product.” He perfected the tradition of making a corpse. Hume, a philosopher who respected Berkeley’s view that the physical world was not an object of existence but a result of human cognition, said that the existence of the mind can only be observed through cognition. Benedict Spinoza is probably one of the 17th century philosophers. Similarly, biologists such as Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Francis Galton played a major role in modern psychology through the theory of evolution. Modern and Contemporary Era These epochs begin with the opening of the world’s first psychological laboratory, the University of Leipzig in Germany, in 1879. This is considered the beginning of scientific psychology. There were three major developments in psychology at this time. Beginning of scientific research in psychology. Integrating theoretical and psychiatric fields that have so far developed into two areas. Opening of School of Psychology The Behavioral School was founded in 1879 by Wilhelm Wund as the first psychology school to focus on the first psychology laboratory. This has contributed greatly to the development of school psychology. In this way, various philosophical ideas had a profound effect on the emergence and development of modern psychology.