Hippocrates, engraving by Peter Paul Reubens

600 B.C. to 200 B.C.

Egypt and Greece were the first cultures to focus on natural and physical explanations for disorders.

The Ancient Greeks

Psychology is the science of understanding people. The foundations for psychology as a science can be traced to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. They were the first cultures to focus on natural and physical explanations for disorders. The Greeks were the first to externalize their thoughts and feelings and open themselves to introspection. Ancient philosophers examined the nature of good and evil and the problem of knowledge. The phrase "know thyself" was carved into the temple at Delphi used by ancient Greeks to worship the god Apollo. The birth of science has often been attributed to these Ancient Greeks who became the first thinkers to shift the focus of causal explanations from the gods to the world around them, the environment.

Homer

Homer composed The Illiad and The Odyssey in which human feelings, thought, and action are explored. The first word of the Iliad (memos) is the ancient Greek word for fury, rage, or wrath. The major theme of the Iliad is the wrath of Achilles. Homer's work focused on how a person should act – he offered broad psychological explanations of human behavior.

Homer, sculpture done in the Hellenistic Period

Socrates, Roman 1st century sculpture, possibly a copy of a bronze statue by Lyssipos

Socrates & Plato

But it was Socrates who placed humanity at the center of these orientations. Plato and Aristotle continued in this framework by attempting to take into account all the features of human personality. Plato believed that character and intelligence are largely inherited and that some ideas are simply inborn. He believed the soul had certain characteristics which made certain individuals suitable for particular activities. He discerned that we perceive objects through the senses, with the mind. Plato had Socrates tell the story of the cave in which prisoners are imprisoned in the darkness of sensory knowledge.

Detail of Plato from The School of Athens, by Raffaello Sanzio

Aristotle

Aristotle studied under Plato in The Academy. His writings integrated the psychological, social, biological, and political dimensions. Aristotle referred to the essence of life as psyche. Translated from Greek as "mind," this term was closely linked to the meaning of "breath." Aristotle believed that the psyche escaped through the last dying breath that was exhaled. He received his training from Plato, but the two disagreed on whether one could receive a full understanding of anything by simply thinking about it. Plato believed that one could, whereas Aristotle adopted a more naturalistic, observational approach. He felt that one must also experience the subject being studied through all the senses - look at it, listen to it, and touch it. He considered the soul to be all the processes by which man or any living thing actually lives.

So it was Aristotle who launched the study of life that eventually became the modern science of psychology. Sleep, dreams, the senses, and memory were all topics of Aristotle's writings. In his On Memory and Reminiscence, he theorized about learning and memory, motivation and emotion, perception and personality.

Aristotle, Roman 1st or 2nd century copy of a lost bronze statue by Lyssipos

A 12th-century Byzantine manuscript of the Oath in the form of a cross

Hippocrates

Hippocrates' approach was very observational. Hippocrates took the biological approach maintaining that personality was made up of four temperaments: sanguine (cheerful and active), melancholic (sad), choleric (angry and aggressive), and phlegmatic (calm and passive). Body fluids called humors influenced these temperaments. You may have taken a personality test to determine if you are sanguine, melancholic, choleric, or phlegmatic, as this test was very popular a few years ago. Hippocrates was also the first to write about acrophobia, the fear of heights.

Ancient Chinese

The ancient Chinese made connections between a person's bodily organs and their emotions. According to these connections, the spleen housed ideas and intelligence.

On Memory and Reminiscence

However, philosophers stated unequivocally that psychology could never be a science because activities and the contents of the mind could not be measured. Psychology would remain subjective.

The tradition that Aristotle set in motion continued until the coming of the Christian era when a shift in thought regarding psychological questions occurred. Historian Daniel Robinson writes, "The emergence of Christianity must be counted as an occurrence whose importance to psychology is matched, if at all, only by the Hellenic epoch" (Robinson, 1981).  

Augustine

Augustine was a dominant figure in this shift of thought. His focus was on faith more than reason and on wisdom more than knowledge. While Plato asserted the need for reason to rule over passions, Augustine explored personal struggles with temptations and guilt feelings. It was Thomas Aquinas who reconciled Aristotle's rationalism and theology, which resulted in the Church's acceptance of both reason and faith. Psychology began to break away from religion and philosophy, and accordingly, Germany provided the setting for psychology as we know it today.  

Medieval to Modern Times

Witchcraft

The Middle Ages was the age of the witches, when people were diagnosed as being possessed, as opposed to a physical disorder. Any bizarre behavior that differed from ordinary, accepted behavior and perception was suspect. In ancient times, the insane or incompetent were only penalized in some way if they actually harmed another person. However, this perception changed in the Middle Ages. The interplay of social, religious, and political forces saw certain persons, usually women, labeled as "troubled" by processes we would now consider equally as bizarre. Witchcraft was understood as something supernatural – either from evil sources or the divine. The witch theory implied that anyone considered a witch willingly entered into a partnership with the devil. There were, however, attempts to establish scientific tests to determine guilt.

 In 1486, Heinrich Kramer, a German clergyman, wrote the Malleus Maleficarum ("The Hammer of Witches"), a treatise on the prosecution of witches. His work became a definitive resource used by doctors and priests for what was more or less expert testimony to determine if a person was a witch. One method of determining if a person was a witch was the float or flotation test, in which a person's hands and feet were tied and the woman was thrown into a lake or river or suspended in a pool. If she floated, she was declared a witch. Many older women were killed as witches because their bones were naturally not as dense. In the tear test, the accused would have to read an official text about the sacrifice of Jesus. If the accused could not form tears, she was presumed to be a witch. Again, older women were more likely to fail the test.

In 1579, Johann Weyer's treatise on witchcraft, De Prestigiis Daemomum , was one of the first writings to connect witchcraft with possible mental disturbances. Weyer attempted to refine the procedures used for identifying witchcraft. He highlighted biological reasons to account for why older women failed the tear and the flotation tests. Yet, he never denied the existence of witchcraft.

During this time, asylums for the mentally ill were created and quickly became warehouses for the socially undesirable. In response to the treatment of the mentally ill in asylums, moral treatment movements began.

The 1600s

1605: Francis Bacon's The Proficience and Advancement of Learning brought modern scientific perspective to the forefront.

1662: Rene Descartes publishes Treatise on Man, proposing a mind-body dualism. His writings on the concept of reflex mechanisms advanced the study of biological psychology. Through his theory, many sensory and motor functions could be explained mechanically.

Isaac Newton's Principia (1687) established the rules for scientific experimentation.

1690: In his essay "Concerning Human Understanding", John Locke states, "There is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses." Locke was an admirer of Newton who developed a Newtonian approach to the study of the mind in which he stated that basic sensations form simple, then more complex ideas.

The 1700s

1739: David Hume writes A Treatise of Human Nature, claiming that the mind is a collection of sensory impressions linked by associations.

Jeremy Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation tied all human activity to either pleasure or pain.

Franz Joseph Gall, the father of phrenology, supported the neurological perspective on psychology through his research and subsequent writings.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, E.H. Weber, a Leipzig physiologist, studied the sense of touch and the ability of observers to determine weights of different magnitude. His research led to the formation of the first general law of sensory function known as Weber's Law, published in 1835.

The 1800s

1856 Hermann von Helmholtz developed significant theories on the physiology of auditory and visual functions.

1860    Gustav Fechner, German experimental psychologist, established experimental methods and the overall perspective for research on sensation and perception. He, along with Wilhelm Wundt and Hermann von Helmholtz, are considered to be the founders of modern experimental psychology. The Fechner Law examines the relationship between the physical strength of a stimulus and the perceived intensity of the stimulus.

1861 Pierre Broca identified what became known as the "Broca's area" of the brain which, when destroyed by a lesion, resulted in the patient's inability to speak. This became known as Broca's aphasia.

1867 In his The Physiology and Pathology of the Mind, Henry Maudsley provided clinical data in support of the medical model of mental illness.

1870s The first laboratories in psychology were opened in Germany.

1879 Wilhelm Wundt, the father of experimental psychology, founded the first university laboratory devoted to psychology at the University of Leipzig. Wundt is credited with giving psychology its independence from philosophy and physiology.

1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus' work titled On Memory was a pioneering work in the field of memory research.

By the end of the 1800s psychological disorders were viewed as a form of illness that should be diagnosed and treated.

Sigmund Freud, from the

LIFE Magazine Photo Archive

The 1900s to the Present

In the beginning of the 20^th century, Emil Kraepelin, a German psychiatrist, was the first to distinguish thought disorders such as schizophrenia from the mood disorders of melancholia such as depression and manic depression now called bipolar disorder. His views were a major influence on diagnostic categories.

1900 Sigmund Freud published Interpretation of Dreams which is considered the beginning of psychoanalytic thought. Freud developed a form of therapy known as psychoanalysis which assumes that the unconscious mind is the most powerful motivator of behavior.

1905  Intelligence (IQ) tests were developed.

1954 The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was published by the American Psychiatric Association.  The DSM outlines diagnosis, prevalence, and treatment of mental disorders.

2000 Sequencing of the Human Genome: Sixteen research institutions complete a draft of mapping the human genetic code. Research continues today.

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