origins of psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt set up the first psychology lab in Leipzig Germany in 1879
• Wundt carried out psychological experiments by presenting participants with a stimulus
• 1900 - Freud established the psychodynamic approach. He highlighted the important of the unconscious mind and developed his own therapy called psychoanalysis
• 1913 - Watson and Skinner established the behaviourist approach, criticising Freud and Wundt and argued that psychology should only study things that can be directly observed and measured. They believed that all behaviour is learnt and that psychologists should only be interested in observable behaviours.
• The 1950s - Rogers and Maslow developed the humanistic approach. they rejected the views of the behaviourist and psychodynamic approaches and emphasised the importance of free will.
• The 1960s - The cognitive approach emerged with the introduction of the computer. This was involved in studying mental processes, cognitive psychologists believe that we can make inferences about the mind based on laboratory experiments.
• The 1980s - the biological approach surfaced due to advances in technology such as brain scans that allow psychologists to have an increased understanding of the human brain
• Wundt’s approach became known as structuralism because he used scientific methods to study human conscious by breaking its structure down into smaller components such as sensations and perceptions
• Wundt developed a technique known as introspection
• Before Wundt, psychology was mostly involved in philosophy
• Introspection is when a person examines their inner world by consciously observing their thoughts and emotions. This shed light into human conscious
• Wundt showed that empirical methods could be applied to mental processes