THE STORY OF PSYCHOLOGY: A TIMELINE

by Charles L. Brewer, Furman University

B.C.E.

387 – Plato, who believed in innate ideas, suggests that the brain is the seat of mental processes.

335 – Aristotle, who denied the existence of innate ideas, suggests that the heart is the seat of mental processes.

C.E.

1604 – Johannes Kepler describes inverted image on the retina.

1605 – Francis Bacon publishes The Proficiency and Advancement of Learning.

1636 – Harvard College is founded.

1637 – René Descartes, the French philosopher and mathematician who proposed mind-body interaction and the doctrine of innate ideas, publishes A Discourse on Method.

1690 – John Locke, the British philosopher who rejected Descartes’ notion of innate ideas and insisted that the mind at birth is a “blank slate” (tabula rasa), publishes An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which stresses empiricism over speculation.

1774 – Franz Mesmer, an Austrian physician, performs his first supposed cure using “animal magnetism” (later called mesmerism and hypnosis). In 1777 he was expelled from the practice of medicine in Vienna.

1793 – Philippe Pinel releases the first mental patients from their chains at the Bicêtre Asylum in France and advocates for more humane treatment of mental patients.

1802 – Thomas Young publishes A Theory of Color Vision in England. (His theory was later called the trichromatic theory.)

1808 – Franz Joseph Gall, a German physician, describes phrenology, the belief that the shape of a person’s skull reveals mental faculties and character traits.

1813 – The first private psychiatric hospital in the United States opens in Philadelphia.

1834 – Ernst Heinrich Weber publishes The Sense of Touch, in which he discusses the “just noticeable difference (jnd)” and what we now call Weber’s law.

1844 – In Philadelphia, 13 superintendents form The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (now known as the American Psychiatric Association).

1848 – Phineas Gage suffers massive brain damage when a large iron rod accidentally pierces his brain, leaving his intellect and memory intact but altering his personality.

1850 – Hermann von Helmholtz measures the speed of the nerve impulse.

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, synthesizing much previous work on the theory of evolution, including that of Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest.”

1861 – Paul Broca, a French physician, discovers an area in the left frontal lobe of the brain (now called Broca’s area) that is critical for the production of spoken language.

1869 – Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, publishes Hereditary Genius, in which he claims that intelligence is inherited. In 1876 he coins the expression “nature and nurture” to correspond with “heredity and environment.”

1874 – Carl Wernicke, a German neurologist and psychiatrist, shows that damage to a specific area in the left temporal lobe (now called Wernicke’s area) disrupts ability to comprehend or produce spoken or written language.

1878 – G. Stanley Hall receives from Harvard University’s Department of Philosophy the first U.S. Ph.D. degree based on psychological research.

1879 – Wilhelm Wundt establishes at the University of Leipzig, Germany, the first psychology laboratory, which becomes a mecca for psychology students from all over the world.

1883 – G. Stanley Hall, student of Wilhelm Wundt, establishes the first formal U.S. psychology laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.

1885 – Hermann Ebbinghaus publishes On Memory, summarizing his extensive research on learning and memory, including the “forgetting curve.”

1886 – Joseph Jastrow receives from Johns Hopkins University the first Ph.D. degree in psychology awarded by a Department of Psychology in the United States.

1889 – Alfred Binet and Henri Beaunis establish the first psychology laboratory in France at the Sorbonne, and the first International Congress of Psychology meets in Paris.

1890 – William James, Harvard University philosopher and psychologist, publishes The Principles of Psychology, describing psychology as “the science of mental life.”

1891 – James Mark Baldwin establishes the first psychology laboratory in the British Commonwealth at the University of Toronto.

1892 – G. Stanley Hall spearheads the founding of the American Psychological Association (APA) and becomes its first president.

1893 – Mary Whiton Calkins and Christine Ladd-Franklin are the first women elected to membership in the APA.

1894 – Margaret Floy Washburn is the first woman to receive a Ph.D. degree in psychology (Cornell University).

– Harvard University denies Mary Whiton Calkins admission to doctoral candidacy because of her gender, despite Hugo Münsterberg’s claim that she was the best student he had ever had there.

1896 – John Dewey publishes “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,” helping to formalize the school of psychology called functionalism.

1898 – In Animal Intelligence, Edward L. Thorndike, Columbia University, describes his learning experiments with cats in “puzzle boxes.” In 1905, he proposes the “law of effect.”

1900 – Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams, his major theoretical work on psychoanalysis.

1901 – Ten founders establish the British Psychological Society.

1904 – Ivan Pavlov is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his studies on the physiology of digestion.

1905 – Mary Whiton Calkins becomes the first woman president of the APA.

– Ivan Petrovich Pavlov begins publishing studies of conditioning in animals.

– Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon produce the first intelligence test for assessing the abilities and academic progress of Parisian schoolchildren.

1909 – Sigmund Freud makes his only trip to America to deliver a series of lectures at Clark University.

1913 – John B. Watson outlines the tenets of behaviorism in a Psychological Review article, “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.”

1914 – During World War I, Robert Yerkes and his staff develop a group intelligence test for evaluating U.S. military personnel, which increases the U.S. public’s acceptance of psychological testing.

1920 – Leta Stetter Hollingworth publishes The Psychology of Subnormal Children, an early classic. In 1921 she is cited in American Men of Science for her research on the psychology of women.

– Francis Cecil Sumner receives a Ph.D. degree in psychology from Clark University, becoming the first African-American to earn a psychology doctorate.

– John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner report conditioning a fear reaction in a child called “Little Albert.”

1921 – Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist, introduces the Rorschach Inkblot Test.

1923 – Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget publishes The Language and Thought of the Child.

1924 – Mary Cover Jones reports reconditioning a fear reaction in a child (Peter), a forerunner of systematic desensitization developed by Joseph Wolpe.

1927 – In Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis, Anna Freud discusses psychoanalysis in the treatment of children.

1929 – Wolfgang Köhler publishes Gestalt Psychology, which criticizes behaviorism and outlines essential elements of the gestalt position and approach.

1931 – Margaret Floy Washburn becomes the first female psychologist (and the second female scientist in any discipline) elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

1932 – In The Wisdom of the Body, Walter B. Cannon coins the term homeostasis, discusses the fight-or-flight response, and identifies hormonal changes associated with stress.

1933 – Inez Beverly Prosser becomes the first African-American woman to receive a doctoral degree in psychology from a U.S. institution (Ph.D., University of Cincinnati).

1935 – Christiana Morgan and Henry Murray introduce the Thematic Apperception Test to elicit fantasies from people undergoing psychoanalysis.

1936 – Egas Moniz, a Portuguese physician, publishes work on the first frontal lobotomies performed on humans.

1938 – B. F. Skinner publishes The Behavior of Organisms, which describes operant conditioning of animals.

– In Primary Mental Abilities, Louis L. Thurstone proposes seven such abilities.

– Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini use electroshock treatment with a human patient.

1939 – David Wechsler publishes the Wechsler-Bellevue intelligence test, forerunner of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS).

– Mamie Phipps Clark receives a master’s degree from Howard University. In collaboration with Kenneth B. Clark, she later extends her thesis, “The Development of Consciousness of Self in Negro Preschool Children,” providing joint research cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to end racial segregation in public schools.

– Edward Alexander Bott helps found the Canadian Psychological Association. He becomes its first president in 1940.

– World War II provides many opportunities for psychologists to enhance the popularity and influence of psychology, especially in applied areas.

1943 – Psychologist Starke Hathaway and physician J. Charnley McKinley publish the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI).

1945 – Karen Horney, who criticized Freud’s theory of female sexual development, publishes Our Inner Conflicts.

1946 – Benjamin Spock’s first edition of The Commonsense Book of Baby and Child Care appears; the book will influence child raising in North America for several decades.

1948 – Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues publish Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, and they publish Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953.

– B. F. Skinner’s novel, Walden Two, describes a Utopian community based on positive reinforcement, which becomes a clarion call for applying psychological principles in everyday living, especially communal living.

– Ernest R. Hilgard publishes Theories of Learning, which was required reading for several generations of psychology students in North America.

1949 – Raymond B. Cattell publishes the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF).

– The scientist-practitioner model of training is approved at The Boulder Conference on Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology.