A Brief History of Modern Psychology

The article addresses Daniel Robinson’s claim that the term, “modern psychology” is vague and imprecise. It points out that there is general agreement that the modern period of history begins no later than 1500 and that any psychology that existed after this date can be legitimately described as “modern.” It also suggests that the qualifier, “modern” is superfluous since there was no psychology prior to 1500.

Psychology Teaching Review

In 1996, Graham Richards published Putting Psychology in its Place: An introduction from a critical historical perspective. Here, I seek to consider what is or should be the ‘place’ of Psychology in education, more particularly Higher Education, and not just from a historical perspective. This raises issues about several contexts in which Psychology finds itself. In the Higher Education context itself, Psychology continues to be in demand. But what is offered in first degrees is largely dictated by the requirements of the Graduate Basis for Registration of the British Psychological Society. These have been criticised both as not ideal as professional preparation, and as being unsuited to the large majority of students who will not enter the restricted psychological professions. Little attention is paid to more general educational aims. In the context of other disciplines, Psychology (with some exceptions) largely fails to draw on other sources of knowledge about human behaviour, suc...

2008

In 1996 Graham Richards published Putting Psychology in its Place: An introduction from a critical historical perspective. Here, I seek to consider what is or should be the ‘place’ of Psychology in education, more particularly Higher Education, and not just from a historical perspective. This raises issues about several contexts in which Psychology finds itself. In the Higher Education context itself, Psychology continues to be in demand. But what is offered in first degrees is largely dictated by the requirements of the Graduate Basis for Registration of the British Psychological Society (BPS). These have been criticized both as not ideal as professional preparation, and as being unsuited to the large majority of students who will not enter the restricted psychological professions. Little attention is paid to more general educational aims. In the context of other disciplines, Psychology (with some exceptions) largely fails to draw on other sources of knowledge about human behaviour...

Encyclopedia of Career Development, 2006

PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION PART VII 2 Psychology in Action Part VII A follow-up study of the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) could be a near if not total impossibility; too much time has passed to conduct an experiment that could replicate the antiquities of thought and methodology used in the early portion of the 1970's decade. There have been a few attempts to replicate the Experiment and the most recent being a televised version made in Great Britain. The BBC Prison Study (BBCPS, 2002) was a fiasco at best and was actually not considered to have validity and should be termed as a "Reality TV Docudrama" as opposed to a scientific experiment. The basic premise of a study as the SPE and

Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 1995

Deals with disintegration of the psychology to a science based on experimentation according to the positivistic methodology of natural sciences, and another one founded on interpretation according to the hermeneutic methodology of historical sciences. Considers the possibilities to reintegrate the psychology by a Vy gotskian methodology that would deal with signs and tools as functionning within the same structure. key words: hermeneutic vs positivistic methodology; historical vs natural sciences; Vygotsky, Leontiev; signs and tools A psychologist in Hungary today does not necessarily want to be acknowledged for what he does as a scientist; actually, the number of those who fancy themselves artists or magicians is growing. On the other hand, those of us who make a point of our theoretical or practical work being of a scientific nature are willing to consider psychology a natural science. Indeed, how could something be scientific if not in the same way as physics, chemistry, biology are? But how could it be thought otherwise, when in our university studies the foundations of our major are laid by anatomy, physiology, ethology, and we graduate without having had to learn a bit of sociology, linguistics, economics, or history as areas relevant to our special subject. True, some time earlier a subject called Cultural History and Anthropology was introduced in psychologist training at Budapest University, for example, but a more recent reform swept if out of the curriculum.

Journal of Social Issues, 1986

The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) has been a prominent conduit for American psychologists' involvement in political and social affairs. For years SPSSI has stood as the center of political activism in American psychology. An examination of SPSSI and several other professional organizations founded during the period between the two world wars indicates that, despite its activism, SPSSl shared with the others a set of conventional assumptions about the irrationality of human nature, an unstable social order, and the preference for scientijic judgment. Early SPSSI documents also contain more radical aspirations: critical self-rejlection about the scientijic enterprise, candid culture criticism, and political activism. However, these did not remain dominant in the organization. While being an occasion for celebration, the 50th anniversary of SPSSI also offers occasion to reevaluate these mixed commitments. With the birth of an intellectual discipline came the disciplinary society. With the disciplinary society came more disciplinary societies. Whether in sociology, economics, or psychology, the later-born organizations typically sought to expand the intellectual mandate of the founding societies to accommodate novel problems. In many cases these problems were not simply scientific, but concerned the role of the expert in serving what was seen as an increasingly complicated and malfunctioning social world. The concerns of these later organi-This research was conducted as part of a project supported by NSF and the Rockefeller Founda-Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to J. G. Morawski, Department of tion. I thank Benjamin Harris and Ross Stagner for their helpful comments.

Data indicate that large percentages of the general public regard psychology's scientific status with considerable skepticism. I examine 6 criticisms commonly directed at the scientific basis of psychology (e.g., psychology is merely common sense, psychology does not use scientific methods, psychology is not useful to society) and offer 6 rebuttals. I then address 8 potential sources of public skepticism toward psychology and argue that although some of these sources reflect cognitive errors (e.g., hindsight bias) or misunderstandings of psychological science (e.g., failure to distinguish basic from applied research), others (e.g., psychology's failure to police itself, psychology's problematic public face) reflect the failure of professional psychology to get its own house in order. I offer several individual and institutional recommendations for enhancing psychology's image and contend that public skepticism toward psychology may, paradoxically, be one of our field's strongest allies.