History is an event or set of events that has happened while the present is a point on a continuum of change. History has a future because the interpretation of the relics or evidence of historical persons and events can change as a result of the discovery of new relics while the events and persons themselves remain unchanged. So even though historical events and persons do not change, the interpretation of their significance can change, thus making the study of history known as historiography a dynamic enterprise. In as much as history is elusive, different approaches for understanding the nature of history are examined, including the cyclical (history repeats itself), progressive (we learn and benefit from the past), and dynamic systems or chaotic (patternless events happen) models of history. We indicate some of the consequences of these models for the history of psychology.
Two major forces that make history include the Naturalistic and the Personalistic forces with the former emphasizing the importance of the time and place of the cultural context while the Personalistic explanation stresses that there are great individuals who make history.
We consider the chronological approach to the study of the history of psychology in which the historian selects a time period such as from the present back to 200 years B.C. and then organizes the historical analysis of events and persons within this temporal framework. The schools of thought is another approach in which a group of psychologists align themselves around a particular pattern of ideas promoted by a leader of a school of psychology such as, for example, structuralism, behaviorism, or psychoanalysis.
According to some scholars, it is our methods of study rather than our subject matter that make psychology scientific, and thus we review briefly methods of study employed by research and applied psychologists. We provide historical examples of the authority and boundaries of scientific laboratory studies within psychology by examining the apparent supernatural powers of an early 20th-century psychic and by an examination of the Salem witchcraft trials. Thereafter, we turn to the new history of psychology, which is critical rather than ceremonial and focuses upon the political and social contexts in which ideas developed.
Paradigms or frameworks guide and influence the collection and interpretation of observations and findings so that findings are not created equally. We examine the process of paradigm formation and revolutionary change in science as reflected in the mythical revolutions in psychology in the United States. In as much as there is no overarching paradigm that embraces all of psychology we examine the advantages and limitations of specialization, which began at the outset of psychology in the late 19th century and which is extremely pervasive in contemporary psychology. We review the findings of meta-analytic, efficacy, and effectiveness studies of psychological interventions that demonstrate unequivocally that psychology yields positive affective, behavioral, and cognitive benefits for individuals as well as groups.
When you finish studying this chapter, you will be prepared to:
History is an event or set of events that has happened while the present is a point in time on a continuum of change. At first glance, history is about what happened, and, therefore, may be considered by some as a stable and fixed discipline. However, history is the continuing discovery of new historical relics and data sets that may give rise to changing interpretations of prior events and persons indicating clearly that history is a dynamic field of study that has a future.
The study of history is known as historiography, which encompasses issues about the historical data set, the nature of history, the forces that shape history, and the writing of history. History is an empirical and interpretative discipline. The empirical part of history is the collection and cataloguing of historical relics or artifacts that serve as the record(s) of the events and persons involved in these events. Relics or data sets might include, for example, stones, tools, letters, books, videotapes, e-mail, web pages, satellite and spacecraft images, bones, and DNA specimens. In historical research, there is always the possibility that the data set may be incomplete and the discovery of new data could change dramatically our interpretation of the historical events or persons. Accordingly, the interpretative side of history focuses upon attributing meaning to the data set, which usually involves the historian looking at the larger social and temporal contexts in which the data are embedded.
Another important issue of historiography is the nature of history itself; for example, is history repetitive, progressive, or chaotic in nature (Henle, Jaynes, & Sullivan, 1973)? Perhaps you have heard the comment about current events that “the news doesn’t change, it just happens to different people.” In other words, history repeats itself. According to the cyclical hypothesis of history, the inherent nature of history is that events repeat themselves over time, there is a pattern to these repetitions, knowledge of the past provides insight into the future, and the historian’s job is to identify and explain these patterns or rhythms. Although the particulars of events may change over time the patterns of these events do not, such as the repetitiveness of ethnic and national conflicts, good and bad economic times, the seasons of the year, and the stages of our individual lives. Cycles in the history of psychology are evident when we realize, for example, that the analysis of consciousness was considered the primary subject matter in the early years of psychology, but it was then replaced with a focus upon behavior during the first half of the 20th century. Now consciousness (awareness and experiences of affect and cognitions) is back again as an important part of the subject matter of psychology along with behavior.
According to some historians, history is progressive with the current generation building upon the accomplishments of prior generations (Gawronski, 1975). According to the linear progressive model of history, new discoveries and knowledge emerge over time arising from earlier experimentation and inquiry so that life today is better than life 100 years ago. Just pause for a moment and think about all the many conveniences of your daily life, none of which probably existed 50 to 100 years ago. Likewise, in the history of psychology we have seen over the years advances in our understanding in areas such as color vision, learning, and the development of different therapies to treat different psychological disorders.
Another model of the nature of history is the chaos hypothesis, according to which “stuff happens.” There are no inherent patterns nor is history a quasi-orderly progressive phenomenon. Rather, events arise as a result of the apparently random interactions of events or systems, although some patterns may be observable depending upon the level of analysis such as the length of the time span or breadth of the context of the observations of the historian. For example, Koch (1993) has argued extensively that psychology is misconceived when seen as a coherent science or discipline focused upon the empirical study of humans and infra humans. According to Koch (1969, 1993), psychology is still searching for a unique methodology to study its subject matter and has been misguided in its attempts to emulate the natural sciences, especially physics.
Each year in the United States and many other countries around the world, every adult taxpayer has to file an annual income tax return indicating total income; deductions, some of which may be related to professional expenses incurred (e.g., expenses for studying the history of psychology); and how much tax may still be owed to the government.
RBL was called in to talk with an official auditor or examiner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about some deductions for research expenses associated with the history of psychology that were listed on a recent tax return. The IRS auditor was a very courteous, no-nonsense kind of person interested only in the facts and figures, so she inquired about the basic nuts and bolts of studying the history of psychology. Accordingly, the first point to keep in mind about the study of history is that historical truth is more elusive than scientific truth because all that remains of historical events are relics. These relics need be inspected and studied carefully, and may be maintained in some archive, museum, or laboratory requiring the historian to travel, and thus the reason for the travel expenses listed on the tax return. On the other hand, it is sometimes possible to purchase relics, books, videotapes, and newspapers, which accounts for some of the other expenses shown on the tax return. The important point to remember here is that once you have access to or possess historical relics you then have to calculate their significance by determining what the relic signifies about the historical event(s) of interest.
Another important point about the study of the history of psychology is that there are a variety of criteria for determining historical importance regarding the discovery of new relics (i.e., a particular person, event, or both). For example, it may be recorded that an important person met with a particular group of people, which was considered historically to be a very important meeting, while later in time it is discovered that another group was excluded from the meeting, and thus it is the exclusion rather than inclusion of a certain group that is important in the analysis and possible present-day impact of the historical event. Another historian may argue that an event may not be significant in and of itself while another may argue to the contrary, or the event may not be important in the short run but rather in the long run. For example, the tearing down of the Berlin wall in 1989 was momentous then and even more so today because it may well have been an international event of such magnitude that it contributed significantly to the elimination of other barriers or walls such as the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Berlin wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union are excellent examples of the issues for determining the criteria of importance of political history. In the history of psychology, John Dewey’s paper on the reflex arc (1896) is considered by some as very important because it was the beginning of the school of psychology known as functionalism.
Another factor in determining what is important out of all the things that have happened is the historian herself or himself. For example, as more women enter psychology, move into leadership positions, and become historians of psychology, the role of women becomes more central and will reshape the history of psychology.
We have identified above some of the forces that shape the study of history and which make plain that history is a dynamic and changing discipline, even though historical events only happen once involving a particular set of persons or events. We now turn to the identification of some of the forces that make history itself, and these include the spirit of the times and the place (Naturalistic) and the Personalistic theory of history making.
According to the Naturalistic or Zeitgeist approach, history is in large part made by the spirit of the time and place so that, for example, Sigmund Freud came onto the global psychological scene as a result of having lived and worked during a time when science was prized, especially in the intellectual and cosmopolitan atmosphere in Vienna, Austria. Likewise, Mahatma Gandhi, Mao Zedong, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Elvis Presley, Mother Theresa, Marie Montessori and all other world-renowned global figures rose to prominence because they happened to be in the right place at the right time. The Naturalistic approach de-emphasizes the individual in shaping history, is deterministic in that contextual or situational forces are paramount, and supports heartily the perspective that “culture informs mind.”
The Personalistic theory of history argues that there are great persons endowed with an abundance of intelligence, insight, skills, personality, or some other dispositional feature or trait so that it is the person that shapes the culture and the times. Here, “mind informs culture” and the Personalistic theory stresses the centrality of the uniquely gifted, talented, and motivated person who makes history. This is a nondeterministic model that stresses the importance of the unique individual in making history. Thus, the civil rights movement in the United States or in South Africa would not have been launched nor its accomplishments and struggles to the present moment been possible without the unique persons of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela, respectively. According to the Personalistic model, it was these unique persons that had the intellectual, moral, and personal courage to lead and shape the civil rights movement in the United States and South Africa. As most would agree, both the Naturalistic and Personalistic models of historical causation have merit and at one point in time one force may be a more robust predictor of historical events than the other, yet over time they both interact so that both models are valuable (Simonton, 1994).
One of the most widely used methods for studying and writing about the history of psychology is the chronological approach. The historian picks some point in time and moves to some other point in time, usually, but not always, from the present to the past. Obviously, the historian establishes some criteria for her or his time line, and examines important persons and events during the selected period. An example of the chronological approach to the history of psychology is Edwin G. Boring’s classic work, A History of Experimental Psychology (first published in 1929 and revised for the 1950 edition), which focuses primarily upon philosophical, physiological, and psychological developments during the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century.
Another approach to the study of the history of psychology is the focus upon the schools of psychology. A school of psychology is a group of psychologists who have aligned themselves around a particular pattern of ideas promoted by a leader(s) of a movement, such as Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener (psychology of consciousness); William James, James Rowland Angell, and John Dewey (functionalism); John B. Watson (behaviorism), Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka (Gestalt psychology); and Sigmund Freud (psychoanalysis). Note that all these leaders of the schools of psychology were men reflecting the exclusionary nature of 19th- and early 20th-century psychology and the larger European and American cultures of those times. The school or systems approach to the history of psychology is represented by Robert S. Woodworth’s Contemporary Schools of Psychology (1931), Edna Heidbreder’s Seven Psychologies (1933), or Melvin H. Marx and William Cronan-Hillix’s Systems and Theories in Psychology (1987). The schools of psychology dissipated around the early 1940s as the persons entering psychology were more diversified, there was increasing specialization as psychological knowledge accumulated in the literature, and the range of psychological topics grew broader. The schools or systems of psychology no longer exist, although orientations to psychological problems endure today such as behavioristic (behaviorism), applied (functionalism), cognitive (Gestalt), or dynamic (psychoanalysis) perspectives on a variety of psychological topics.
In the autobiographical approach well-known psychologists write personal or professional content autobiographies as reflected by Carl Murchinson’s History of Psychology in Autobiography (1952). Lastly, a topical approach focuses upon particular areas of psychology such as, for example, perception, learning, and personality as reflected in J. P. Chaplin and T. Krawiec’s Systems and Theories of Psychology (1960) or E. Hilgard and G. Bower’s Theories of Learning (1966). Recent treatments of the history of psychology have become more focused upon highly specialized topics such as Donald K. Freedheim’s History of Psychotherapy (1992).
Just as there are a number of fundamental methods for studying the history of psychology, there are also some fundamental methods of study employed in almost every area of specialization in psychology. The search for the appropriate methods of study dates back to the beginnings of psychology as a formal, separate discipline in 1879 and continues right up to the present moment. This emphasis upon the importance of methodology in psychology has led some to observe that psychology is more a set of methods in search of subject matter than a discipline with a fixed subject matter.
Although there are many methods of study in psychology, most are related to four primary methods employed by many research and applied psychologists around the world. The psychological literature is located in textbooks, journals, electronic list servers, world wide web sites, personal correspondence, and archives. The value and applicability of any of these data sets are determined by the method of inquiry used to obtain the data.
Table 3.1 Methods of Study and their Advantages and Disadvantages
| Method of Study | Advantages | Disadvantages |
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| Case study |
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| Field experiment |
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| Archival research |
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Source: From Lawson, R. B., & Shen, Z. Organizational psychology: Foundations and applications. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission of The Oxford University Press.
Table 3.1 presents the four primary methods of study that are used most often in psychology. In general, as you move from case study to laboratory experiment you gain increasing control over the independent and dependent variables at the expense of losing realism, ecological validity, or touch with indigenous individuals or groups.
A working knowledge of all four methods is definitely of value when examining foundational studies and experiments in the history of psychology.
We now examine a significant challenge in the beginning of the 20th century that faced American psychologists as they attempted to construct and maintain boundaries between the new science of psychology and its “pseudoscientific” counterparts of psychic research and spiritualism. It is interesting that the psychologists involved in these events relied almost exclusively upon issues of method of study of psychological phenomena to make plain that the new science of psychology could study both natural and so-called supernatural events. In demonstrating the power of the methods of study, psychology was further legitimized as a separate and scientific discipline. Interestingly, this earlier focus upon the centrality of methods in psychology is extremely timely today as Eastern and Western psychologies merge into a global psychology requiring the alignment of vitalistic, spiritual, and scientific explanations of events and experiences. Also, public interest in spirituality, especially in the Western world, has given rise to a creative tension between the public’s demand for alternative psychological services, while psychologists seek to maintain the credibility of psychology by using scientific methods while being open to methods that focus upon individual phenomenological or experiential narrative reports.
At the beginning of the 20th century, psychology was deemed by some as incapable of becoming a science because the subject matter, consciousness, was unquantifiable and its methodology was unclear and adrift in a metaphysical morass (Coon, 1992). Interestingly, Coon (1992) has argued that early 20th-century psychologists used their battles with spiritualists to legitimize further psychology as a science and thus established a new role for themselves as the guardians of the science of psychology. For example, Hugo Münsterberg (1913b), director of the Harvard Psychological Laboratory, studied the alleged psychic or mind reader Beulah Miller, a young girl from Rhode Island, and concluded that she was not a fraud nor was she a clairvoyant (capacity to sense the thoughts of others as a result of supernatural communication). Münsterberg claimed that Miller had “supernormal sensitiveness” to the minute muscular movements made by a person when concentrating, and if she was prevented from seeing the person while concentrating, then she lost her psychic powers. Münsterberg asserted that all persons made minute muscular movements when concentrating, a fact that “we can easily show with delicate instruments in the psychological laboratory” (p. 17).
Psychologists demonstrated the authority of science, the laboratory, and its instruments to the public, which reinforced the idea that psychology is a science and that this natural science can explain natural and apparently supernatural phenomena as well! Explaining a phenomenon does not necessarily minimize interest in it as many people today still seek psychics in Boston, Rhode Island, and almost any place around the world. People seeking psychics may be looking for comfort, knowledge to inform important life choices, and a sense of predictability to life, all of which are psychological needs. Psychics provide services that are very natural such as presence, attentiveness, emotional support, and an aura of deep insight and package these services as supernatural. Unfortunately, psychics are not regulated by law nor are their practices regularly open to systematic study, so it is difficult to learn further about how their services work and do not work in assisting people in learning about themselves and how they manage their lives.
As indicated earlier in this chapter, the interpretation of a historical event may change even though the event(s) itself happens only once, and the relics or evidence of that event may not change as dramatically as the interpretation. We turn now to an event that many considered to be the result of mass hysteria, while some thought the event was the result of witchcraft or other supernatural forces that influenced significantly the affective, behavioral, and cognitive systems of hard-working and pious people. The event took place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, and is widely known as the Salem witchcraft trials. The relics of this event include legal documents, letters, and personal diaries, which have been studied and reviewed.
A third and extremely ingenious interpretation of the so-called sorcery in Salem was proposed by a psychologist Linnda Caporael in 1976. According to Caporael (1976), many of the young girls who exhibited symptoms of what some in Salem then considered “bewitchment” may well have been suffering from a disease known as convulsive ergotism, which is due to ergot. This is the sclerotia of the fungus Claviceps purpurea, which usually grows on rye. Ergot grows densely on rye harvested from low, moist, shaded land, especially if the land is newly cultivated. Interestingly, all 22 of the Salem households affected in 1692 were located on or at the edge of soils ideally suited to rye cultivation, namely, moist, acidic, and sandy loams.
The supposed witchcraft at Salem village was not initially identified as such. In late December 1691, about eight girls, including the niece and daughter of the minister, Samuel Parris, were afflicted with unknown “distempers.” Their behavior was characterized by disorderly speech, odd postures and gestures, and convulsive fits. There was no apparent medical explanation and, in February 1692, a doctor suggested the girls might be bewitched. Reluctant to accept this explanation, Minister Parris resorted to prayer and fasting, while a neighbor instructed Parris’ Barbados slave “Tituba” to prepare a “witch cake” made in part from rye. Shortly thereafter, the girls accused Tituba and two other women in Salem Village, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn, of witchcraft. The three women were taken into custody in February 1692. The affliction of the girls continued and in March they also accused Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse. Further accusations by the children followed. The first case of witchcraft was tried on June 2, and the first condemned “witch” was hanged on June 10, 1692. By the time the witchcraft episode ended in the late fall of 1692, 20 persons had been executed and at least two had died in prison of the total 150 accused that were waiting to be hanged.
The original eight girls and others accused or afflicted experienced the following symptoms: (1) crawling sensations in the skin; (2) tingling in the fingers, vertigo, tinnitus aurium, headaches; and (3) disturbances in sensation, hallucination, convulsions, vomiting, and diarrhea. These are exactly the same symptoms of convulsive ergotism that result from eating contaminated rye bread and other foods prepared with rye, which was the basic grain of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1691–1692. Ergot, a parasitic fungus, contains a large number of potent pharmacologic agents, including “isoergine” (lysergic acid amide), which has similar behavioral effects to those produced by LSD. It is very possible that the Salem witchcraft crisis was the result of ergot poisoning carried by the rye grain harvested in the fall of 1691. Although the surviving records make certainty impossible, what is available indicates that the witchcraft accusations of 1692 were most likely a public health problem due to ergot poisoning rather than the work of Satan. Other outbreaks of ergotism have been reported, such as the epidemic during the Middle Ages known then as Ignis Sacer or the holy fire but which has not been widely interpreted as the work or result of Satan or witchcraft (Matossian, 1982; Spanos & Gottlieb, 1976).
In a series of presentations, papers, and books, Professor Laurel Furumoto and her colleagues have introduced and refined the historiographical methods of “the new history of psychology” (Furumoto, 1979, 1981, 1985, 1988; Furumoto & Scarborough, 1986). Within the discipline of history itself, Professor James H. Robinson argued, in The New History, that we need to turn from the study of history “as a chronicle of heroic persons and romantic occurrences” (p. 10) to the study of institutions as the path to a more accurate historical understanding. Institutions, according to Robinson (1912), represented national habits or “the ways in which people have thought and acted in the past, their tastes and their achievements in many fields besides the political” (p. 15). The “new history” is now well established in the discipline of history as well as the specialty area of the history of science (Himmelfarb, 1987; Kuhn, 1970). Interestingly, Stephen J. Brush (1974), a historian of science focusing upon physics and early astronomy, published a paper in Science in 1974, titled “Should the history of science be rated X?” In essence, Brush was advocating for the “new history” over the traditional history that portrayed the scientist as an objective fact finder and neutral observer compared to the approach of the new history that presents scientists often operating in a subjective fashion under the influence of a variety of extra-scientific factors such as funding opportunities, public opinion, and worldviews or metaphysical commitments within the given scientific discipline.
The appearance of the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences; the establishment of Division 26—the History of Psychology of the American Psychological Association; the founding of the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron, Ohio, all in 1965, along with the first graduate program (1967) in the history of psychology (through the leadership of Robert I. Watson); and lastly, the founding of Cheiron, the International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences in 1969, established the study of the history of psychology as a legitimate area of specialization within psychology.
The initial model for the study of the history of psychology was the traditional approach, and it was not until the mid-1970s that the new or critical history began to emerge in the history of psychology (Blumenthal, 1975; Furumoto, 1988). According to Furumoto (1988), the new history of psychology tends to be critical rather than ceremonial, contextual rather than simply the history of ideas, and inclusive going beyond just the study of great white men. Furumoto also believes that it utilizes primary sources (those authored by the historical person of interest) and archival documents (correspondence and diary materials), and aspires to see issues as they appeared at the time rather than just as antecedents of contemporary ideas. The new history of psychology rejects the model of scientific activity as a continuous progression from error to truth, and considers scientific change as a shift from one paradigm or worldview linked to another. The new history of psychology seeks to ground psychology in a history that is more diversified, chromatic, and positioned to deal with the challenges of globablization coupled with the tensions to preserve, respect, and foster indigenous psychologies and local cultures.
According to Furumoto (1988), the new or critical history of psychology has evolved through the following stages:
Scarborough and Furumoto (1987) have stressed five gender-specific themes and barriers to participation that are essential for understanding the contributions of women to the history of psychology:
Unfortunately, some of these barriers to participation still exist. However, as a consequence of the leadership of Furumoto (1988) and others the history of psychology is now more critical, inclusive, and contextual.
Science does not just happen; rather, it arises from the labors of scientists, the communities in which they work and live (e.g., different laboratory groups which may embrace a particular school or system of thought), and serendipitous or chance observations or findings. In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962/1970), Thomas Kuhn suggests that in the stage of prescientific development, the preparadigmatic phase, the focus is upon fact finding, which is a fairly random process since no single framework, system or school of thought, or in Kuhnian terms, paradigm, is dominant to guide and direct the fact-finding process. Thus, in the beginning all facts are created equally. However, eventually one of the paradigms becomes dominant as the accepted or correct way to interpret findings, and to guide the search for new findings to support the predominant paradigm. A particular paradigm becomes dominant for a variety of reasons such as the validity of the findings as well as the relative economic and political strength of one of the communities of scientists compared to others. Once a paradigm is established, we enter, according to Kuhn (1962/1970), the period of normal science when there are no more arguments about basic definitions of the subject matter, methods, and assumptions about what to look for and what it means when you find it, because a paradigm is now dominant.
According to Kuhn, revolutions in science as contrasted with economic, political, or social revolutions are smaller dramas, involve a clash of ideas, and usually one worldview gives way to another (Kuhn, 1970; Leahy, 1992). Kuhn (1970) suggested that scientific revolutions pass through four stages: (1) normal science, characterized as a period with a dominant paradigm that sets the research agenda, sanctifies the methods of study, and provides the calculus for interpreting the reported findings; (2) appearance of anomaly, in which some difficult puzzles cannot be solved, and if they persist are then seen as fundamental and generate a period of crisis; (3) crisis, in which the predominant paradigm begins to crack and then crumble; and (4) revolution, in which the adherents of the emerging paradigm gain control of the levers of power in science such as journal editor-ships, textbooks, listservers, and even granting agencies (Leahy, 1992). In effect, the new replaces the old paradigm and the cycle or revolution begins again with the normal science, appearance of anomaly, crisis, and then revolution.
Cohen (1985) has also proposed a model of scientific revolutions in which the four stages of revolution are more clearly defined than in Kuhn’s model, and he also proposed clear criteria to evaluate whether or not a scientific episode was revolutionary. The primary criterion to determine if a scientific revolution was taking place according to Cohen (1985) was the opinion of scientists involved in the event itself, what he called contemporary testimony. To this major criterion for scientific revolution, Cohen added later documentary history, historians’ judgment, and the opinion of working scientists. Porter (1986) has also put forth a model of scientific revolutions that combines the central features of Kuhn’s and Cohen’s models. In essence, scientists must be aware that the entrenched orthodoxy is being overthrown, and scientific revolutions must be at least international or global in extent.
Leahy (1992), in an insightful and important journal article titled “The Mythical Revolutions of American Psychology,” has argued that the so-called three major revolutions in American psychology (i.e., mentalism, behaviorism, and cognitive psychology) were in fact periods of rapid and continuous rather than revolutionary change. According to Leahy (1992), the widespread yet mythical story of the development of American psychology consists of three chapters. In chapter 1, mentalism, psychology was born in 1879 as the study of consciousness, using the method of introspection or systematic and skilled self-reports of conscious experiences relative to controlled stimuli presented in the psychological laboratory. The second chapter, behaviorism, began in 1913 when mentalism was challenged and taken to task by the behaviorists, who made behavior or “bodies in motion” the subject matter of psychology, stressed the centrality of behavioral learning methods such as classical or Pavlovian conditioning, and asserted unequivocally that mind did not matter in psychology as it was private and subjective. Lastly, chapter 3, cognitive psychology, began in 1956 with the so-called cognitive revolution, which was facilitated by the outside forces of linguistics and artificial intelligence. After 20 years of struggle, information-processing cognitive psychology became the dominant paradigm in American psychology (Leahy, 1992). Thus, the psychology evolved along a continuum of change marked by mentalism, behaviorism, are finally cognitive psychology focused upon information processing.
Leahy (1992) believes that the story of the above three revolutions in psychology is more appropriately portrayed as a narrative of research traditions that have changed over time, moving from the early efforts of Wundt to represent mental life by means of introspective reports, then to the realism of John B. Watson’s behaviorism, and finally to the research tradition of reductionism in cognitive psychology. This analysis of changing research traditions in psychology is a more accurate reflection of the development of psychology in the United States because within each of these three systems of psychology there had been a difficult time identifying unifying methods of study; extensive debate raged regarding the subject matter of focus within each school; and none of the so-called revolutionary changes had been international in scope save for Wundt’s establishment of psychology as a separate discipline of study in 1879.
There is no doubt that psychology appears fractured, made up of many areas of specialization, and is populated by the proliferation of subspecialties and specific proficiencies such as the different psychotherapeutic techniques or different forms of psychometric assessment for personality, intelligence, or abilities (Benjamin, 1997a). As we noted earlier, the schools or systems of psychology gave way in the 1940s to areas of specialization such as clinical, developmental, industrial/organizational, and school psychologies reflecting the conceptual diversity of psychology. These areas of specialization gave rise to the many divisions of the American Psychological Association (Benjamin, 1997a; Bower, 1993; Dewsbury, 1997; Wolfe, 1997). Interestingly, however, organized psychology began to specialize almost from the outset when the American Psychological Association (APA) began with its first informal meeting in Granville Stanley Hall’s study at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, on July 8, 1892, and the first annual meeting held on December 27, 1892, at the University of Pennsylvania. The 31 charter members consisted primarily of experimental or laboratory-based psychologists, philosophers, psychiatrists, and educators (Sokal, 1992). The then fastest-growing part of the APA was made up of philosophers, whom the psychologists attempted to balkanize into a separate section (Benjamin, 1997a). The philosophers objected and started to bolt from APA, and they formed the American Philosophical Association in 1902. For those psychologists remaining in the APA, controversy then developed around psychologists who might destroy the scientific purity of psychology through application of laboratory-based findings to practical problems. Lightner Witmer, who was considered the founder of clinical psychology, established the first psychological clinic rather than laboratory in 1896, encouraged his colleagues to appreciate applied or practical psychology, and charged them to use their laboratory findings to “throw light upon problems that confront humanity” (Witmer, 1897, p. 116). Thus, from the outset, American psychology consisted of different emerging areas of specialization, especially laboratory and applied psychologies.
Another force promoting specialization in psychology is the maturing of the discipline giving rise to the view that psychology really has three distinct subject matters, namely, behavior, neurobiological processes of behavior, and phenomenological experience (Bower, 1993). As a consequence, there is no longer any systematic attention focused upon identifying an overarching paradigm for all of psychology but rather the identification and analyses of paradigms in specific areas of specialization. McGovern, Furumoto, Halpern, Kimble, and McKeachie (1991) examined undergraduate psychology curricula, developed four alternative psychology curricula, and inquired if there is a canon in psychology. They suggested that the canon is probably focused upon evolving methodologies for studying affective, behavioral, and cognitive systems. This focusing upon methodology is very important because it cuts across areas of specialization in psychology, thus bringing some unity to psychology and also allowing psychologists to study a wide range of applied problems such as racism, conflict resolution, and educational strategies for an increasingly diversified global cultural environment. The centrality of methodology is an important historical and contemporary unifying force in psychology.
Lastly, Slife and Williams (1997) have argued that another unifying force, like methodological issues, that existed in the formative years of psychology that can also play an important role in contemporary psychology is the area of theoretical psychology. In the 1930s, schools of psychology such as behaviorism, functionalism, and psychoanalysis still existed and attempted to embrace all or most of the subject matter of psychology under one unifying theoretical model. By the 1940s, these schools had given way to more focused but still “grand” theories that aspired to explain psychological processes such as learning, perception, and social action. These smaller theories have been replaced by even more focused theories that are restricted, for example, to specific types of learning, motivation, and psychotherapy.
Slife and Williams (1997) have argued that subject matter fragmentation in the discipline, biologizing of psychology, and postmodern challenges to mainstream methods of inquiry within psychology (see Table 3.1) make plain the need for a specialization in theoretical psychology. Theoretical psychologists would serve as disciplinary consultants much like statisticians and methodologists do on thesis, dissertation, and research projects and programs. Some have suggested that we do not need a theoretical psychology because we already have too many theories. However, a major purpose of theoretical psychology would be the clarification and critical evaluation of psychology’s ideas and practices. Theoretical psychology can embrace the study of method, globalization of psychology, and an appreciation of indigenous psychologies. Lastly, all data sets always need interpretation, thus requiring a theoretical framework to bring meaning to the data. Slife and Williams (1997) argue that theoretical psychology needs to be transdisciplinary, including philosophical contributions from epistemology (nature of knowledge) and ontology (nature of existence) as well as ethics.
Although psychology consists of many areas of specialization constructed around focused theories or models, it is important to determine if there is any global or transspecialization assessment of the outcomes of psychological interventions derived from a variety of settings using a variety of psychological interventions.
Prior to the advent of meta-analysis in the mid-1970s (Glass, 1976), assessments of psychological interventions were limited to single-study experimental or quasi-experimental approaches and research reviews of such studies with mixed outcomes supporting clear positive outcomes, or studies that presented a “parade of close-to-zero effects” (Rossi & Wright, 1984). The advent of meta-analysis affords a very powerful technique to gather systematic knowledge about the efficacy of psychological, educational, and behavioral interventions for individual and social problems (Lipsey & Wilson, 1993). Meta-analysis treats eligible research studies as a population to be systematically sampled and surveyed. Accordingly, the features and findings of individual studies are abstracted, quantified, coded, and assembled into a database that is statistically analyzed, similar to other quantitative survey studies. Lipsey and Wilson (1993) examined the effect sizes (i.e., the difference between the means of the treatment and control groups divided by usually the pooled standard deviation or that of the control group) for 302 meta-analytic studies directed at practical individual- or group-level problems and included interventions such as general and cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, treatment programs for offenders, meditation, biofeedback, tobacco smoking cessation programs, computer-based education, science and math instruction, test anxiety, job enrichment programs, organizational development programs, and many other areas of specialization.
The fundamental finding of the Lipsey and Wilson study is that psychological interventions have a robust positive impact upon individuals and groups—psychology works! Lipsey and Wilson (1993) performed a more refined meta-analysis controlling for some possible biases that might have inflated the initial positive outcomes, such as nonrandomized assignment of participants to treatment conditions or the use of one group for the pre- and post-intervention research designs or protocols, which tend to yield higher positive outcomes. Lipsey and Wilson (1993) found robust positive effects of psychological interventions (83% of mean effect sizes with the refined distribution were 0.20 or greater) based upon 156 out of the original 302 meta-analyses, which encompassed approximately 9,400 individual treatment effectiveness studies and more than one million individual subjects! These findings are comparable to the range of outcomes for a variety of medical treatments such as drug treatment for arthritis. Obviously, not every psychological intervention works, but clearly the overall outcomes are very positive and the challenge now is to determine which interventions are most effective, the mediating causal processes through which they work, and the characteristics of recipients, providers, and settings that most influence outcomes.
In summary, many types of psychological interventions yield positive outcomes for individuals and groups. We must continue to develop transcultural interventions and assessment strategies to deal with the many challenges and opportunities that arise from around the world.
History has a future because it shapes the future through the changing interpretations of fixed historical events and persons that may change as new historical evidence is discovered.
We examined the cyclical (history repeats itself), linear progressive (present is an improvement over the past), and the chaotic (stuff happens) models of the nature of history. Historical importance is determined by a variety of criteria including the method of study of history, the availability of historical relics, and the interests of the historian. History happens as a result of a variety of forces, according to the Naturalistic model, which proposes that the context shapes history or culture informs mind. This deterministic perspective is in contrast to the Personalistic model, according to which history is shaped by great, unique, and gifted persons so that mind informs culture.
We examined different approaches to the history of psychology, including the most frequently used chronological approach in which events and persons during a particular period of time are focused upon. Spiritualism and science have always coexisted uneasily as alternative explanatory mechanisms for understanding physical and psychological phenomena. We reviewed alleged historical instances of the supernatural, as espoused by some psychics, and the so-called Salem witchcraft trials to indicate the authority as well as the limitations of laboratory-based scientific methods for explaining natural as well as supernatural phenomena.
We then turned to the method of the new history of psychology that focuses upon the contributions of previously marginalized persons (e.g., African Americans and women) to psychology. We reviewed the constructs of paradigm and revolution which have been employed to understand the history of science in general and the so-called mythical revolutions in American psychology. We examined the historical and contemporary expression of areas of specialization in psychology and concluded that psychology works by reviewing the unequivocal findings from meta-analytical studies demonstrating that a wide variety of psychological interventions yield positive outcomes within and across the affective, behavioral, and cognitive systems of individuals and groups.