The Story of Psychology

BOOK: The Story of Psychology
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Morton Hunt
THE STORY OF
PSYCHOLOGY

Morton Hunt has been a freelance writer specializing in the behavioral sciences since 1949. His articles have appeared in many national magazines, including
The New Yorker
and
The New York Times
, and have won him numerous prizes including the Westinghouse A.A.A.S. Award for best science article of the year. He has written twenty-one books, the best known of which are
The World of the Formerly Married
(about the lives and psychology of separated and divorced people),
The Universe Within
(cognitive science), and the earlier edition of this present book. He lives in Gladwyn, Pennsylvania, with his wife, writer and psychotherapist Bernice Hunt.

A L S O    B Y     M O R T O N     H U N T

The Natural History of Love

Her Infinite Variety:
The American Woman as Lover, Mate and Rival

Mental Hospital

The Talking Cure
(with Rena Corman and Louis R. Ormont)

The Thinking Animal

The World of the Formerly Married

The Affair: A Portrait of Extra-Marital Love
in Contemporary America

The Mugging

Sexual Behavior in the 1970s

Prime Time: A Guide to the Pleasures and Opportunities
of the New Middle Age
(with Bernice Hunt)

The Divorce Experience
(with Bernice Hunt)

The Universe Within:
A New Science Explores the Human Mind

Profiles of Social Research:
The Scientific Study of Human Interactions

The Compassionate Beast: What Science Is Discovering
About the Humane Side of Humankind

How Science Takes Stock: The Story of Meta-Analysis

The New Know-Nothings: The Political Foes of the
Scientific Study of Human Nature

To Bernice,
for reasons beyond counting

READER

I here put into thy hands what has been the diversion of some of my idle and heavy hours; if it has the good luck to prove so of any of thine, and thou hast but half so much pleasure in reading as I had in writing it, thou wilt as little think thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed.

J
OHN
L
OCKE
, “The Epistle to the Reader,”
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

CONTENTS

Prologue: Exploring the Universe Within

         
A Psychological Experiment in the Seventh Century
B.C.
1

         
Messages from the Gods

         
The Discovery of the Mind

P
ART
O
NE
: PRESCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY

    1   
The Conjecturers

         
The Glory That Was Greece

         
The Forerunners: Alcmaeon, Protagoras, Democritus, Hippocrates

         
The “Midwife of Thought”: Socrates

         
The Idealist: Plato

         
The Realist: Aristotle

    2   
The Scholars

         
The Long Sleep

         
The Commentators: Theophrastus, the Hellenists, the Epicureans, the Skeptics, the Stoics

         
Roman Borrowers: Lucretius, Seneca, Epictetus, Galen, Plotinus

         
The Patrist Adapters: the Patrists, Tertullian, Saint Augustine

         
The Patrist Reconcilers: the Schoolmen, Saint Thomas Aquinas

         
The Darkness Before Dawn

    3   
The Protopsychologists

         
The Third Visitation

         
The Rationalists: Descartes, the Cartesians, Spinoza

         
The Empiricists: Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, the Empiricist-Associationist School

         
German Nativism: Leibniz, Kant

P
ART
T
WO
: FOUNDERS OF A NEW SCIENCE

    4   
The Physicalists

         
The Magician-Healer: Mesmer

         
The Skull Reader: Gall

         
The Mechanists

         
Specific Nerve Energy: Müller

         
Just Noticeable Differences: Weber

         
Neural Physiology: von Helmholtz

         
Psychophysics: Fechner

    5   
First Among Equals: Wundt

         
As Good a Birth Date as Any

         
The Making of the First Psychologist

         
The Curious Goings-on at Konvikt

         
Wundtian Psychology

         
Sic Transit

    6   
The Psychologist
Malgré Lui:
William James

         
“This Is No Science”

         
Adorable Genius

         
Founding Father

         
Ideas of the Pre-eminent Psychologizer

         
Jamesian Paradoxes

    7   
Explorer of the Depths: Sigmund Freud

         
The Truth About Freud

         
The Would-Be Neuroscientist

         
The Hypnotherapist

         
The Invention of Psychoanalysis

         
Dynamic Psychology: Early Formulations

         
Success

         
Dynamic Psychology: Extensions and Revisions

         
But Is It Scientific?

         
Decline and Fall—and Revival

    8   
The Measurers

         
“Whenever You Can, Count”: Francis Galton

         
Galtonian Paradoxes

         
The Mental Age Approach: Alfred Binet

         
The Testing Mania

         
The IQ Controversy

    9   
The Behaviorists

         
A New Answer to Old Questions

         
Two Discoverers of the Laws of Behaviorism: Thorndike and Pavlov

         
Mr. Behaviorism: John B. Watson

         
The Triumph of Behaviorism

         
Two Great Neobehaviorists: Hull and Skinner

         
The Impending Paradigm Shift

    10  
The Gestaltists

         
A Visual Illusion Gives Rise to a New Psychology

         
The Rediscovery of the Mind

         
The Laws of Gestalten

         
Out-of-Reach Bananas and Other Problems

         
Learning

         
Failure and Success

P
ART
T
HREE
: SPECIALIZATION AND SYNTHESIS

           
Introduction: The Fissioning of Psychology— and the Fusion of the Psychological Sciences

    11  
The Personality Psychologists

         
“The Secrets of the Hearts of Other Men”

          
The Fundamental Units of Personality

          
Measuring Personality

          
Making Order out of Chaos

          
Learned Personality

          
Body, Genes, and Personality

          
Late Word from the Personality Front

    12  
The Developmentalists

          
“Great Oaks from Little Acorns Grow”

          
Grand Theory and Nontheory

          
A Giant, and a Giant Theory

          
Cognitive Development

          
Maturation

          
Personality Development

          
Social Development

          
Development from A to Z

    13  
The Social Psychologists

          
No Man’s Land

          
A Case of Multiple Fatherhood

          
Closed Cases: Cognitive Dissonance, the Psychology of Imprisonment, Obedience, the Bystander Effect

          
Ongoing Inquiries: Conflict Resolution, Attribution, Others

          
The Value of Social Psychology

    14  
The Perception Psychologists

          
Interesting Questions

          
Styles of Looking at Looking

          
Seeing Form

          
Seeing Movement

          
Seeing Depth

          
Two Ways of Looking at Vision

    15  
The Emotion and Motivation Psychologists

          
Fundamental Question

          
Somatic Theory

          
ANS and CNS Theory

          
Cognitive Theory

          
Patchwork Quilt

    16  
The Cognitivists

          
Revolution

          
Revolution No. 2

          
Memory

          
Language

          
Reasoning

          
Is the Mind a Computer? Is a Computer a Mind?

          
New Model

          
And the Winner Is—

    17  
The Psychotherapists

          
Growth Industry

          
Freud’s Offspring: The Dynamic Psychotherapists

          
The Patient as Laboratory Animal: Behavior Therapy

          
All in the Mind: Cognitive Therapy

          
A Miscellany of Therapies

          
But Does It Really Work?

    18  
Users and Misusers of Psychology

          
Knowledge Is Power

          
Improving the Human Use of the Human Equipment

          
Improving the Fit Between Humans and Their Jobs

          
The Use and Misuse of Testing

          
Covert Persuasion: Advertising and Propaganda

          
Psychology in the Courtroom

          
Beyond the Fringe

    19  
Psychology Today

          
Portrait of a Psychologist

          
Portrait of a Science

          
Schism

          
Psychology and Politics

          
Status Report

          
Notes

          
Notes

          
References

          
Acknowledgments

BOOK: The Story of Psychology
6.24Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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