'' HISTORICAL ROOTS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY''

        '' HISTORICAL ROOTS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY''

 Throughout some twelve or so decades, psychology has led an active life, developing gradually into a true science. As part of evolution, it has produced a number of conceptual models, approaches, theories, interrelated ideas and concepts used to explain phenomena, that has guided the work being carried out.

 Earlier views of
the philosophies and concepts were important because they gave the outline with the help of which modern ideas were developed and further formulated.

 “Psychology has a long past, but only a short history.”(Hermann Ebbinghaus, 1908)

 Wilhelm Wundt set the foundations of modern psychology in 1879, by establishing the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany.

 Man was always curious about human behavior, nature of consciousness, origin of “madness”, emotions and much more about other people’s nature. Control and desirable modification of behavior interested man; he always wanted to become powerful and be able to make others do what he wanted them to do.

 Historical Roots of Modern Psychology Although psychology did not exist in its present form thousands of years ago, its application can be traced even at that stage of history. 

The following facts indicate that man was always interested in understanding and managing psyche and behavior, and was capable of controlling and modifying it: Domestication of dogs was practiced even 10,000 years ago.

 Babylonians made speculation about etiology of epilepsy and tried to cure it accordingly. Egyptians performed crude brain surgery thousands of years ago. Evidence is available through an examination of ancient human skeletons, that ‘trephining’ was performed even half a million years ago; trephining was a procedure whereby a hole was drilled into the skull of a mental patient. 

This was done in order to let the evil spirits or demons escape from the sufferer’s body. The basic assumption was that abnormal behavior was caused by supernatural beings. Such evidence suggests that man sought explanations of human behavior, and tried to control it according to the explanation he believed in. Ancient explanations centered on the supernatural: gods, evil spirits, demons etc

Phases in the History of Psychology Today psychology is Study of ‘Soul’ Study of considered as the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes. But the case was always not so. Initially the soul; of man interested the philosophers, then mind and conscious experience, and lastly observable behavior.

 In 1590, Rudolf Goeckel used ‘Mind’ Study of ‘Conscious experience’ Study of ‘Behavior’ the term “psychology”. This word is the combination of two Greek words “ psyche” and “ logos”, the former means the “ soul” and the later “ discursive knowledge”. Thus literally, psychology means the science of soul. Aristotle gave a very important place to soul in human life. Life has no meaning without soul. But he couldn’t explain the relationship of the soul to the body. The problem of the relationship between body and soul persisted for centuries. it was not solved by philosophers because it was based on  false dualism and involved a separate study of physical and spiritual phenomena. 

Later on, the spiritual aspect was discarded altogether and substituted by a more comprehensive word “mind”. Psychology was also defined as the “science of mind”. But psychologists were never satisfied with this definition because mind was a vague term that could not be defined in objective terms. 

Mind and mental experiences were primarily subjective in nature. Therefore the later psychologists switched their positions and began investigations into behavior that was an objective and observable phenomenon. So it should not be surprising for a student of psychology that definitions of psychology have varied considerably over the years according to the theoretical orientation of particular “schools”.

 Modern psychology is no longer interested in the study of mind. Mental processes have substituted mind. The “mind approach” in psychology was rejected because mind can not be studied using scientific procedures; besides there is no scientific way to determine whether an entity such as mind actually exists.

 Also those who used the word mind or mental processes were not unanimous in their explanations of the very nature of mind. This definition also does not include the overt behavior of man and animals, which forms a major subject of study in the present day psychology. Psychology has also been defined as the science of consciousness. Structuralism, an important early school of thought in psychology, considered psychology as the study of conscious experience. In the words of Wilhelm Wundt, “psychology has to investigate that which we call internal processes or experiences---- i.e., our own sensations and feelings, our thoughts and volitions in contradistinction to the subject of external experience”. 

This definition of psychology as a science of consciousness is now discarded and rejected on the following grounds: Modern day psychology does not believe in consciousness as it used to. Mental processes have substituted consciousness. Even those thinkers, who use the word consciousness, do not agree on its meaning. According to some, it is a substance while for others it is a process or a stream. The word consciousness does not include animal or human behavior. Psychology also studies unconscious and sub- conscious processes.

 Therefore there is sufficient rationale behind the belief that it cannot be called the science of consciousness alone. Modern psychologists define it as a science of behavior, both of animals and humans. It was Watson, the founder of the behaviorist school of thought, who postulated this definition. This definition is comprehensive in the sense that it identifies behaviors that are overt and can be observed.

 But this definition also has some limitations. This definition takes behavior in a very narrow sense; behavior, as Watson saw it, was merely stimulusresponse. Behavior, for modern psychologists, includes both the overt behavior as well as the mental processes that accompany those behaviors i.e., the inner experiences that carry out those behaviors