Historical introduction to modern psychology Gardner Murphy and Joseph K. Kovach

Includes bibliographical references and index.

pt. 1. The antecedents of modern psychology. The intellectual background. The seventeenth century. The eighteenth century. The early nineteenth century. -- pt. 2. The rise of the research spirit. Some intellectual antecedents of experimental psychology. The beginnings of experimental psychology. British psychology in the mid-nineteenth century. The theory of evolution. Psychiatry from Pinel and Mesmer to Charcot. German physiological psychology in the age of Helmholtz. Wundt and experimental psychology. Early studies of memory. The influence of neurology, 1860-1910. William James. Structural and functional types of psychology. The Würzburg school. Experiments on the acquisition of skill. -- pt. 3. Contemporary psychological systems. Behaviorism. Modern conceptions of association. Gestalt. Field theory. Sigmund Freud. The response to Freud. -- pt. 4. Some representative research areas. The measurement of intelligence. Physiological psychology. Child psychology. Social psychology. Personality. An interpretation.

Psychology, in the sense of reflection upon the nature and activities of mind, is a very ancient discipline, one which reached great heights in ancient Greece and has continued (in intimate relation with philosophy) with every phase of European civilization. During the nineteenth century this literary and philosophic psychology underwent profound changes, chiefly as a result of the progress of biology, from which both concepts and methods were freely borrowed. Many of its greatest students began to rely upon experimental and mathematical method, believing that psychology could become a science akin to other biological sciences. It is the purpose of this volume to trace the course of those changes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which have thus tended to transform psychology and to give it its present character. This text presents a detailed history of modern psychology not limited to the experimental tradition. -- Description from http://psycnet.apa.org (June 12, 2012.).