THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

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                    THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY          

I am going to be looking at the history of psychology, and by using a few examples try to explain some of the theories that leading psychologists and scientist have concluded in their experiments and scientific studies. Psychology is in fact the study of the mind, how it works and what effect it has upon an individuals thoughts and general functions, the processes of the mind will never be fully understood but there has been a great breakthrough over many years, although the mind has many parts in which we will never truly understand.

The first example I am going to look at is behaviourism, Wittgenstein(1889-1951) believes what is in the mind as “over and above behaviour” He believes that if everyone were to have a box which held a beetle and only they were allowed to look in their own box, people will talk about their boxes and perceive them to stand for a beetle as that is how they associate their boxes, he believes the boxes are like the mind, everyone has one, they are alike but no one actually knows what either persons looks like as you cannot compare them just like the mind no one knows what exactly is in them.

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The most famous experiment looking into behaviourism is by the Russian scientist I.P Pavlov (1849-1946) in which he found that by ringing a bell every time he fed the dogs in his lab, he realised that the dogs learned to associate the bell with food so therefore salivated, eventually the dogs would salivate without the need for food as the simple ringing of the bell was enough for them to assume that the bell meant food therefore salivation would occur. Not only does this form of behaviourism work with animals it has the same effect on humans, therefore it ...

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**** This is a reasonably clear exploration of the history of psychology. A clearer timeline would help to explain where psychology originated from and where it is going. My main criticism is a lack of clarity in explaining some complex issues and a need to improve the flow of the piece.