Soul also means qi or breathing in Greek, because ancient people thought that life depended on breathing, and when breathing stopped, life ended. With the development of science, the research object of psychology has changed from soul to mind. It was not until the beginning of19th century that Herbart, a German philosopher and educator, first proposed that psychology is a science.
When people interact with things around them in life practice, there must be subjective activities and behaviors of one kind or another. This is people's psychological activity, or psychology for short. Specifically, external things or changes in the body act on people's body or senses, and through the information processing of the nervous system and brain, they produce feelings and perceptions, memories and representations of things, and then analyze and think. In addition, when dealing with objective things, people always have some attitude towards them and form various emotions. People also have to deal with and change things around them through actions, which are manifested as will activities.
The feeling, perception, thinking, emotion and will mentioned above are all human psychological activities. Psychological activity is a subjective activity caused by objective things in people's life practice and produced in their minds. Any psychological activity is a dynamic process, which can be called psychological process.
In understanding and transforming the objective world, everyone has his own characteristics different from others, and everyone's psychological process shows great or small differences. This difference is not only related to everyone's innate quality, but also related to their life experience and study, which is called personality or individuality.
Psychological process and personality are both important objects of psychological research. Psychology also studies human individual and society, normal and abnormal behaviors. Animal psychology studies animal behavior, not only to understand animal psychological activities themselves, but also to understand human psychological activities. In the highly developed human society, man's psychology has been fully developed, which enables him to climb to the top of the animal evolution ladder. Psychology is the basic science for human beings to study themselves in order to know themselves.
A brief history of psychological development
As a science, psychology has only a short history, but it has a long past. Psychology can be traced back to ancient philosophy. Philosophy and religion have long discussed the relationship between body and mind, and how human knowledge is produced. Ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, and ancient China thinkers such as Xunzi and Wang Chong all had many expositions on mind.
In the west, from the Renaissance to the middle of19th century, the psychological characteristics of human beings have always been the object of study by philosophers, and psychology is a part of philosophy. The British Bacon, Hobbes, Locke and others in this period, as well as the French Encyclopedia thinkers at the end of 18, all tried to correct the psychological thought distorted by theology in the Middle Ages and give scientific explanations.
Bacon's inductive scientific methodology has played a great role in the development of modern natural science. Hobbes put forward that human knowledge comes from the outside world, and Locke first put forward the concept of association, which promoted the development of psychology. Lamater, a French encyclopedic school, simply described man as a machine in his book Man is a Machine. Although these ideas have mechanical materialism, they are all of progressive significance.
/kloc-In the mid-9th century, due to the further development of productive forces, natural science has made great progress, and the prestige of science has gradually taken root in people's hearts. At this time, physiology, as a twin science of psychology, is approaching maturity, and psychology begins to get rid of the general discussion of philosophy and turn to the study of specific problems. This background laid the foundation for psychology to become an independent science.
Modern psychology was founded in 1879. This year, German psychologist Feng Te established the world's first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, and psychology was declared to be independent from philosophy and become a science. Feng Te is a philosopher and physiologist. His psychology laboratory mainly studies the psychological process of feeling and perception, mainly using physiological experimental techniques, so he calls his research "physiological psychology" or "experimental psychology".
So far, modern psychology has experienced a history of more than one hundred years. During this period, the discussion about the research object of psychology has been repeated several times. At first, Feng Te thought that psychology was a science to study people's direct experience or consciousness, and complex psychological activities were composed of simple units. The task of psychology is to decompose psychological activities into some psychological elements. For example, the perception of a book is composed of rectangular, certain size, green cover and other sensory components.
This view was undoubtedly influenced by the development of chemistry at that time. Analytical methods are used in chemistry, and chemical elements are constantly being discovered. Because of this, later generations called Feng Te's psychological system elemental psychology or structural psychology. Feng Te, a pioneer of modern social psychology, also studied national psychology in his later years. Feng Te has enrolled a large number of senior students from Europe and America in Leipzig. After they returned to China, they set up psychology departments and psychology laboratories respectively, which made this new science rapidly popularized.
The psychology founded by Feng Te only prospered for thirty or forty years before it met with difficulties. The problem arises from the definition that "psychology is the science of studying consciousness". Because to recognize this definition, we need to recognize the existence of consciousness first, but not all psychologists can agree with it. American psychologist Watson first challenged Feng Te's psychology.
Watson pointed out that if psychology is to become a science and be on an equal footing with other disciplines of natural science, it is necessary to have a thorough revolution and give up consciousness as the research object of psychology. Watson said that consciousness is a subjective thing, and no one can see or touch it, let alone put it in a test tube for testing. This illusory thing can never be the object of scientific research.
He believes that scientific psychology should be based on things that can be observed objectively. The behavior of human and animals can be observed objectively, so behavior is the object of psychological research. Psychology is a science that studies behavior. It wants to explore what makes an organism happen and what behavior occurs in what environment. As for the inner process of the mind, we can only speculate, not be sure, so we don't have to pay attention. Watson set off a far-reaching behaviorism movement in the field of psychology.
Neo-behaviorism appeared around the 1940s, emphasizing the study of human and animal behaviors on the basis of experimental operations. Skinner, a new behaviorist, made the boldest attempt to transform society by using the principle of behaviorism. He wrote a novel Walden II, which described a utopian ideal society in the form of a diary. Skinner called this social design "behavioral engineering" and pinned the realization of such a society on China. In the 1960s, the United States was involved in the Vietnam War, and social crises were everywhere. People began to doubt the American social system and yearn for an ideal society, so this book spread like wildfire.
From the 1920s to 1950s, behaviorism had a great influence in America. Behaviorism has always dominated American psychology. Now it seems that behaviorism theory is too simplistic and absolute, and we can't deny the existence of human thinking and consciousness just because the activities of the mind are invisible. Similarly, in physics, atoms, molecules and electrons are invisible to the naked eye, but they can still be studied with instruments or other tools. Psychological activities such as people's thinking can also be studied objectively through technical means. Psychology, after all, should study the internal process of human psychology. Moreover, people's social activities are extremely complicated, which cannot be explained by simple behavioral engineering.
At the same time of the rise of behaviorism, there are two schools of psychology in Europe, one is the Gestalt School and the other is the Psychoanalysis School.
Gestalt psychology was born in Germany, which opposed the essentialism of Feng Te's structural psychology, and its representatives were wertheimer, Kaufka and Koehler. Gestalt is a transliteration of German Gestalt, which means wholeness and gestalt. This school advocates that psychology studies the internal process of the human brain, and thinks that when people observe external things, what they see is not completely determined by the outside world, but that there is some kind of "field" power in people's minds to organize stimuli into a gestalt, thus determining the external things that people see. At that time, the theory of "field" was popular in physics, and the Gestalt school believed that the human brain was a part of the material world, so the laws of physics could also be applied to the activities of the human brain.
Gestalt psychology studies the intelligence of apes. Koehler observed how the ape folded several wooden boxes and climbed to the top of the boxes to get the bananas hanging on the roof. Apes can also connect sticks to get food blocked by railings. Gestalt psychologists believe that people and animals solve problems through sudden epiphany.
Gestalt School opposes Feng Te School's emphasis on analysis, and thinks that psychological phenomenon is a whole, and the whole determines its internal parts. This view, which emphasizes integrity and comprehensiveness, is conducive to the future development of psychology. Scientific research should not only look at problems from the perspective of analysis, but also the overall relationship is the more important aspect.
Psychoanalysis school comes from psychiatry. It has brought a huge impact on psychology, so that it can't be ignored when discussing psychological objects. Austrian doctor Freud used hypnosis and free association to make mental patients recall the past to find out the cause. He found that the patient's childhood experience, especially the emotional relationship between children and parents, was very important. He also found that dreaming often reflects a person's internal psychological contradictions, so analyzing patients' dreams is also a kind of treatment.
Freud believed that, on the one hand, the inner biological lust of human beings is the most basic impulse; On the other hand, people's social customs and ethics limit the venting of this primitive impulse and suppress it into unconsciousness. The content of consciousness is rational and conscious; Unconscious content is often contrary to reason and morality. When the contradiction between reason and unconsciousness intensifies, neurosis occurs. In order to cure the disease, it is necessary to analyze the patient's unconsciousness. This is psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalytic school believes that psychology is the function of studying the "unconscious". It is believed that people's fundamental psychological motivation is unconscious impulse. It is this powerful "unconscious" psychological activity that plays a decisive and fundamental role in people's lives. As for the conscious psychological process, it is just some isolated fragments exposed on the surface. In recent years, new psychoanalysis no longer emphasizes the role of biological impulse, but pays more attention to the social relationship between people. The incidence of mental illness is very high in western society, so psychoanalytic theory is easily accepted.
In the development of psychology, Soviet psychology is different from western psychology represented by the United States. Sechinov regarded brain reflection as the basic concept of psychology, and later Bechtelev wrote a book "Reflection". Then, Pavlov specially studied conditioned reflex. His conditioned reflex theory promoted the rise of American behaviorism. Pavlov's theory had a great influence on Soviet psychology, which became one of its theoretical foundations, and also directly influenced the psychology of China and some eastern European countries after the founding of New China.
In China, modern psychology began with the reform of education system and the establishment of new schools in the late Qing Dynasty. At that time, psychology courses were first offered in normal schools, and most of the textbooks used were translated from Japan and the West. 1907 Wang Guowei retranslated the English version of Introduction to Psychology by Danish writer Houding. 19 18 Chen Daqi published the Outline of Psychology, which is the earliest book named after psychology in China. 19 17 Peking University established a psychology laboratory, 1920 Nanjing Normal University established the first psychology department in China.
At this time, structural psychology, behavioral psychology, gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis were introduced into China, and China began to have his own psychological research. After the founding of New China, 195 1 established the Institute of Psychology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and set up psychology majors and teaching and research departments in many universities and normal universities.
Recent psychological situation
In the past few decades, psychological science has developed rapidly. A remarkable feature of this development is that the arguments among various schools of psychology are no longer fierce, but tend to seek common ground while reserving differences, and the reasonable ideas of various schools have been preserved, narrowing their differences. This weakening of the debate on the research objects and methods of psychology shows that psychology is gradually maturing.
Another feature of contemporary psychology is its interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature. The intersection of psychology and some adjacent disciplines makes some parts difficult to distinguish. Psychology has developed into a science with many branches and vague boundaries.
Psychology is a science with both natural science and social science.
On the one hand, it combines with biological science to explore the physiological basis of psychological activities. It extends to the field of technical science, is linked with computer science, and promotes the development of cognitive science. Psychology also studies the occurrence and development of human individuals, providing a development view on human cognitive ability and personality socialization.
On the other hand, psychology is combined with social science to study the influence of society, politics, economy and culture, as well as social psychological phenomena in interpersonal communication. Today, psychology has developed more extensively and intricately, which requires a theoretical summary from the perspective of philosophy. Theoretical psychology is to explore the ideological system of psychology from a macro perspective.
Because the research scope of psychology is quite extensive, different complex psychological activities may require different theoretical models and research methods, so contemporary psychology divides the complex psychological activities of people and animals into different levels and conducts research at different levels. Psychological problems can be roughly divided into the following levels.
Physiological psychology is a discipline that studies various psychological phenomena from the physiological level. Pavlov used conditioned reflex to study the learning activities of animals in his early days and put forward higher nervous activity's theory of human psychological activities.
Modern physiological psychology uses neurophysiology, biophysics and biochemistry to study the process of perception, learning, memory, thinking and emotion, with the aim of clarifying the physiological mechanism of various psychological activities. Due to the progress of biomedical technology, great achievements have been made in this field. Huber and Weiser's research on receptive field and sperry's research on splitting brain are the most famous.
In terms of memory, people think that since experience can be preserved in the brain for a long time, the physiological structure of the brain must have undergone some material changes or left some traces. Suppose RNA is the memory substance to be searched for. It is also found that drugs that promote protein's synthesis can accelerate the learning process, while drugs that inhibit protein's synthesis can prevent the development of long-term memory. These brain chemistry studies on memory have improved our understanding of psychological processes.
Physiological psychology mainly uses animals for experiments, and sometimes it is combined with medical practice for clinical research. It adopts the general research methods of biological science, mainly the experimental methods of surgery or drug use under controlled conditions. Researchers engaged in this field are not only psychologists, but also neurophysiologists, biophysicists and biochemists. Physiological psychology is sometimes classified as a branch of neuroscience.
Cognitive Psychology This is a new psychological direction in 1960s. Cognitive psychology originated from opposing behaviorism and inherited the viewpoint of Gestalt psychology. Cognitive psychology aims to study advanced psychological activities, especially memory, thinking and problem solving. This is the view of gestalt psychology.
Cognitive psychology is a typical example of the influence of other sciences on psychology. The rapid development of communication technology during World War II, especially the appearance of information theory and cybernetics, made psychologists see that human cognitive process is similar to communication system, so they used the concept of communication engineer to describe human cognitive process. People's cognitive process is regarded as the information processing process such as input, coding, decoding, storage, extraction and output of information channels.
The main theory of cognitive psychology is information processing theory, so it is also called information processing psychology. In 1950s and 1960s, newell and Simon regarded the internal brain processes such as human concepts, concepts and representations as physical symbol processes, which is an extremely important assumption of physical symbol system in contemporary cognitive psychology. This hypothesis has built a bridge between the thinking activities of human brain and the information operation of computer, so that computer programs can be designed to simulate people's psychological processes, especially advanced psychological activities such as thinking and solving problems, based on the research of information processing psychology. The combination of cognitive psychology and computer science has produced a new discipline of artificial intelligence.
Developmental Psychology Developmental psychology is a subject that studies the psychological characteristics and laws of people in different periods from birth to old age. People's body and mind show quantitative and qualitative changes over time. The quantitative change of human development is obvious. With the growth of age, children's height and weight will increase, their vocabulary will continue to expand and their knowledge will become wider and wider, which is measurable.
Developmental psychology is an active branch of contemporary psychology. With the adoption of new research methods and equipment, especially audio and video recording, many new discoveries have been made in this field.
Today, many psychologists realize that development runs through a person's life, and every stage of life is influenced by the previous period, and it also affects the future development.
A new research direction called lifelong developmental psychology is taking shape, which focuses on the whole development of human life and studies all psychological and behavioral changes from prenatal to death. Because the population of many countries tends to be aging and the psychological problems of the elderly are becoming increasingly prominent, the research in this area has been paid attention to.
Social psychology is a subject that studies the occurrence and change of social psychology and social behavior of individuals and groups in social communication. Social psychology analyzes interpersonal relationships from two levels, namely, individual level and social group level.
Social psychology studies the socialization process of people's psychological development, including the influence of children's communication, speech development, partner, family, living environment and school on people, and the law of these influences. What are the social and psychological laws that play a role in the interaction of adult individuals?
Attribution theory in social psychology is to explain how people find explanations for certain behaviors in interpersonal communication. Attribution is one of the central topics in current social psychology research.
Psychology has been developing towards science for decades. Taking physics, biological science and even technical science as examples, it has established its own theoretical system. This inevitably brings a certain degree of reductionism and mechanical determinism. During this period, the popular humanitarian social trend of thought in western culture penetrated into psychology, and humanistic psychology in social psychology appeared.
Maslow and Rogers, the representatives of humanistic psychology, oppose mechanical determinism in psychology, arguing that traditional psychology taking the road of natural science is not enough to solve more complicated human psychological problems, especially those involving values and beliefs.
Social psychology is closely related to sociology. They study different aspects of the same social phenomenon. Sociology studies social problems from a relatively macro and general level, while social psychology studies interpersonal activities from a relatively specific and micro level. Due to the extreme complexity of people's social life, although there are many difficulties in the study of social psychology, from the social constraints of people's psychology, we can certainly sum up the laws of people's social psychology.
Theoretical psychology is a discipline that discusses psychological methodology from a philosophical point of view, including the research objects and methods of psychology, the origin and development of consciousness, the relationship between body and mind, and the ideological system of critical psychology.
The application of psychology
Psychology is closely related to human life. It plays an increasingly important role in human life, and its application scope is also expanding. Psychologists can participate in solving educational, medical, industrial, commercial, military and various social problems. The following are branches of psychology in some application fields:
Educational Psychology Educational psychology studies the laws of psychological activities in the process of education, reveals the relationship between educational process and psychological development, and applies the research results of developmental psychology to educational practice. The main research contents of educational psychology include: the mastery of knowledge and skills of the educated, individual psychological differences, the formation of moral quality, and the psychological quality that educators should have.
Disciplinary educational psychology studies the contents and teaching methods of Chinese, arithmetic and other courses, which also belongs to the category of educational psychology. Moral psychology studies the formation process of children's moral motivation and moral judgment, and explores effective ways to cultivate excellent moral quality, correct beliefs and ideals. The research of educational psychology is directly related to the important task of educational reform and talent training.
Medical psychology is a psychological study on disease and health, which discusses the role of psychological factors in maintaining health and causing diseases, and studies the behavioral characteristics of medical staff and patients in medical treatment. Medical psychologists play a role in general hospitals, specialized hospitals, especially mental hospitals. They use psychological tests to diagnose patients and find out the causes of psychological disorders.
Medical psychology also studies the role of psychotropic drugs, so it is necessary to explore the methods of psychotherapy. The rehabilitation process of patients is also the research content of medical psychology, aiming at mobilizing patients' psychological factors and making them recover as soon as possible. Medical psychologists are also engaged in psychological counseling and mental health work, providing guidance and help to promote people's physical and mental health.
Industrial psychology mainly includes engineering psychology and management psychology.
Engineering psychology studies the relationship between man and machine in modern industry, also known as man-machine system, which is to adapt equipment to the characteristics of human activities in engineering design, so as to achieve the highest working efficiency. The temperature, lighting, working conditions of the factory, the instrument display of the aircraft cockpit in the aviation industry, and the rationality of the vehicle and boat driving system are all research topics of engineering psychology. The characteristics and laws of workers' psychological activities in industrial labor are also studied.
Management psychology studies personnel organization issues such as employee selection, training, evaluation and use, as well as psychological issues such as work motivation, incentive means, communication of opinions, organizational structure and leadership behavior. The purpose of these studies is to mobilize people's enthusiasm, give full play to people's potential ability, form a harmonious working atmosphere and improve work efficiency.
Business psychology studies people's psychological activities and their laws in business activities, and uses psychological knowledge and methods to solve related behavioral problems in the process of commodity circulation. It includes market psychology, consumer psychology and advertising psychology.
Market psychology studies the role of psychological factors in the relationship between market supply and demand, while consumer psychology studies the psychological laws of consumers in commodity production, commodity circulation and service industries, including the analysis of purchasing motives and the characteristics of purchasing behavior. Advertising psychology studies the design of trademarks, packaging and advertisements, and the evaluation of their psychological effects. The study of business psychology is highly valued in countries with dominant market economy and has become an important means of business competition. China's work in this area has yet to be carried out.
Legal psychology studies people's psychological activities and their laws in judicial activities. According to different aspects, legal psychology can be divided into criminal psychology, reconnaissance psychology and trial psychology.
Criminal psychology studies the motive of crime and the education and reform of criminals; Reconnaissance psychology should study the psychological laws that should be followed in the process of detecting cases; An important content of trial psychology is to analyze the reliability of prisoner's confession and witness testimony; Another important branch of legal psychology is forensic psychology, which uses the professional knowledge of clinical psychiatry to conduct psychological appraisal on defendants or other litigants suspected of mental disorders and provide scientific basis for determining their legal responsibilities.
Military psychology studies people's psychological problems under the conditions of military activities. These issues include the selection and classification of military personnel; The learning process of mastering military technology and weapons; Personality and psychological characteristics required by military activities; Psychological tactics, propaganda and counter-propaganda. Military psychology regards military organizations as a small social whole, and studies the social processes in them, such as the relationship between commanders and soldiers, the mutual influence of emotions in groups under war conditions, and the role of military morale.
According to the characteristics of arms, military psychology can be divided into aerospace psychology and navigation psychology. Aerospace psychology not only studies the psychological laws of general military activities, but also studies the training of astronauts' will, morality, psychological changes and adaptability under weightlessness and overweight conditions. Navigation psychology should study the psychological changes when leaving land for a long time, as well as the unique psychological problems in maritime operations and ship manipulation. Military psychology research in all countries in the world belongs to the confidential scope, and can only be made public if it loses its military value.
The development of psychology has a history of more than one hundred years. It is not only a basic science with strong theory, but also an applied science with a wide range of applications. It has extensive horizontal contact with many practical departments and widely serves social practice.
Subjects let us know what is true freedom and what is the wisdom of life. Only such a discipline can lead us to think about the purpose, significance and value of life, so as to establish an ideal personality and goal, and we are willing to fight for it for life. The educational goal of humanities is to develop human nature and perfect personality, provide correct values or meaning theory, and establish correct humanistic value orientation for society.