The origins of scientific psychology. Psychology in the nineteenth century
(from psychophysics to school of Wurzburg). Theories and systems in psychology in first twentieth century(from psychoanalysis to researches on intelligence and personality). Psychology in second part of twentieth century (from cognitive psychology to neurosciences). Development of mental illness concept in nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Luciano Mecacci (2008). Manuale di Storia della Psicologia. Firenze: Giunti
Learning Objectives
Students are introduced into a systematic knowledge of the theoretical and methodological bases of psychology in a historical perspective, putting in
evidence the relationships between psychology and other sciences from the nineteenth century to nowadays.
Prerequisites
none
Teaching Methods
Historical illustration of principal psychological theories through their authors and own researches discussion with direct reference to their original publications.
Further information
none
Type of Assessment
oral exam
Course program
The history of psychology develops from the primordis of the western thought (classical Greece), up to all '900. Initially, therefore, the conceptions of the psyche and its relationship are treated with the body developed in primis by the philosophy and by the ancient medicine and subsequently the relative medieval theories. With the modern age it widens the horizon of the philosophical investigations to the structure and the operation of the cognitive and dynamic trials, in hold relationship with the birth of human sciences, particularly anthropology and ethnology. The adoption of the experimental method in the psychological search starts to be discussed at the end of ‘700, but it is especially in the ‘800 that such method is verified for the foundation of a scientific psychology. Always in the ‘800 it is notable the influence that the darwinian theory of evolution and the progress of the searches on the brain had on the development of psychology. At the end of the ‘800 different theoretical models start to take on a shape, first schools are born in Europe and in America, and sectors of specialization are formed (from the animal psychology to the psychology of the development, from the social psychology to the psychopatology). In the '900 are often consolidated some great schools in conflict among them on the theoretical and methodological plan (from psychoanalysis to behaviorism, from reflexology to the theory of the form, from the historical-cultural theory to the cognitivism). Besides it is assisted to a notable amplification of the sectors of investigation, both as search of base and applied. The problem of the relationship between the mind and the brain, set since the antiquity, is faced in innovative way only in '900, with searches that concern both the operation of single nervous cells and of whole cerebral areas. Some themes are finally looked out upon by to deepen on the historical plan and that they are remarkable to understand distant roots of the actual debate on the goals and on the methods of psychology.