Evolution of Psychology From Pseudoscience to Science Pseudoscience

Evolution of Psychology From Pseudoscience to Science

• Pseudoscience = false science - not based on any solid evidence. • Psychology today is based on rigorous research and empirical evidence gathered by careful observation, experimentation, and measurement.

Early psychology • Psychology has its earliest roots in other more traditional studies like philosophy and biology. • Early Greek philosophers wanted to know how people take in information through their senses, become motivated to do good or harm, and wondered about the source of emotion.

• The early Greeks were making educated guesses. Sometimes they were right. Hippocrates after observing several patients with brain injuries concluded that the brain must be the source of “our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs, and tears. ”

Sometimes they were wrong. . . • Galen, a Roman building on the ideas of a balance of humors of Hippocrates came up with the following: Blood Sanguine, cheerful Phlegmatic, sluggish Yellow bile Choleric, angry Black bile Melancholy, sad

Phrenology The Ultimate Pseudoscience • Phrenology (Greek for study of the mind) was the fad pseudoscience of the early 1800 s. Austrian Joseph Gall’s writings started the trend, saying that by studying bumps on the skull you could identify characteristics of people, including criminal tendencies.

Late 1800 s Scientific Psychology Begins • Wilhelm Wundt- generally considered the first actual psychologist. • He used a method called trained introspection to study psychological issues. • Later discredited as being too subjective.

Structuralism • Started by Edward Titchener in the late 1800 s. • Tried to identify component parts of thought processes

Functionalism • Started up by American William James in the late 1800 s. • Looked at how various behaviors help a person or animal adapt to the environment. • Emphasis was on the causes and consequences of behavior.

• And now a big drum roll please for the man, the myth, the legend. . .

Sigmund Freud

Psychoanalysis • Freud, a neurologist from Vienna, Austria, came to believe that things like depression, nervousness, and obsessive habits were the result of emotional traumas from early childhood that were too threatening to be remembered consciously.

Today’s Pseudoscience • • Astrology Handwriting analysis Fortune telling Some “pop psych” that you find in self help books borders on pseudoscience.