Rudolph Goclenius

Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the study of the human mind, brain, and behavior. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the treatment of mental illness. The word psychology comes from the Greek psyche ("soul," "mind") and -ology, "study"). Rudolph Goclenius (1547-1628), a German scholastic philosopher, is credited with inventing the term 'psychology'.

Wilhelm Wundt

In 1879 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) (known as the father of Psychology) founded a laboratory at the Leipzig University in Germany specifically to focus on the study of psychology. William James later published his 1890 book, Principles of Psychology which laid many of the foundations for the sorts of questions that psychologists would focus on for years to come.

Sigmund Freud

Meanwhile, Sigmund Freud, who was trained as a neurologist and had no formal training in experimental psychology, had invented and applied a method of psychotherapy known as psychoanalysis. Freud's understanding of the mind was largely based on interpretive methods and introspection, but was particularly focused on resolving mental distress and psychopathology. Freud's theories became very well-known, probably because they tackled subjects such as sexuality and repression as general aspects of psychological development. These were largely considered taboo subjects at the time, and Freud provided a catalyst for them to be openly discussed in polite society. Although Freud's theories are of virtually no interest today in psychology departments, his application of psychology to clinical work has been very influential.

John B. Watson

Partly as a reaction to the subjective and introspective nature of psychology and its exclusive dependence upon the recollection of vague and faraway childhood experiences, behaviorism began to become popular as a guiding psychological theory. Championed by psychologists such as John B. Watson, behaviorists argued that psychology should be a science of behavior, not the mind, they rejected the idea that internal mental states such as beliefs, desires, or goals, could be studied scientifically. Behaviorism was the dominant model in psychology for much of the early 20th century, largely due to the creation and successful application (not least of which in advertising) of conditioning theories as scientific models of human behavior.

Noam Chomsky

However, it became increasingly clear that although behaviorism had made some important discoveries, it was deficient as a guiding theory of human behavior. Noam Chomsky is considered one of the major factors in the ending of behaviorism's reign. Chomsky demonstrated that language could not purely be learned from conditioning, as people could produce sentences unique in structure and meaning that couldn't possibly be generated solely through experience of natural language, implying that there must be internal states of mind that behaviorism rejected as illusory.

The goal of psychology is to describe and attempt to explain consciousness, behavior and social interaction.

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