The Story of Psychology

Table Of Contents

Prologue: Exploring the Universe Within
A Psychological Experiment in the Seventh Century B.C.
Messages from the Gods
The Discovery of the Mind

PART ONE : PRESCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY

1 The Conjecturers
The Glory That Was Greece
The Forerunners: Alcmaeon, Protagoras, Democritus, Hippocrates
The “Midwife of Thought”: Socrates
The Idealist: Plato
The Realist: Aristotle

2 The Scholars
The Long Sleep
The Commentators: Theophrastus, the Hellenists, the Epicureans, the Skeptics, the Stoics
Roman Borrowers: Lucretius, Seneca, Epictetus, Galen, Plotinus
The Patrist Adapters: the Patrists, Tertullian, Saint Augustine
The Patrist Reconcilers: the Schoolmen, Saint Thomas Aquinas
The Darkness Before Dawn

3 The Protopsychologists
The Third Visitation
The Rationalists: Descartes, the Cartesians, Spinoza
The Empiricists: Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, the Empiricist-Associationist School
German Nativism: Leibniz, Kant

PART TWO: FOUNDERS OF A NEW SCIENCE

4 The Physicalists
The Magician-Healer: Mesmer
The Skull Reader: Gall
The Mechanists
Specific Nerve Energy: Müller
Just Noticeable Differences: Weber
Neural Physiology: von Helmholtz
Psychophysics: Fechner

5 First Among Equals: Wundt
As Good a Birth Date as Any
The Making of the First Psychologist
The Curious Goings-on at Konvikt
Wundtian Psychology
Sic Transit

6 The Psychologist Malgré Lui: William James
“This Is No Science”
Adorable Genius
Founding Father
Ideas of the Pre-eminent Psychologizer
Jamesian Paradoxes

7 Explorer of the Depths: Sigmund Freud
The Truth About Freud
The Would-Be Neuroscientist
The Hypnotherapist
The Invention of Psychoanalysis
Dynamic Psychology: Early Formulations
Success
Dynamic Psychology: Extensions and Revisions
But Is It Scientific?
Decline and Fall—and Revival

8 The Measurers
“Whenever You Can, Count”: Francis Galton
Galtonian Paradoxes
The Mental Age Approach: Alfred Binet
The Testing Mania
The IQ Controversy

9 The Behaviorists
A New Answer to Old Questions
Two Discoverers of the Laws of Behaviorism: Thorndike and Pavlov
Mr. Behaviorism: John B. Watson
The Triumph of Behaviorism
Two Great Neobehaviorists: Hull and Skinner
The Impending Paradigm Shift

10 The Gestaltists
A Visual Illusion Gives Rise to a New Psychology
The Rediscovery of the Mind
The Laws of Gestalten
Out-of-Reach Bananas and Other Problems
Learning
Failure and Success

PART THREE: SPECIALIZATION AND SYNTHESIS

Introduction: The Fissioning of Psychology—and the Fusion of the Psychological Sciences

11 The Personality Psychologists
“The Secrets of the Hearts of Other Men”
The Fundamental Units of Personality
Measuring Personality
Making Order out of Chaos
Learned Personality
Body, Genes, and Personality
Late Word from the Personality Front

12 The Developmentalists
“Great Oaks from Little Acorns Grow”
Grand Theory and Nontheory
A Giant, and a Giant Theory
Cognitive Development
Maturation
Personality Development
Social Development
Development from A to Z

13 The Social Psychologists
No Man’s Land
A Case of Multiple Fatherhood
Closed Cases: Cognitive Dissonance, the Psychology
of Imprisonment, Obedience, the Bystander Effect
Ongoing Inquiries: Conflict Resolution, Attribution, Others
The Value of Social Psychology

14 The Perception Psychologists
Interesting Questions
Styles of Looking at Looking
Seeing Form
Seeing Movement
Seeing Depth
Two Ways of Looking at Vision

15 The Emotion and Motivation Psychologists
Fundamental Question
Somatic Theory
ANS and CNS Theory
Cognitive Theory
Patchwork Quilt

16 The Cognitivists
Revolution
Revolution No. 2
Memory
Language
Reasoning
Is the Mind a Computer? Is a Computer a Mind?
New Model
And the Winner Is—

17 The Psychotherapists
Growth Industry
Freud’s Offspring: The Dynamic Psychotherapists
The Patient as Laboratory Animal: Behavior Therapy
All in the Mind: Cognitive Therapy
A Miscellany of Therapies
But Does It Really Work?

18 Users and Misusers of Psychology
Knowledge Is Power
Improving the Human Use of the Human Equipment
Improving the Fit Between Humans and Their Jobs
The Use and Misuse of Testing
Covert Persuasion: Advertising and Propaganda
Psychology in the Courtroom
Beyond the Fringe

19 Psychology Today
Portrait of a Psychologist
Portrait of a Science
Schism
Psychology and Politics
Status Report

Notes
References
Acknowledgments
Index