Become a Psychologist

Psychology, science or study of the thought processes and behavior of humans and other animals in their interaction with the environment. Psychologists study processes of sense perception, thinking, learning, cognition, emotions and motivations, personality, abnormal behavior, interactions between individuals, and interactions with the environment. The field is closely allied with such disciplines as anthropology and sociology in its concerns with social and environmental influences on behavior; physics in its treatment of vision, hearing, and touch; and biology in the study of the physiological basis of behavior. In its earliest speculative period, psychological study was chiefly embodied in philosophical and theological discussions of the soul.

Development of Modern Psychology

The De anima of Aristotle is considered the first monument of psychology as such, centered around the belief that the heart was the basis for mental activity. The foundations of modern psychology were laid by 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who argued that scientific causes could be established for every sort of phenomenon through deductive reasoning. The mind-body theories of Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and G. W. Leibniz were equally crucial in the development of modern psychology, where the human mind's relation to the body and its actions have been significant topics of debate.

In England the empirical method employed in modern psychological study originated in the work of John Locke, George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, and David Hume. David Hartley, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Alexander Bain stressed the relation of physiology to psychology, an important development in the scientific techniques of modern psychology. Important contributions were made in the physiological understanding of human psychology by French philosopher Condillac, F. J. Gall, the German founder of phrenology, and French surgeon Paul Broca, who localized speech centers in the brain.