Top 10 Great Psychologists
These psychologists are known as fathers of psychology. Psychology has, historically, been considered the ugly stepchild of science. There are some legitimate reasons for this. First of all, the average person associates psychology with the kooky antics on on-screen therapists in various movies and T.V. shows. Second, everyone considers him or herself an “amateur” psychologist. While most of us don’t have direct experiences with black holes DNA or atoms, we all have experienced and generated behavior, emotions and thoughts. Finally, few understand that, historically, there were attempts to shape psychology as a science of human nature, along the lines of physics or chemistry. Unfortunately, modern psychology is an incredibly fractured discipline with many components, some of more value than others. The ten individuals I’ve selected, in my semi-educated opinion, are those who had the greatest impact on the shaping of psychology into the field it is today.
These psychologists are known as fathers of psychology. Psychology has, historically, been considered the ugly stepchild of science. There are some legitimate reasons for this. First of all, the average person associates psychology with the kooky antics on on-screen therapists in various movies and T.V. shows. Second, everyone considers him or herself an “amateur” psychologist. While most of us don’t have direct experiences with black holes DNA or atoms, we all have experienced and generated behavior, emotions and thoughts. Finally, few understand that, historically, there were attempts to shape psychology as a science of human nature, along the lines of physics or chemistry. Unfortunately, modern psychology is an incredibly fractured discipline with many components, some of more value than others. The ten individuals I’ve selected, in my semi-educated opinion, are those who had the greatest impact on the shaping of psychology into the field it is today.
1842-1910
James was an American psychologist who disliked the
label. Morton Hunt, the science writer, described him as the psychologist
malgre lui or the reluctant psychologist. James fancied himself more as a
philosopher than a psychologist, and did very little experimentation in
psychology. He was not impressed with the work of Wilhelm Wundt, and towards
the end of his life focused on matters of religion and spiritualism. However, I
place him in the number one position for one reason: in 1890, he wrote a book
called “Principles of Psychology” which is still in print today. It contains
some apparently very modern ideas of psychology. In fact, a naïve reader would
probably assume the book had been written in the last couple of decades not over
100 years ago. James essentially outlined modern psychology in this book. Wundt
had proposed a psychology that focused, primarily, on the senses and
perception. He rejected the notion that psychology could concern itself with
some of the higher-order processes, like learning or problem-solving. James
disagreed and outlined in his “Principles” the idea that psychology could
concern itself with issues like: emotions, habits, consciousness, self,
adaptation and learning. Behaviorism has many of its roots in James’ ideas, as
does concepts like “self-esteem, self-concept, clinical psychology,
biopsychology” and others. There are few topics in psychology that James didn’t
anticipate, in one form or another. Interestingly, James was unsatisfied with
the book. He wrote to the publishing company and described it as “a loathsome,
distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to nothing but two
facts: 1st, that there is no such thing as a science of psychology, and 2nd,
that W. J. is an incapable”.
1832-1920
Wundt is probably the most influential psychologist that
no one has ever heard of. His influence did not lay in his ideas of psychology
(his goal was to discover the “elements of thought”), or his methods of
studying psychology (his one original contribution to methodology was probably
“introspection”, which involved having subjects, somewhat subjectively, report
their mental responses to different kinds of stimuli). No, Wundt is considered
the founder of psychology. He was the first individual to call himself a
psychologist, and to recognize that the work he was doing was part of a new
discipline that hadn’t been labeled. Wundt was serving as the chair of the
department of philosophy at the University of Leipzig, in Germany, when he
began conducting his first psychological experiments, probably around 1879. His
program of study was so successful that Germany became the center of psychology
for a time (until a couple of world wars occurred). During the late 1800s, if
you wanted to study psychology, there was no question that you must go to
Germany, and many of the early psychologists traced their intellectual
genealogy back to Wundt.
1890-1958
Karl Lashley is a debatable choice for the tenth spot. I
selected him because he was one of the first psychologists to try to understand
the physiological underpinnings of behavior. Lashley was an American
psychologist who initially worked with John Watson. However, Watson was never
very interested in the brain-behavior relationship and Lashley eventually went
his own direction. He conducted a series of studies with rats where he
attempted to locate the “engram” or the physiological seat of memory. Lashley
trained his rats to run a maze, systematically removed portions of their
brains, and observed any effect it had on their ability to run the maze
afterwards. Lashley found, to his astonishment, that it didn’t matter. What did
matter is how much of the brain was removed. Lashley would go on to train, and
mentor, a number of psychologists and physiologists who built upon his early
work linking brain and behavior. Currently, much of the work in modern
experimental psychology is focusing on this topic.
1904-1990
B.F. Skinner is one of the few psychologists with name
recognition outside the field. Much of this had to do with his charismatic
personality, excellent writing ability (he originally wanted to be a novelist),
and confrontational style. Skinner was convinced that his approach to
psychology was the only reasonable one, and had little patience with opposing
views. Arrogance aside, few men in history can claim to have created the
vocabulary for an entire discipline. In psychology, when we speak of “operant
conditioning”, “positive reinforcement”, and “shaping” these are terms
introduced and popularized by Skinner. But his ideas go beyond terminology.
Skinner was instrumental in making his notion of psychology (called
“behaviorism”) a dominant force in the discipline. In fact, in America, between
the years 1930 and 1950, behaviorism WAS psychology. Much of this had to do with
the compelling nature of Skinner’s ideas; a few simple principles based on the
interaction of the organism and environment, that can explain a multitude of
behaviors without invoking ideas like “thought”, or “emotion” or
“unconsciousness”.
1896-1980
My first cheat: Piaget was not a psychologist. His
training was as a natural scientist. As a young man growing up in Switzerland,
he was interested in fossils, shells and birds. However, after finishing his
degree, he became interested in developing an “embryology” of intelligence.
Piaget initially planned to spend only a few years on this. He ended up
spending 60 years observing children and their abilities, and formulating his
highly influential theory of cognitive development. His ideas had a huge impact
on developmental psychology, educational psychology and cognitive psychology.
Ironically, Piaget, perhaps due to his own unusual childhood, while
intellectually interested in the children he studied, never really engaged with
them emotionally.
1908-1970
Maslow, an American psychologist, was familiar with the
two dominant forces in psychology during the mid-twentieth century: namely,
psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Maslow felt that neither of these approaches
adequately explained human experience. Behaviorism was founded on animal
research which Maslow felt couldn’t have any real relevance to humans.
Psychoanalysis seemed to focus on psychotic individuals and not healthy
personalities. Maslow, by nature shy and reserved, felt strongly enough about
this to lead the development of a new approach to psychology he called
“third-force” psychology. His psychology discarded research as not relevant to
human beings, focused on what it takes to become mentally healthy, and paved
the way for a number of approaches to therapy, developed in the sixties and
seventies, of dubious utility. Depending on your perspective, Maslow either
increased the scope of psychology or reduced its overall validity.
1880-1943
Wertheimer was a German psychologist, fascinated by fact
that what we often see is not what is present. For example, when we watch
movies, we are actually watching several still pictures presented quickly in
sequence. What we see is movement up on the screen. Wertheimer believed that
our minds do something to the perceived image to create this apparent movement.
His curiosity in this phenomenon led to the development of Gestalt psychology,
and its focus on perception, cognitive insight and learning and dynamic social
systems. Wertheimer had to leave Germany because of the rise of Nazism, and
when he came to America, presented the only real competitor to the ideas of
behaviorism that were so dominant at the time. The principles of Gestalt
psychology were instrumental in the founding of social psychology and cognitive
psychology. While it no longer exists as a separate discipline, many Gestalt
principles have been integrated into other subfields of psychology.
1857-1911
During the late 1800s, “intelligence” was conceptualized
as a psychological quality passed on from one generation to another. What was
needed was a way to successfully measure this particular quality. Binet was a
French psychologist, approached by the French government to assist in
developing a number of tests to discriminate between children of normal ability
and children who needed extra educational assistance. In 1905, Binet and a
colleague, Theodore Simon, developed their first attempt, called the
Binet-Simon Test of Intelligence. It was based on a brilliant but simple idea.
If you want to know if a child is “less intelligent” than another, first see
what a “normal” child does and then observe how many of those tasks the child
you’re evaluating can accomplish. This is the basic principle that all modern
intelligence tests follow. Binet’s simple test was brought over to America and
eventually revised to become the Stanford-Binet Test of Intelligence that is
still being published and used today. But more importantly, Binet introduced
the concept of successfully measuring psychological qualities that led to an
absolute testing mania in the United States and other parts of the world. Few
people have not been touched, for good or ill, by testing. Ironically, Binet
would probably be appalled by the direction that testing has gone.
1878-1958
Few famous men have started out so ignominiously. John
Watson was the son of a drunkard who abandoned his family, and an extremely
pious woman who made Watson promise to become a minister. Unfortunately, as a
young man growing up in South Carolina, Watson was well on his way to juvenile
delinquency. For some odd reason, (perhaps in the interest of pleasing his
mother) Watson suddenly decided to go to college. Eventually, he graduated from
the University of Chicago with its first Ph.D in psychology. Watson was
dissatisfied with the current trends in psychology and believed only that which
was directly observable could, and should, be studied. In 1912, Watson
presented his ideas to the psychology community and in one broad stroke, swept
away the old methodologies and presented his own. B.F. Skinner, as influential
as he was, built his success on the foundation of Watson’s ideas. Watson is
also well-known for his notorious “little Albert” study and, even more
notoriously, for carrying on an affair with his assistant in that work, Rosalie
Raynor. The affair cost Watson his academic position in 1920 (times being what
they were) and, like any good behavior modifier, he worked in advertising for
the rest of his life.
1856-1939
Here he is: the most well-known psychologist in history,
and another cheat. Freud was not a psychologist; he was a psychiatrist (and,
yes, there is a difference between the two). It is difficult to overestimate
the influence that Freud’s ideas had over psychology and culture. His terms
‘ego’, ‘id’, ‘libido’ and others have entered every day language, and his very
name is synonymous with probing techniques that reveal the damage that your
parents did to you when you were young, and dreams that are superficial covers
for surging, uncontrollable desires. What may be perplexing to the layperson is
that in modern psychology, Freud’s ideas are not taken very seriously. Most
acknowledge that his ideas have little basis in reality, and were more the
product of Freud’s highly creative and innovative imagination. So why is he so
well-known? Whole books have been written on this subject but I would say his
place on the list is due to a very basic, but at his time, completely new idea.
This was the notion that mental disorders could be treated psychologically.
Before Freud, doctors considered mental disorders to be the product of some
physical aberration (and many of them are). Freud provided compelling anecdotal
evidence for the psychological origin and treatment of many of these problems.
To get updates like us FB: www.facebook.com/psychtronics
Post a Comment