Introduction: The Origins of Psychology
Wilhelm Wundt
The Founder of Psychology Today, psychology is defined as the science of behavior and mental processes, a definition that reflects psychology’s origins and history.
KEY QUESTIONS
What roles did Wundt and James play in establishing psychology? What were the early schools and approaches in psychology, and how did their views differ?

you need to understand how the definition of psychology has evolved over the past 130 years to what it is today—the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Indeed, the early history of psychology is the history of a field struggling to define itself as a separate and unique scientific discipline. The early psychologists struggled with such fundamental issues as:
• How should psychology be defined?
• What is the proper subject matter of psychology?
• Which areas of human experience should be studied?
• What methods should be used to investigate psychological issues?
• Should psychology include the study of nonhuman animal behavior?
• Should psychological findings be used to change or enhance human behavior?
These debates helped set the tone of the new science, define its scope, and set its limits. Over the past century, the shifting focus of these debates has influenced the topics studied and the research methods used.

Wundt used scientific methods to study fundamental psychological processes, such as mental reaction times in response to visual or auditory stimuli. For example, Wundt tried to measure precisely how long it took a person to consciously detect the sight and sound of a bell being struck. He also promoted his belief that psychology should be established as a separate scientific discipline that would use experimental methods to study mental processes.

Edward B. Titchener
Structuralism

Structuralism held that even our most complex conscious experiences could be broken down into elemental structures, or component parts, of sensations and feelings. To identify these structures of conscious thought, Titchener trained subjects in a procedure called introspection.
The subjects would view a simple stimulus, such as a book, and then try to reconstruct their sensations and feelings immediately after viewing it. (In psychology, a stimulus is anything perceptible to the senses, such as a sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste.) They might first report on the colors they saw, then the smells, and so on, in the attempt to create a total description of their conscious experience (Titchener,
1896/2009).

structuralism Early school of psychology that emphasized studying the most basic components, or structures, of conscious experiences. functionalism Early school of psychology that emphasized studying the purpose, or function, of behavior and mental experiences.

William James
Functionalism
William James (1842–1910)
Harvard professor William James was instrumental in establishing psychology in the United States.
James’s ideas became the basis of another early school of psychology, called functionalism, which stressed studying the adaptive and practical functions of human behavior.

Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
Naturalist Charles Darwin had a profound influence on the early development of psychology. Darwin was not the first scientist to propose that complex organisms evolved from simpler species
(Caton, 2007). However, Darwin’s book,
On the Origin of Species, published in
1859, gathered evidence from many different scientific fields to present a readable, compelling account of evolution through the mechanism of natural selection.
Darwin’s ideas have had a lasting impact on scientific thought (Dickins,

G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924)
G. Stanley Hall helped organize psychology in the United States. Among his many achievements was the establishment of the first psychology research laboratory in the United States. Hall also founded the
American Psychological Association.

Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–
1930) Under the direction of
William James, Mary Whiton Calkins completed all the requirements for a Ph.D. in psychology. Calkins had a distinguished professional career.
She established a psychology laboratory at Wellesley College and became the first woman president of the American Psychological
Association.

Margaret Floy Washburn
(1871–1939) After becoming the first
American woman to earn an official
Ph.D. in psychology, Washburn went on to a distinguished career. Despite the discrimination against women that was widespread in higher education during the early twentieth century, Washburn made many contributions to psychology.
She was the second woman to be elected president of the American Psychological
Association.

Francis C. Sumner (1895–1954)
Francis Sumner studied under
G. Stanley Hall at Clark University.
In 1920, he became the first African
American to earn a Ph.D. in psychology.
Sumner later joined Howard
University in Washington, D.C., and helped create a strong psychology program that led the country in training African American psychologists (Belgrave & Allison,
2010; Guthrie, 2000, 2004).

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) In 1909,
Freud (front left) and several other psychoanalysts were invited by G. Stanley Hall (front center) to participate in Clark University’s twentieth anniversary celebration in Worcester,
Massachusetts (Hogan, 2003). Freud delivered five lectures on psychoanalysis. Listening in the audience was William James, who later wrote to a friend that Freud struck him as
“a man obsessed with fixed ideas” (Rosenzweig,
1997). Carl Jung (front right), who later developed his own theory of personality, also attended this historic conference.

behaviorism School of psychology and theoretical viewpoint that emphasizes the study of observable behaviors, especially as they pertain to the process of learning.

Three Key Scientists in the
Development of Behaviorism
Building on the pioneering research of Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, American psychologist
John B. Watson founded the school of behaviorism. Behaviorism advocated that psychology should study observable behaviors, not mental processes. Following
Watson, B. F. Skinner continued to champion the ideas of behaviorism. Skinner became one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century. Like Watson, he strongly advocated the study of observable behaviors rather than mental processes.