Chapter 1: Prescientific Psychology

Prescientific Psychology 1 Start with these facts. Psychology is the most popular elective in American high schools today. Furthermore, psychology is one of the two or three most popular undergraduate majors in North American colleges. People cannot seem to get enough of psychology; it is everywhere today. It is the substance of movies, novels, computer games, social media, magazines, television shows, tabloid newspapers, radio talk shows, and music lyrics. Clearly, there is no shortage of public interest in psychology. People are interested in behavior—their own, their relatives, their neighbors, their cowork- ers, and even strangers who they know only through the media of books, magazines, or television shows such as soap operas, courtroom programs, game shows, situation comedies, dramas, and the so-called “reality” shows. There seems to be a never-ending fascination with human behavior that is perhaps inherent in human nature. It is likely that such an interest has afforded evolutionary advantages. An individual ’ s ability to understand and, better still, anticipate the behavior of others has survival value. Psy- chologists refer to this public interest in psychology as popular psychology. It isn ’ t psychology of the form that would be recognized by most psychologists as scientific psychology. Indeed, many psychologists would be embarrassed by any association with it. However, the public loves it, and it is their psychology. Psychology has existed, no doubt, from the very beginnings of human history. When hominids first walked erect on the earth, facing a life expectancy of perhaps 30 years, a life beset with hardships and dangers that could hardly be imagined today, these early individuals were in need of human comfort, of reassurance, of empa- thy, and of guidance. Moreover, where there is demand, there is supply. There must have been individuals who provided services of a psychological nature to their fellow humans as practitioners.COPYRIGHTED These early humans practiced MATERIAL their craft under a variety of names such as sorcerer, wizard, charmer, shaman, medicine man, enchanter, seer, and priest. Their trade involved a combination of medicine, religion, and psychology. Although they often held positions of authority and respect within their tribes, they could lose that social standing, and indeed their very lives, if they were judged incompetent or ineffective in their healing arts. With the passage of centuries, spe- cialization occurred leading to separate professions of medicine, religion, and psychology, although it can be easily argued that these three remain linked in various 1 Benjamin3e_c01.indd 1 9/8/2018 12:40:52 PM 2 PRESCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY ways in modern practice. Thus, the practice of psychology dates to thousands of years ago, but, as we will describe in this book, the science of psychology is a nineteenth- century invention. As the title of this book indicates, this is an account of modern psychology, which means that the story recounted here is a mostly recent one. So having acknowledged that the practice of psychology is thousands of years old, we will fast forward to the era of concern for this chapter, which is the nineteenth century. The term “modern psychology” has come to be synonymous with scientific psychology. Indeed, there is consensus that the dating of modern psychology begins with the establishment of a research laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 1879, covered in greater detail in Chapter 3. The historical significance and salience of that occurrence is underscored by historian James Capshew (1992) who wrote, “the enduring motif in the story of modern psychology is neither a person nor an event but a place – the experimental laboratory” (p. 132). The new psychological laboratories began their appearance in North America in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, first at Johns Hopkins University in 1883, then at Indiana University in 1887, at the University of Wisconsin in 1888, and at Clark University and the universities of Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Nebraska in 1889. The first of the new laboratories in Canada was established at the University of Toronto in 1891 (Baldwin, 1892). By 1900, there were more than 40 such laboratories in North America (Benjamin, 2000), all seeking to apply the new scientific methods, borrowed largely from physiology and psychophysics, to questions of the basic human processes of seeing, knowing, and feeling. These early North American laboratories and their founding dates are shown in Table 5.1 in Chapter 5. When this new psychology arrived on American soil, there was already a psychology in place. In fact, there were two other psychologies extant in the nineteenth century, the practice of psychology, which, as argued, had been around since the dawn of human history, and another psychology that existed largely within colleges and universities known as mental philosophy. The practitioners of psychology offered their services under a variety of labels. There were phrenologists who measured the shape of the skull of their clients, looking for bumps and indentations that signified talents or deficiencies. There were physiog- nomists who studied the contours and features of their clients’ faces, making determi- nations of personality traits and abilities based on things such as the shape of a person’s nose, the height of the cheekbones, or the distance between the eyes. There were mes- merists who used forms of hypnosis to encourage changes in their clients’ behaviors. There were seers and clairvoyants who claimed to predict the future and thus advise clients about their current and future actions. There were graphologists who made psychological assessments based on the characteristics of their clients’ handwriting. In addition, there were individuals who practiced as mediums, psychopathists, psychics, spiritualists, mental healers, advisors, psychometrists, and even people who labeled themselves psychologists. Mostly self-trained and using methods tenuously based in science, if at all, these practitioners sought to help their clients in much the same way as modern psychologists do. They attempted to cure depression, improve marital Benjamin3e_c01.indd 2 9/8/2018 12:40:52 PM Prescientific Psychology 3 relations, teach parenting skills, increase job satisfaction, reduce anxiety, and assist in vocational choices. These individuals represented what the general public understood to be the subject matter and practice of psychology. This kind of psychology, however, did not have credibility within the community of higher learning, that is, within colleges and universities, where the other prescientific psychology, known as mental philosophy, resided. Mental philosophy had been part of America and its university curriculum since the seventeenth century. Of English and Scottish origins, through the works of philoso- phers such as John Locke, David Hume, George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, and Dugald Stewart, the subject became a nineteenth-century staple in the education of students. Demonstrating the centuries-long influence of British empiricism, the focus of mental philosophy was on sensation and perception, usually referred to as properties of the intellect, although the intellect also included other cognitive processes such as atten- tion, learning, memory, and thinking. In addition, mental philosophy covered the emo- tions (often called sensibilities) and the will, including debates on determinism versus free will (Fuchs, 2000). This tripartite treatment—intellect, sensibilities, and will— defined the extant academic psychology in America when laboratory experimental psychology arrived from Germany. It is these two psychologies—one public, one academic—that are the subject of this chapter. They are important for the history of modern psychology because they From the Author's Collection From the Author's Collection FIGURE 1.1 At left, an advertisement for the Chicago School of Psychology in 1900, a school that taught the use of hypnosis for psychological treatment, an example of the public psychology of that time. At right, the title page for Thomas Upham’s 1869 textbook on mental philosophy Benjamin3e_c01.indd 3 9/8/2018 12:40:52 PM 4 PRESCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY are part of the historical context for understanding the development of the science of psychology, the profession of psychology, and that brand of psychology that has such broad public appeal, often referred to as popular psychology. When the new science of psychology arrived in American universities at the end of the nineteenth century, its legitimacy was threatened by these “psychologies” that were seen as unscientific. In order for the new experimental psychology to succeed, it was necessary to establish a clear boundary, distancing the field from these rivals that pretended to be sciences of human behavior. A Public Psychology The public fascination with behavior today existed in the nineteenth century as well, although the media sources in that century were far more limited. Still, people were exposed to psychology through books, newspaper and magazine stories, and advertise- ments and signs announcing psychological services, for example, “Sister Helen, Palm Reader.” People wanted the assistance that they believed could come from those whose special knowledge or talents could help them identify their strengths and improve their personal weaknesses, help them choose a career wisely, help them find a suitable partner for life, help them overcome

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