Laying the Foundations of Independent Psychology

Part of a two-volume series, this book offers a multicentric perspective on the history of psychology, situating its development in relation to developments made in other social sciences and philosophical disciplines. This first volume, Laying the Foundations of Independent Psychology, provides a detailed exploration of the origins and development of European psychology. The book examines psychology's beginnings as an independent discipline in the late 19th century through to the emergence of the dominant new schools of behaviorism, Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis in the early 1900s. This volume also offers a broad overview of the early impact of Darwinism, not only on the psychological study of individual differences and on American functionalism, but also on the early evolutionary treatments of cognition in William James, James Baldwin, Ernst Mach and even Sigmund Freud. Taking this wider perspective, the book shows that European psychology was continuously present and active, placing these European developments in their own context in their own time. An invaluable introductory text for undergraduate students of the history of psychology, the book will also appeal to postgraduates, academics and those interested in psychology or the history of science, as well as graduate students of psychology, biology, sociology and anthropology with a theoretical interest.

Csaba Pléh is a Hungarian psychologist and linguist, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and of the Academia Europeae, and a visiting researcher at the Central European University, Department of Cognitive Science, Budapest.

1. History of Psychology and Psychological Theory Part I. At The Dawn of Autonomy: A Topic in Search of a Discipline 2. Descartes and The Scientific Method 3. Cognition and Association: The Development of The Psychological Agenda in The Enlightenment Period 4. Early Neuroscience as a Precursor to Modern Psychology: Reflexes and Localization Part II. From Birth to Divisions 5. On the Threshold of Psychology: The Birth of the Idea of Measurement of the Mind 6. Wilhelm Wundt: The Program Setter and Codifier 7. The Evolutionist Alternative for a Modern Psychology: Development, Adaptation and Individual Differences 8. Functionalism and Structuralism in America: The First Open Debate 9. The Distribution and Division of New Psychology in Europe 10. Critics and Alternatives to Experimental Psychology at the Turn of the 20th Century: Platonist, Irrationalist and Human Science Alternatives Part III. The Age of Great Schools 11. The Behaviorist Revolution: Psychology Loses its Mind 12. Wholes and Meaning: Gestalt Psychology 13. The Underwater Part of the Iceberg: Sigmund Freud and the "Discovery" of the Unconscious