What is psychology/introduction/history

INTRODUCTION

psychology is the science of the mind and human behavior, it aims to understand our underlying mental functions, physiological and biological processes and internal mechanisms.

Psychology was never a separate discipline in the traditional sciences. In the traditional sciences whether they be from the Islamic world or the Christian world or the ancient Chinese Japanese civilizations. Traditional sciences always contained an element of psychology there was no physics, no chemistry, no biology, that did not have psychology as its part even the science of astronomy was then called astrology and it treated the study of stars, as if it was a study of human beings, so all ancient and traditional sciences connected psychology to a study of the world modern science, with its need for separation of disciplines, with its need to separate physics from chemistry, chemistry from biology, biology into zoology and botany needed a separate science of psychology and in this separate science of psychology there was a need to create relevance.

WILHELM WUNDT:

 In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt set up the first mental research laboratory in Leipzig. This laboratory studied human beings as thinking, feeling, sensing beings many of the things. Wundt studies are no longer studied but they were important phenomena. Wundt was interested in the structure of sensation, in the structure of feeling, in the structure of how we experience the world around us.

EXAMPLE: An example if you go into a room and there is absolutely no light in that room if we switch on a light bulb with 0-watt power, we are going to experience a major change, we are going to experience a sudden flash of light where there was absolute darkness. Now there is light now let's say we add another 100 watts, you will experience lighter. Now let's say that you enter a room where there are a hundred light bulbs and a big hall, where there are a hundred light bulbs and somebody decides to add the hundred and first light bulb of 10 watts, would you even notice, so there is a difference in our experience of light when we go from darkness to light, it is seen as a huge change, but if it is just the addition of another 10 watts or another 100 watts even when there are 10,000 watts worth of electricity in the room you're barely going to notice it. 

EXAMPLE: Isn't it the same with our experience of money let's say you have no money and somebody gives you 10,000 rupees or 10,000 dollar for that month and then let's compare it with somebody who has 10 million dollars and you give them another 10,000 rupees it's the same amount of money but the satisfaction that it'll give you when you're a popper is going to be huge, so somebody who has no money when they get 10,000 rupees or 10,000 dollar is going to feel very different, than somebody who has a million dollars and you give them 10,000 rupees.

So, the idea here is that Wilhelm Wundt wanted to see how people respond to different sensations in different conditions. So, what happens when your skin is touched with a pencil or when it's touched with a needle or when it's touched with the hot iron, it depends on the environment the context your prior experience of things and so on, So. Wilhelm Wundt's laboratory founded the modern science of psychology by experimenting with people and by trying to find out what made them tick.

SIGMUND FREUD:

Then we had another major contribution to the field of psychology in the early 1890s and that was by Sigmund Freud. 

Sigmund Freud was a neurophysician who was interested in solving the problem of hysteria. Hysteria was an illness in which mostly young girls would lose their minds. Sigmund Freud when he hypnotized these young girls found that there were many repressed wishes and desires that expressed themselves in mental illness from there he came up with his theory of personality. There are many criticisms of Freud, but he made a major contribution to the field early on. He contributed to the study of psychology as a science.

Sigmund Freud's major contribution was that he introduced the idea that, mental illnesses could be treated by talking. He was the founder of modern psychotherapy the talking cure.

Before his time many psychological interventions were purely medical or even primitive, such as poking a hole in your brain and letting blood out such as inducing coma through insulin, we're all familiar with electric shocks how they were used to treat mental illness.

So, what we need to understand is that Freud made a huge contribution. First, he used hypnosis but then he used free association in which the patient talked without any constraints, and he talked about their problems and difficulties and issues, and the therapist analyzed and interpreted what the patient said. So, that was a major contribution to the field of psychology. 

So, we see on the one hand Wilhelm Wundt in his lab did experiments on what's considered normal, sensation and perception. 

And Freud looked at abnormal reactions of human beings the only difference was that based on those abnormal reactions and behaviors and thought patterns Freud proposed a theory of personality which was to alter the course of civilization.