Please read chapter 1. After reading the chapter, please respond to the following questions:
What were three (3) things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? Why?
What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
What topic would you like to learn more about? Why ?
What ideas did you have while reading the chapter?
It’s hard to find things that I am genuinely interested in but the first thing that jumped out at me was the discussion of intelligence testing. Intelligence is one of those things in life that is just too indefinite to come up with a concrete measurement for. This guy Henry Goddard was given the task of helping to screen immigrants entering the United States. He was specifically asked to come up with a way to measure their intelligence so that the “unfit” immigrants could be denied access to the country. I have a hard time understanding why America at the time thought they were so above other countries that they needed only allow the most “intelligent” of immigrants into the country. But anyway, he came up with this test that supposedly measured the intelligence of the immigrants and he used it in order to deny access to those immigrants he felt to be unworthy. He even claimed he could tell which immigrants were “mentally defective” just by looking at them. The book claims that using historcist thinking we can determine that he behaved in this way because of the large influence of Darwinian thinking at the time; meaning that he firmly believed intelligence was inherited and developed through natural selection. The book also mentions a fear of being overrun by immigrants and a general apathy towards science by the public as reasons why this kind of test was issued. It’s important to see how something this unnoticed by the public can have such a huge impact on attitude towards immigrants and how this attitude can affect policy.
I read a little bit further and stumbled upon the excerpt about E.G. Boring and his writings about psychology. In the passage, he describes psychology as being an infinitely interesting subject that non-majors were clamoring to hear about. He studied several subjects while in school including human maze learning, nerve regeneration (he severed a nerve in his own arm!) and schizophrenia. He became so passionate about the field of psychology that he became one of the major players in the fight to separate psychology and philosophy. He started a video course on a public education channel; one of the first of its kind! He also believed that one who is first learning about psychology should learn from someone who is a “master” of the subject so he himself taught an introductory course. It is amazing to me that some individuals can be so intrigued by a subject that they throw themselves head first into it even experimenting on themselves to prove a point.
The book makes another valid point that grabbed my attention. It discusses the misconception that anything written and published in black and white is true. There are so many people with so many ideas and so many influences and biases that everything ever written is effected by human error. Ten different people studying psychology can write a book on animal testing. But whose book is most accurate? Every one of those people grew up in a different environment with different genes and different influences so every sentence they write is affected by this human aspect. The book emphasizes that we must be very skeptical of every history text we read so that we are never accepting opinion or B.S. as truth.
I can’t say I was too “put off” by any topic in particular. I don’t like reading, it just doesn’t do it for me so I wasn’t interested enough to fully read and understand every sentence in the chapter. If I happened to miss some information hopefully we will discuss it in class.
The discussion of historicist vs. presentist thinking will be very helpful to me in my understanding of the the history of psychology. After reading about this distinction I realized that I have been a presentist thinker about many events of the past. Having the ability to realize and come out of presentist thinking will allow me to examine past events more objectively and with a more open mind instead of immediately judging researchers or experiments based on information available today.
I want to know more about how psychology was able to branch off from philosophy as a science. It seems to me that many if not all psychological experiments are speculative and have room for error so it would be interesting to me to learn how these “guessing” scientists were able to persuade education boards or whatever to recognize them as legitimate scientists. We have been able to design experiments that produce similar results after multiple trials but has there ever been a test that produced the exact same results for every participant every time? I certainly haven’t heard of one.
When I was reading the chapter I found myself thinking about the government’s involvement in legitimizing psychology as a science and how they could have used it to their advantage when screening immigrants or hospitalizing “crazy” individuals. I thought about the early 1900s and how excited Boring was about psychology and how excited his roommates were about the field. It must have been an entirely different educational atmosphere at the time to create such fervor over a class.
The first thing that I found interesting in this first chapter was a quote by E.G. Boring. He wrote, "The past is not a crystal ball. It has more whence than whither to it. The seats on the train of progress all face backwards: you can see the past but only guess about the future". I found this quote interesting because after reading this, I literally pictured myself riding a train facing the back and thinking about all of my past experiences and wondering about my experiences to come. I love when I come across readings and quotes like this that make me take a step back and think about things. Especially when reading a history of psychology book and then the next second I'm thinking about my life.
The second thing I found interesting in this chapter was under the section why study history. The very last paragraph talks about how by studying history, people can search for life's very difficult and complex answers. For example, in the reading they gave the example of by studying the history of World War II, we can derive answers about prejudice, aggression, and violence. Another example, by studying the American Revolution we can examine the human desire for freedom and self-determination. I found all of this interesting because I never put these two histories together (the history of psychology and the history of wars and such). However, they are all connected and very relative to each other. There is always a reason people do what they do, and by studying the reasons why people do things, we can better understand the outcomes of there actions.
The third thing I found interesting was a sentence under the section why study psychology's history. The sentence is, "by the time you reach the final chapter of this text, where the issue of psychology's increased specialization will again be addressed, you will have learned enough to begin to understand the interconnectedness among the different areas of psychology". I liked this because so far I have taken a few different psychology courses but I have never tied them together with each other. So by taking this class and learning about the history of psychology, I am excited to learn that I will be able to tie all of my psychology knowledge together.
The one thing I did not find interesting in this chapter was the sources of historical data section. I didn't find this interesting because I already had previous knowledge of what primary sources and secondary sources were. I also was aware of what archives are and how about going to find all of this information, so I did not learn anything new in this section.
One thing that I found that is useful to the understanding the history of psychology was the section about presentism versus historicism. I think it is very important to understand the thinking and background knowledge about why people did what they did in the past. Today we can look back and say how stupid people were for doing what they did in the past and ask questions like "why would they do they?" "didn't they no better?" But without understanding what was going on and what knowledge they had, we can not judge there decisions. It is the same for in the future when people look back and judge the decisions we are making today. They will ask the same questions, "what were they thinking?" But today we are making the best decisions we can based on what we know.
One topic I want to learn more about is internal versus external history because I was confused reading this section. I couldn't quite follow along with the reading and so I would like to learn more about it so I can understand it.
My thoughts while reading this chapter were just in general about the history of psychology and how all these people, ideas, and thoughts are going to come together and intermix with each other.
The first area of the chapter I was interested in was the section on Edwin G. Boring. I find it fascinating that he used himself as a research subject and severed his own nerve for science. I know the chapter goes on to point out many of Boring's flaws, like refusing to write about applied psychology in his 1929: "A History of Experimental Psychology", but I find the man very interesting and would like to learn more about his research.
The second area I found interesting was about scientists destroying their work, like John Watson and Sigmund Freud, along with the loss of Mary W. Calkins research to flood. Just think of all the important research we have lost over the years, either because of scientists' mental breakdown or natural disasters. What information would be available to us today had all the research stayed intact?
The final part I found interesting was the section on "Data Selection." From deciding what to record as history, to being denied access to archives, it seems that no matter how long and drawn out history books seem to be there is an insurmountable amount of data that is left out and never seen by the general public or even high end researchers. I find this mind boggling and with all the reading involved I cannot see myself becoming a historian anytime soon.
The section I found least interesting was the part on: "Sources of Historical Data." I got the point of the section in the first paragraph after learning about primary and secondary sources and the section seemed to drag on for another page and a half.
The section I thought was most helpful in understanding the history of psychology was the "Interpretation of Data" section. This section explains the flaws that may arrive in history texts and minds us to stay skeptical and not accept everything we read as truth. I think that this is a good way to begin on the history of psychology and it is a good warning to psychologists as scientists. We must always be looking to improve and extend on what is true and what is flawed.
The topic or in my case person I would like to learn more about is Edwin G. Boring. The man intrigues me and I love the fact that he did extensive research experiments on himself. I would like to learn more about his research and methods.
As I read the chapter I kept thinking about how different history will be in the future. As more and more data is discovered and as more and more research is done where will we be? Also, what will we think when we look back at the 21st century? Will we be seen as an era of enlightenment where we pushed our boundaries for every inch of knowledge or will we be a dark age in which we focus on the past, but make no dominating strides towards a brighter future?
The thing that I found most interesting about this chapter is when the topic of immigrant screening and IQ tests was discussed. I found it interesting because of the way immigrants were deemed “unfit” or as Henry Goddard classified them “morans” seems so ridiculous and harsh now, but was considered perfectly acceptable in that time. It’s also interesting how it is a factor of history that has been an attribute in our evolving to “live and learn” through past experiences. There were restrictive immigration quotas intact in the 1920’s, but compared to that time we are now much more open to immigrants from all areas becoming members of our society. Because of Goddard’s work, as the book stated, it “illustrated how difficult it is for us to avoid a presentist orientation.” This is also the last interesting factor read in chapter 1, that understanding how we interpret the past in terms of the present. We interpret the past from what we value and view now, which restricts us from truly understanding our past and what made us who we are today and how we became to view and value what we do today. If we are stuck in our modern thoughts and values, we aren’t able to understand why previous views and values existed, and also aren’t able to understand how we became to view and value them how we do now.
Presentism as well as historicism I believe are key elements in understanding the history of psychology. It is important to understand the past behaviors and beliefs of people, and presentism and historicism enable us to view them in different lights. I have come to realize from reading this section that I’m a presentist thinking, and how I need to not understand the past in terms of the present. I will not be able to accurately learn from the past if I don’t take the values and views of the time into perspective, and try to understand why they were the way they were.
The topics that I would like to learn more about are the different methods used to gather historical research, so I will be able to distinguish which methods are more appropriate for gathering separate sets of data, and which ones might be more legitimate in regards for different topics. Some ideas that I have had while reading this section, is , how I had said before, that I need to broaden my perspective of thinking about the past so I will better be able to use it to learn for future references.
What ideas did you have while reading the chapter?
The first thing that I found really interesting from this chapter was the difference of Presentism versus Historicism. Now History is not my favorite subject in the world but I had never thought of it being taught in two completely different ways. I think it's really interesting to think about how yes, in modern day we usually and ignorantly consider people of the past to be not as smart as us because they couldn't figure out the things we do today. And what would be a huge victory during the time when they were discovered may be undermined today because we compare it to the current discoveries made in today's time. This is a lot of times not considered when reading about history and I think it was a really interesting fact about the teaching of history that I hadn't ever considered.
The second thing that I found really interesting about this first chapter is a more broad concept. I found it intreguing that of course in a psychology text book we couldn't just talk about history they also mentioned that they were going to discuss the behaviors of historians themselves. I think this will add a new perspective on history that almost no history classes address. You never really think about the people writing down the history. Most of the time it focuses people that are being written about but this book should be interesting because it will give us a little bit of what the behinds the scenes looks and feels like.
The third thing I found interesting about this chapter was that it intentionally listed many problems that can be found when writing history and directly addressed those so you would be aware. Many authors wouldn't admit to shortcomings of their field (aka history) but this author came right out and helped you understand that there may be some issues with reporting and writing history and I think in a deeper sense it made you even more interested in reading what this book might have to say and more interested in what the author may have to say. In a sense it helped you trust the author of this book more.
Unfortunately the least interesting thing about this chapter was in the beginning when they were actually talking about the history of the field of history of psychology. For me there is a definate difference between learning about the history of psychology (interesting) and learning about the history of the history of psychology. Learning about the history of history of psychology wasn't super interesting because it didn't have much to do with psychology or learning what happened in the field. In a sense it was almost it's own field that was explained.
I think the thing that will be the most useful to me in learning the history of psychology is knowing those previously mentioned issues that can happen when reporting data. Even though it may be written in black and white (as the book states) you can't always trust that it is true. I think understanding this will help us in discussion not necessarily of what happened and what didn't but maybe help in thinking and discussing about what we think the psychologist was thinking at the time that he/she did such-and-such.
I would like to learn more about the process of how people have gotten rid of their data over the years and why. They mention in the chapter that Watson destroyed all his data before he died and that Freud did something similar. I would really like to learn about their motives behind this behavior and why they felt it so necessary.
Some ideas I had found myself thinking during this reading was that I really hadn't realized all that went into the study of history. I know that I will learn a lot about history of psychology but I will also learn about something I had never considered. And that is, like I said before, the behaviors of the historians and why they may focus on one thing more then another and why they decide to write history as they do.
The first thing I found interesting was where the text started to talk about the intelligence testing on the immigrants coming into America. The immigrants who were considered not intelligent were sent back to where they came from. Henry Goddard used a version of an IQ test on these immigrants to be able to tell if they were "mentally defective." Also the text on page 10 told that Goddard said he could pick out the unintelligent individuals on his own just by looking at them. I find this interesting because it's like discriminating against people from the other nationalities by not letting them come into our country because they were considered "unintelligent." I find this I guess silly because every ones' education and learning experiences are different, one person may be good at book work for example, where as another person who grew up in a bad territory might have stronger survival skills, it doesn't mean that either person is "unintelligent." Their environmental background may have a lot to contribute to the knowledge and skills they do have.
The second part of information I found interesting was that historians would sometimes perpously make their data come up missing, like John Watson for example, burned the remainder of his notes in the last year of his life. Along with Freud who also destroyed his papers, "partly to make it difficult for others to trace the sources of his ideas." Basically they made it so other historians couldn't continue on from their work they had to start off by themselves searching to get them farther, which could have resulted in different information, findings, and methods.
Third, I was shocked to read that there is so much archive data that was never published and left out.
What I found least interesting was the first part of the chapter where the text talked just about history. History doesn't interest me as much as actual psychological findings. When it got in to talking about the history of the IQ testing for example, my attention was grabbed.
I think that one topic covered in this chapter that will be useful is where the text talked about the problems with writing history, and knowing that there can be problems with the data that was collected. Another problem or concern would be the interpretations of the data can reflect the historians "beliefs, theories on the nature of history, and potentially their unexamined biases." I think this is important to take into consideration, so we know that different people and different historians can interpret happenings differently, because we are all human.
I would really like to learn more about the different testings and theories of IQ testings and other kinds of testings. Behaviors and the knowledge of different people really interest me.
From reading this I realized that I can tie what I learned about the wars to other findings and find out how they relate to one another along with how psychological findings transform as more information is found and it can grow into new findings and information.
After reading Chapter 1, one thing that I found interesting was the intelligence tests that were given to immigrants trying to come to the US. Those who did not pass these IQ tests were sent back to their home countries. I find this absolutely ridiculous that we did not let the “mentally defective” people enter our country. People are smart in different ways and I believe everyone has something to offer, whether they meet the standards for an IQ test or not. Also, some of the people giving these tests probably couldn’t achieve a score that would allow them in either, so it is completely discriminating. Another thing I found interesting was the section about Edward G. Boring. I cannot imagine using myself as a research subject and severing my own nerve to get results. He seemed deeply passionate about almost every aspect of psychology, and to throw yourself into your own experiment just fascinates me. I would love to learn more about his work. A third thing I found interesting in this chapter is the question of why we study history. I have always found history classes to be boring, probably because the topics we covered were of no interest to me, or because I knew I was being forced to remember names and dates that I found to be only useful for passing the test. But after reading this chapter, I have a new outlook on studying history and why it is important. The text states that by studying history, people can search for life’s very difficult and complex answers. By studying our own history, we can look back on our experiences and what has made us who we are, so by studying any aspect of the world’s history, there are endless things to learn. The history of psychology is not only important in studying topics for today’s modern psychology world, but it applies to almost every other aspect of our daily lives as well.
The only part of this chapter that really did not grab my interest was the beginning when the text discussed history, and what history is. As mentioned before, history has never been a subject of real interest to me, so I did not start to focus on the text really until specific subjects were brought up about the history of psychology.
The part of this chapter that I think will be the most helpful to understanding the history of psychology is the “Interpretation of Data” section. As we discussed in class, we MUST be skeptical when reading about history, or reading about anything for that matter. We cannot always trust what we hear, read, or even see. Now, this does not mean we have to perceive everything as false. But, to realize that we must be skeptical and ask questions, I believe we will always be one step ahead.
One section that really stood out to me and that I would like to learn more about is why scientists have disposed of their research. The text stated that scientist such as Freud and Watson destroyed their research before they died. I just do not understand why these people work their whole life on collecting information, and then dispose of it as if it was nothing. I say let later generations decide if the material is worthy or not.
My thoughts while reading this chapter were very scattered. Since it was basically an introductory chapter into the history of psychology, I have realized there are many different areas that we will be discussing. I look forward to learning about these areas because honestly I do not know much about the history of psych (yet!).
Because I’m also studying history, the idea of recording and interpreting what we accept as historical truth is both fascinating and tangled.
The first facet of thinking about history is a presentist versus historicist perspective. Presentists look at a historical event through the lens of values and belief in the modern day, and historisits see events as they would have probably been perceived in that time period based on their values and beliefs. Take WWII as an example, a modern view sees it as a terrible period in the American past that had many fatalities. However, if you look at it from the perspective of the people of Poland during the same time. They lost everything, their homes, their family, and their nation under Nazi occupation. And if you were Jewish you probably saw the cruel treatment of your own people.
Whether or not the idea or content has been externally influenced or just internally examined can change how ideas and concepts can be used. If it is internal, external factors like politics, social norms, and the economy doesn’t have any effect on the history of those findings. If it is external, those things o have an influence on that research. Especially in the last 20 years, ethics and standards for research have changed. Some of the most notable research in introductory psychology classes serve a purpose in the sense that there were great leaps in our knowledge of the field but may not be legal anymore.
Personalistic and naturalistic is the last way Goodwin splits historical psychology. The best way I can explain these two is with the idea of the internal and external locus of control While someone with a high locus of control sees that their actions are based on their own decisions or mistakes an external sees environmental factors as the determinant of their current standing. Personalistic is an approach gives history a individual stance while naturalistic sees history as based on environmental and situational factors.
While I see interpreting history as interesting, the actual act of writing history didn’t entirely engage me. It seemed incredibly technical because data needs to be used and accurate, etc. It’s one of those subjects that seems like one either is really interested in, or not at all.
The section that I found most helpful was also the section I enjoyed the most, the key issues section. I think that leaning about history isn’t just chronological events with certain people. It’s about taking the events given and understanding that there is context to each situation and by simply reading one side of any historical doesn’t make you an expert.
After reading the chapter, one of the things I found interesting was how the book talked about history. How important history is for many reasons. How everything seems to repeat itself, and yet so many people ignore this and repeat the same mistakes that they, and others, have done over and over again. One of my favorite quotes from the chapter was from David McCullough who said “Imagine a man who professes over and over his unending love for a women but who knows nothing of where she was born or who her parents were or where she went to school or what her life had been like until he came along-and furthermore, doesn’t care to learn. What would you think of such a person? Yet we appear to have an unending supply of patriots who know nothing of the history of this country, nor are they interested.”
Another thing in this chapter that I found interesting was when the author talked about how that, even without Darwin, someone would have found and created the theory of evolution; since Alfred Russell Wallace developed a virtually identical theory at the same time. This got me thinking about: do names really matter when learning historic events, theories and ideas, or is just about understanding the concept and how it changed things at the time and changed things for the future.
A third interesting point in the chapter was the discussion of how psychologists study animal behavior and how studying animal behavior could also translate into studying human behavior. This interested me since I took behaviorism last semester and this reminded me of Pavlov.
To be honest there really was not any one subject matter that turned me off to this chapter. If I had to pick one that was “less interesting” it probably would be when the authors talk about problems with writing history and the problems historians face in writing history without putting their own beliefs into the interpretation of historical information. While I like this viewpoint, there were just a lot more interesting things in this chapter I preferred reading.
The thing I read in the chapter that I think will be most useful to me in understanding the history of psychology is the concept of how history is important to understand because of how it contributes to the present. Also the realization of how a lot of the ideas we have now, people in the past had those same ideas.
A topic/person I would like to learn more about is David McCullough, his thoughts and ideas on history and its importance. I was very impressed with the few quotes and stories the textbook referenced about him and would like to learn more.
While reading the chapter, I thought a lot about how there is so much historical information available. And how history can teach us about mistakes others have made, and yet we still often seem to make those exact same mistakes over again.
I liked the section about why studying history is important. I thought ideas about Old versus New History were interesting. This helped me become more open minded and hopefully I will be able to keep this open-mindedness with me throughout the semester and beyond. I also found the analogy from David McCullough about the man who loves the woman to be interesting. I thought it was funny and a creative way to help me and most normal non-historian types understand another reason why history is important. Then the third part I found interesting was the Internal versus External History. This is something I never would have come up with on my own. I think that both of these viewpoints can be important and was not surprised to see at the conclusion of the talk of Old versus New History that the book will try to stay in the middle of these two approaches.
The least interesting part was sources of historical data. This was very dry without any fun quotes or analogies. I realize it is important but not very interesting unless one is going to write a serious history book or article and I doubt that I will.
Going back to the section on New versus Old History. I think that keeping a non-presentist mind when reading will help me.
I would like to learn more about the IQ testing mentioned in relation to immigrants and Henry Goddard. This was what got me to understand Presentism the most. I think situations not exactly but similar to this could exist or happen even today. I also want to learn more about comparative psychology. I took an animal behavior class last semester at UC Denver and I really enjoyed it. However the class focused of the biological aspects of the behavior and a lot less on the history. I really would like to learn as much as I can on this topic
.
Many ideas passed through my mind while reading this chapter. One was “Wow, this is not a quick read, I will have to allow plenty of time to read these chapters.” Other ideas were on history in general. I also thought about what a huge undertaking it must be to go into those huge archives, look through material, sort though it all and then write a book that is not too boring. I also thought while this book will not be easy it will be very deep and high quality.
I like how the book opened up with deferent reasons on why we should learn history in all aspects. It explained that one reason is that know the history of any topic will lead us to understand why anything is the way it is today. It gives us great background information on any subject we wish to know about and can give us a good understanding on why the way people do certain things in an organization or in anything such as the APA and the APS’ feud in the battle between research psychologists and psychologists. It also highlights great accomplishments in a particular age and can show how far we’ve really come. It also is the roots of how we act today from not only learning from our own mistakes, but benefiting from those significant accomplishments.
It also goes on to say how psychology is very much still in its infant stage as it is a relatively new science field which is exciting to know how much is able to be attained from new information. It also goes over many basic subjects such as the differences between internal and external history. Internal being history derived strictly from the discipline of psychology which may be new laws or updates and external being new information taken from outside the field. I believe external information is much more important as the field of psychology is based on all forms of behavior and that studying many different types of other fields or jobs can not only open new branches of psych, but also makes it so much more interesting.
The book also does a great job at describing psychologists that students might not be familiar with such as Edwin G Boring. Boring was a famous historian that got his roots in the old days of psychology and ended up making a foundation for future historians and even airing on television in the 1960’s. He did a great job in looking in the past and seeing what worked and how the present can continue with progress. The book does a great job in also explaining how the authors will not take either side in different areas and will blend ideas as they progress and change throughout the years. They also explain how many different, but similar ideas happen throughout the world are important to know about wither the psychologist is well known or not.
The part about AHAP was not quite as interesting as the rest of the reading to me. They made it as interesting as they could with the different important research notes that are in it and interesting aspects of it, but I didn’t find it all that appealing. They continued to tell about other research note that were lost or destroyed such as Freud disposing of his own notes and other psychologists, but I thought it was still relatively none interesting.
I also would add that I would love to learn more about I/O psychology.
Right from the beginning of the chapter I found concepts and ideas that were intriguing to me. For example, the author makes a great point that many fields do not have a “history” class behind them. Furthermore, even the fields that do have a history class associated with them are usually part of the history department and not part of that particular field’s department. (In the book they used an example of history of science being taught by a historian rather than a chemist). Another part of this (which I already knew, but nonetheless still find interesting) that I found interesting was they mentioned Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory in Leipzig, Germany. The reason that I find this interesting is actually a personal reason; because I have spent a great deal of time in Germany as well have a B.A. in German.
The second thing that I found interesting in this chapter was some of the explanations of why we should study the history of psychology. One of these reasons was that because the field of Psychology is a very young field. (Once again, Wilhelm Wundt) Not only is the actual field of Psychology very young, but the subdivision of “history of psychology” is even younger. Interest in the field of psychology didn’t come along until the 1960’s. (Logically this is because you first have to have history before you can be interested in it) Personally I also think that learning about the history of psychology can do a lot of good for students because sometimes they will learn about fields of psychology that they have never even heard of before. (Sparking a new interest that could possibly lead to a career path)
The third thing that I found interesting (also very philosophical) was the section of the chapter entitled “Personalistic Versus Naturalistic History”. The German philosopher Hegel called the naturalistic history, zeitgeist, a German term meaning “spirit of the time”. Personalistic history on the other hand, is the belief that one single hero or evil person can change the course of history. For example, a personalistic historian might believe that Adolf Hitler changed the course of history, while a naturalistic historian might believe that it was more of a cultural change.
The part of the chapter that I found LEAST interesting was the section “Sources of Historical Data”. The only reason that I found this to be a bit dull is because of all the numbers present in the chapter. I am a psychology major, and to be blatantly honest, I hate numbers. (Unless it is a large number on a check made out to me). The section also had quite a few names of people that I had never heard of and I found it quite difficult to follow.
The part of the chapter that I think will be most useful in learning the history of psychology was the fact that the book even told its own point of view. For example it gave little lines with a dot on it, indicating that it will be a bit more “historicist” than “presentist” but will be completely unbiased between “Internal and external” and “personalistic and naturalistic”.
As I stated earlier, the section of the chapter regarding Personalistic views and Naturalistic views was very intriguing to me. I’d like to learn more about why people have either of these views and how they developed them. I would also like to hear some arguments backing up both of these views. In my opinion, I think that is neither a single person, nor a collective change in history; rather a combination of the both.
One idea that I had while reading this chapter is an idea that I have every time that I read history. I constantly wonder how history books are going to make our generation and this present time look. I am very interested to read history books in the future about the years that I am living right now. If I could guess, they will make us seem like a very liberal generation. Certain things in our society are more accepted than any other time in our history. For example: tattoos, gay marriage, drug laws, and abortion. I also can see them portraying us as the beginning of “internet addiction”.
After reading the first chapter of the textbook I found myself finding three things that were interesting to me. The first thing I like reading about was in the section Key Issues in History and talked about how we in the present evaluate the past in terms of our knowledge and values in the present. I had never thought of this before and it makes sense why some people pass unfair judgment. The book calls these people ‘presentist’ whereas ‘historicist’ try to avoid imposing modern values in the past. They rather try to understand the past from the stand-point of the knowledge and values present in the past. Another thing that I found interesting in the chapter was also in the same section and talked about a personalistic approach versus a naturalistic approach. A personalistic approach to history glorifies major historical figures and argues that history moves through the action of heroic individuals. I thought this was interesting to think about because the people we grow up learning about in history are famous because of something that they invented or came up with in theory. Just because we read about them in textbooks and not magazines doesn’t mean they are well-known role models for many. One term that the book used was ‘eponyms’ which means Darwinism biology and are labels on historical periods with reference to people. A naturalistic approach emphasizes the mood or spirit of the times, which the book refers to as the zeitgeist, as the prime moving force in history. The interesting part about a naturalistic approach is that it is consistent with when we say somebody is “ahead of their times.” I think both approaches are very different from one another and I can see why each one has some accuracy to it. The third thing that I found interesting while reading was in the section Historiography: Doing History and said that the information that is available for research is subject to numerous sources of error and biases. I understand why this is the case, so what I find the most interesting about it is how history is such a reliable subject for our culture to study and rely on when it fact it is hard to be sure during a period that was so long ago that no people of that time remain living to document any truth.
What I found the least interesting was the beginning of the chapter. Mostly the sections Why Study History? and Why Study Psychology’s History? For me it was somewhat slow and hard for me to enjoy because I already knew why I study history and why I am now studying the history of psychology. At this point I enjoy history because it is very interesting for me to learn about how things used to be when I wasn’t there to witness it, I like knowing how different it was. I was already eager to jump into the subject and start learning the course content, so I felt like I could have skip that part.
I think that the part about the two major problems that historians face will be the most useful to me in understanding the history of psychology. Those two problems faced are 1) the selection of information for their historical narratives and 2) interpretation of the information at hand. This would be useful for me to remember so that if I conduct research I know to go in with an open mind yet remain somewhat skeptical because there may be biases apparent in the information. Knowing this information beforehand, I believe, will help me retain the information learned in class in a better way as well. It also gives me a much greater respect for the historians and researchers that do what they do for a living. It requires a great deal of patience, but I think that only makes success more worth it when things add up and some truth is discovered.
I would really like to learn more about archives. I never knew about them before reading this chapter and never really thought about where historical research takes place. The book explains archives as a place that holds primary source information such as diaries, notes, original manuscripts, and correspondence, as well as secondary information. To me, this sounds like an amazing place to explore with endless things to learn about. Even though archival collections can be incomplete, I think with the rest that can be extensive would be enough for me to learn more about.
When I was reading chapter one I found myself thinking about the importance of history in our education system and life in general. I absolutely love that it is because it was always one of my favorite classes growing up in school, but part of me becomes extremely skeptical about everything we have been taught. I do not doubt that what we learn is what really happened, but it is interesting to think about the certainty of the past when no technology was around record. Some periods in history we must rely on drawings or sketches and some of the conclusions drawn make sense, but at the same time we can never say with 100% certainty that something happened when no human or physical record can show that.
The analogy of knowing the history of a subject to the knowing the past of a person we profess to love dearly. I hadn’t thought of how limited the knowledge of Psychology would be without having some background knowledge of its history.
It is always interesting to realize that we are dealing and studying things that have been studied for years. In looking back at the IQ tests and the implications help when experimenting today, meaning that we must use caution in assigning labels to individuals.
Presentism was also fascinating in that without an understanding of the great distance traveled it is easy to degrade the decisions of the past. The idea that we are not necessarily better thinkers but we have more available in the way of this knowledge and advancements in reaching conclusions.
I think knowing the process of obtaining the facts for a historical account can help I the study of Psychology’s history. If there are conflicting accounts of a particular event the knowledge that some of the history is obtained through diaries and second hand accounts can help in discerning and piecing together the real story.
I really did not find anything I felt to be uninteresting. Most of the concepts tied together. I am most interested in the history of Industrial Psychology and effects in workplace environments. We hear much about the studies being done but little about how it has changed the work environment from either perspective.
There is not a lot I know about the history of psychology, so I found a lot of the material presented in chapter one very interesting. The first thing that popped out at me was the very first section of the chapter. There was a lot of information about how the study of the history of psychology began to pick up. Significant interest in the history of psychology didn’t begin until the 1960s, and many believe the first person to be passionate about the history of psychology was Robert I. Watson. He wrote an article in American Psychologist titled “The History of Psychology: A Neglected Area”, and he formed a group within the American Psychological Association that later became its own division of the APA. I found this to be very interesting, because it gives me a better understanding of how and when the study of the history of psychology began to flourish. It’s hard to believe that the history of psychology as a study didn’t become popular until the 1960s.
Another thing I found interesting was the section about the intelligence test used by Henry Goddard in the immigration screening process. This occurred just before the start of World War I, and he tested the immigrants with the IQ test. Immigrants were sent back to their country of origin if they were deemed “unfit” for some reason or another. Goddard claimed that he could pick out defective immigrants by just looking at them. He also said that a large portion of immigrants were morons. Goddard was responsible for questionably deporting a large number of immigrants. I was just stunned when I read about this. I find it crazy how someone can just look at someone and determine that they’re “mentally defective”. Now, his behavior seems out of line, but there may be reasons why he acted this way. One reason could be the powerful influence of Darwinian thinking, which made him strongly believe that intelligence is inherited and developed through natural selection. Also, another reason could be that he feared the nation would be overrun by immigrants.
The third thing I found interesting was the section about personalistic and naturalistic history. Personalistic history focuses on the important events in history being caused by heroic or evil actions of different individuals, and history would be very different without those people. Thomas Carlyle was a firm believer in this view. He is best remembered for saying, “The history of what man has accomplished in this world is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here.” Naturalistic history focuses on the forces of history that act on individuals. Edwin G. Boring favored this model. Boring believed that understanding history meant understanding the historical forces that influenced the men and women living in that particular era. I found this very interesting, because I can only imagine the different arguments that have happened between people who have different views between these two kinds of history. I would love to watch a passionate argument about this topic. I think people would bring out the best points available, and I think it would help me better understand this topic as a whole.
The thing I thought was the least interesting in this chapter was the material about the sources of historical data. I had learned about this in another class, and I remember it didn’t interest me a lot in that class either. While reading the material, I didn’t learn a lot of new things, and I just caught myself becoming very bored with this section. I understand that this is important material, and it can be very helpful, but it’s just not the most interesting thing for me.
The thing I read that will be most useful in understanding the history of psychology would have to be the time period when the study of the history of psychology really flourished. Just like anything else, I think being able to thoroughly understand something, one has to know the origins of that topic. I enjoyed learning how the study really picked up, and who the people were to help make this study become a popular one.
I’d like to learn more about personalistic and naturalistic history. The material presented in the textbook was very interesting, and I really enjoyed learning about it. I’d like to watch/read arguments about this topic to hear why people believe in what they do. I don’t favor either side at this time, because this is the first time I’ve heard of this. I’m looking forward to learning more about each side, so at one point I’ll be able to have a strong opinion on this topic.
I had a lot of different ideas when I was reading the chapter. The first thing that came to mind was wondering what the history of psychology field will look like in 50 or 100 years. Will they still look at the same things we’re looking at now, or will they focus more on the things that will happen from now until then? Besides that, most of my thoughts were just thinking of how much material there has to be for this class. Just like any other history class, there is a lot of material, and I can’t wait until we get into some of the specific material.
I found it interesting that the book really explained why learning about the history of psychology is important. Every event that happens affects the events to come. We use references from the past in arguments in order to make our points. We have to understand the past to know the present came to be. This book made the reason this class is important to take more clear, that we need to use the past to put our present in prospective. We can try to avoid making mistakes because we can predict what the future outcome will be. I was interested to find out there are two different associations for psychologists. I had heard of the American Psychological Association (APA) before, but I had never heard of the Association of Psychological Science (APS). It makes sense though because psychologists who work with patients have a very different agenda than research psychologists. APS is focused on scientific research, while APA is more focused on psychotherapy. These different types of psychologists have different goals, so it makes perfect sense to put them in two different types of associations. It was interesting to find out that a lot of the old history of psychology is discarded or forgotten; it has no current relevance anymore because of how far we have come since that time. We have made a lot of progress since the early years of psychology. We need to hold on to the value of these historical events. They were an achievement at the time they happened. We should think about what the current knowledge was at the time an achievement was made. An example the book uses to understand this is computers. They have come a long way since the first one was created. The size of a hard drive you bought ten years ago was big at that time, but seems quite small now. At the time that you bought that computer you picked out the best of the best and if it wasn’t for that progress we wouldn’t have been able to build a computer with an even bigger hard drive. The thing what I found the least interesting about this chapter was all of the vocabulary words. I find it difficult to remember all of them. I think it is very useful to understand the limitations that researchers face. Thy have to find old documents like diaries, notes, and manuscripts in order to get more information about the past. It can be difficult to try to put together pieces from the past. An example is in the case of Sanford-Titchener, only one of the psychologists saved all of his data. I would like to learn more about some of the researcher from history that was hard to piece together, to learn some more specific cases where researchers had a very difficult time, but finally put it all together! A big thing that was running through my mind as a read this was that there is a lot of time and people involved in the history of psychology. There are the researchers who created experiments, the people who were on the research teams, the government, the people who now try to find all the past research and information on psychology, and the psychologists today who use the information found to improve their overall knowledge of psychology.
The first thing that stood out to me and that I found interesting was the idea of Historian David McCullough. His idea explains why it is important to study history. It explains that without knowing something about the past, you cannot fully understand the present. The book also has an analogy that he wrote about that explains knowing history to be like knowing someone we love. “Imagine a man who professes over and over his unending love for a women but who knows nothing of where she was born or who her parents were or where she went to school or what her life had been like until he came along-and furthermore, doesn’t care to learn. What would you think of such a person? Yet we appear to have an unending supply of patriots who know nothing of the history of the country, nor are they interested.” I really find not only this idea, but also this quote to be extremely well thought out even though it may seem simplistic. I mean, how well can you possible know what is going on in the present without having the context on which it happened.
The second topic that interested me was presentism vs. historicism, but more specifically the example on IQ testing by Henry Goddard on immigrants trying to pass through Ellis Island just prior to WWI. Goddard believed that he could test IQ with what was at the time a brand new test out of France, and with the test he could name immigrants as “unfit” to enter the United States. He also claimed that he knew which immigrants were “mentally defective” only by looking at them. This story is a horrible one, but cannot be taken at face value due to the idea of presentism vs. historicism. A historian using the presentism method would just tell the story at face value without the context upon which it happened, just as I have previously presented. A historian using the historicism method would include the context of the time that the story took place. This would include the emphasis on Darwinism and Mendelian genetics of the time. It would also include information on the United States fear of being overrun by an immigrant population and more.
The third item in the book that I found to be very interesting was the section on Interpretation problems. This section brings lots of distortions and misconceptions about history to the surface. For me, the most interesting example within the section was that events that occurred in the past are written down in chronological order and never changed misconception. The book then goes on to discuss what E.G. Boring has discovered and that is that historic analysis always leads to more light being spread and the constant need to revise information. I believe this to be a very enlightening idea that we as people must understand in our quest for knowledge in history. We only know so much, and can only understand the information the extent to which we know the context of the situation. I personally wish the writer of the book would have used a different example of this in the book, because the relationship between Wundt and Titchener example felt pretty generic. For me it did not draw me in and make me want to read further about the topic.
The least interesting thing for me to read was the information on sources of historical data. This is because I already knew about secondary and primary resources and I personally didn’t feel like it really went well with the rest of the chapter. This section was more straight forward and informative and less abstract than the mass majority of the rest of the chapter. I will point out the credit that must be given to people like Marion McPherson and John Pobblestone for their hard work and dedication to putting together the information to make it more accessible for the world to use.
For me the topic that I feel is most important to obtaining knowledge on the history of psychology would have to be the key issues in psychology’s history that are discussed. These include: Old vs. New History, Presentism vs. Historicism, Internal vs. External History, and Personalistic vs. Naturalistic History. With these different issue presented in the book it is clear that one should not just except everything at face value. They must understand the writers views and ultimate goal in which they are writing toward. It also shows the complexity of history and all the skewed views that can be in place. With this in mind the reader should ask questions to better try to understand the topic and be sure it is as literal as possible.
Something I would like to learn more about is David McCullough and his ideas and topics. In the reading I found his topics on why to study history and the example that were included in the text that came from him. These include the example I quoted earlier and well as an example on the Vietnam Memorial and Antietam Battle. I feel like his writing and examples really make it clear as to why it is important to study history and make me more interested in learning about then topics. Something I thought abour when I was reading was how much goes into the research of history. Even for me (a person who likes to study history) I could never imagine the amount of work that has to be done to write about even just one topic in a creditable manner, without biases. Also, all the work that must be done to find the articles and research done on topics in the past and the roadblocks that can be encountered in doing so is so mindboggling. For this I must commend the people that do it so that I can have a better understanding of the past, and in return may have a context for the present.
While reading the first chapter, I really found interesting when the text provided information and topics that I’ve thought about but haven’t fully processed ideas and statements into my mind and made sense of these thoughts. The first example is that we think everything in the past was better and that our current time is the worst of times. This is true because I often hear people talk about how they wish they lived in a different time era because life was so much simpler and overall better. Another interesting thing I found is that psychology is still a young science and doesn’t have much history behind it. Only being just over 125 years old, many of the same topics such as shyness, schizophrenia, and intelligence are still being studied and researched about. The third interesting statement that had me thinking was that a key issue in psychology’s history is that we don’t take in what was available in the past when we made a decision. We don’t take in account that resources and information may have been limited to what we know now when we made that certain decision. The least interesting thing I found would be the problems with the writing of history. I understand that all of information provided is important, but that isn’t what intrigued me.
The most useful thing I read in the chapter that in my opinion, will be the most useful in understanding the history of psychology, would be knowing how each branch and different parts of psychology all relate and interconnect with one another.
A topic I would like to learn more about is the personalistic versus naturalistic approach when recalling historic events. I never realized that many historic events are remembered because of certain people and are recognized because of said people. I find that stimulating because it’s crazy to think how different the present could be if certain people or “heroes” hadn’t existed.
There are so many different sections and studies of psychology that it would be impossible to know everything about each of those sections. So when the chapter talked about the importance of history of psychology is to bring understanding of how each section goes together, it had me really thinking about if one day psychologists and researchers will ever know the true workings of the human brain and body.
One thing that I found interesting about the chapter is the book’s reasons for why we should study history. They argue “if knowing history is no guarantee that mistakes won’t be repeated and if history is an imperfect at best means of forecasting the future, then the only thing left is the present”. They furthermore give a lot more reasons as to why it is important to study history in general. This was interesting to me because it helped me understand that it is actually important for us, as a society to study history. By doing this we can learn from our mistakes and hopefully remember how to solve them because most people say that history repeats itself, so remembering what had happened in a previous event may help us to overcome the issue when it arises again.
Another thing I found interesting are some of the reasons as to why we should study the history of psychology as a whole. By studying the history of the discipline of psychology we can solidify the identity of psychology as a respectable discipline. Psychology is still in its infancy, its only 125 years old. The book makes a good point of saying that modern psychology is closely tied to its past; being a literate psychologist does require us to know some of its history. Secondly, the field is still grappling with many of the same issues that occupied the discipline a century ago. Thirdly, it can provide some unity for a discipline that is widely diverse. Fourthly, knowing the history, it makes all psychologists more able to be better critical thinkers. The discerning psychologist is more better to evaluate the claims and issues that come up in a very diverse science. Finally, by understanding the history of psychology, we are gaining a complete understanding of psychology as a whole but are also becoming engaged in a history class. Therefore we are furthering our knowledge in the main study and also about history.
Finally, the contrasts between internal history and external history were interesting as well. By tracing the development of theories of behavior that have been held by various psychologists based on the research that was conducted by the psychologists. What is written occurs entirely within the discipline. An external history focuses on the influences outside of psychology that nonetheless have influenced the discipline. I found this interesting because it explored two different phrases that are used when talking about history that I had not known existed. This exact fact may be a good reason as to why it is a good idea to learn about the history of psychology because as psychology majors we are introduced to a deeper understanding of the people that have helped developed psychology into what it is today and gaining a small understanding to terms that are used in history as well.
The thing that I didn’t find interesting was that it talked about the books stance on the history of psychology and what its point of view was. I just thought that this was not something that was important to the chapter. Something that I found that was helpful in understanding the history of psychology was how the book started out talking about how important it was to study history and then how important it was to study the history of psychology. By starting off with this and explaining it as well, it helps give substance and understanding to why this class is important to psychology majors. Honestly my only thought while reading this chapter was that they did a pretty good job to not make the topics really boring and used a good approach to delivering the information. Secondly, I just kept thinking why the textbook didn’t include more pictures or something along those lines. Why does most textbooks just deliver the information and make it really boring and long. This information isn’t necessarily boring but initially it’s not stimulating. You just see a bunch of headings and paragraph after paragraph of words with no breaks or anything interesting on the side. Just an initial thought.
After reading chapter 1, one of the things I found most interesting was the intelligence testing the United States did for immigrants coming in to America (conducted by Henry Goddard). I had always known we had done something like that but never really knew the details of it until reading about it in the book. I think it’s completely ridiculous that we used to do things like that. I suppose it is just another one of those things, like when people in the future might look back and think “why would they start smoking cigarettes after they were proven to kill you?” To be able to say that you can just look at someone and tell that they are “mentally defective” is laughable. Someone actually put this man in charge? You would think deciding if someone would be allowed in the country would be measured in other ways…or not at all considering the people that live here, anyway…. This kind of ties in with another part of the reading I found interesting which is Historicism versus Presentism. The idea that we think our findings are so much more advanced than what was found in the past, or I guess another way to put it is that we think the things discovered in the past seem trivial compared to what we’ve accomplished. I think that we have to make every trial and error throughout history in order to get where we are (and we still have a ways to go). However, the longer I’ve been in school the more I’ve enjoyed learning about the history. I think it is fascinating to think about what people have accomplished considering they didn’t have computers with loads of journal articles or high tech labs to conduct research. They had to be so passionate about what they were doing. Another thing I found interesting in the chapter was about data that can be lost or left out of history for various reasons. Sometimes natural disasters take place, or like Freud or Watson which destroyed their own work. I wonder what we could have found from these great psychologists if only their work hadn’t been destroyed for various reasons.
I thought "sources of historical data" was a little boring. I felt like I had to keep rereading those couple pages because I kept forgetting what I had just read. Probably a sign that it didn't interest me! One think I read that I think will be most helpful in understand the history of psychology was the concepts of history in general. I think it is important and extremely interesting to see where we started from and how we ended up where we are now. A lot of the chapter was difficult to get through. I think that it partially my fault I should have started reading when I was more awake and had a highlighter handy. I think that this book will grow on me. Sometimes these things start off slow but I think that I will get the hang of it soon enough.
1. Ironically, one of the most interesting things in this chapter was said by a guy named Boring. I’m a quote junky and I usually pay better attention of enjoy reading something more if it has some short quotes that make me slow down and think. Boring said, “The past is not a crystal ball. It has more whence than whither to it. The seat on the train of progress all face backwards: you can see the past but only guess about the future”. This was an incredibly interesting take on things considering that we will be discussing the past. It’s a lovely intro and all too true. I road on a lot of trains this summer when I was in Taiwan and I always hated riding backwards, I wonder if that says something about me? (hahaha). I’m not very good at history and I don’t appreciate it as much as most people, but this analogy makes it all seem, “not so bad” and even, fascinating. It was a good quote as it brought me into the subject and instantly relating history (usually boring) to my life (usually exciting)…who knew that it would all come from a man named boring.
2. To continue on the Boring subject (punny). Learning about Edwin G. Boring was actually fairly interesting. Perhaps it was because I found way to much humor in the irony of his name and my interest level, but that is beside the point. I can’t blaim him for not wanting to write about applied psychology in his book “A History of Experimental Psychology” in 1929. Applied is generally not overly exciting. The fact that he used himself for his research is however VERY interesting. I cringe to think of using my own nerve or any aspect of myself (physically) in my research. I might be a little bias as well. Though it might be even more interesting to me as I would be learning about myself. I think it would be cool to look more into his findings. I wondering if there were bias. I know that I would want to find research that supports my wonderfulness. It would be hard for me to not look at some of the results with rose colored glasses. Either way, Boring might just be the new interesting in my personal look at Psychological History.
3. I find it interesting to think that there is all kinds of research from the land before ethics…yet we will never know about it. I know that I have had some crazy moments in my life. I’ve definitely had some mental breaks during my college experience. However, I can’t imagine destroying my work like Watson and Freud. I guess maybe if I really thought it sucked… The reason I think I’m most interested is in the destruction of their work is because, it makes me wondering if maybe part of their work was also too inappropriate. Could science be farther ahead today if their work wasn’t lost? Also, Calkin lost research in a flood. It’s interesting to contemplate what we may be missing today because of Mother Nature and crazy breaks of the past.
The most boring/least interesting part of the chapter was when it started to talk about the history of content of this course, that is, the history of the History of Psychology. REALLY?!?!!!! I would venture to guess that very few people truly wondering about the history of the history of psychology. I mean, it doesn't really talk about psychology which is what those of us going into the field are “really” interested in! I guess I found it least interesting because I found it least relevant to my life and the things I make space for in my brain. I’m personally not incredibly interested in history, so the history of history was OVER KILL!
An important/useful take-away point from this section of reading is that sometimes, things just aren’t correct! This is important just for personal understanding and awareness while analyzing history. Sometimes things are “lost in translation”. It makes sense really. Everyone makes and is entitled to a couple mistakes now and then. It’s useful to know that when we discuss and analysis history, we also taking into consideration the beliefs and opinions of those who interpreted the data. Perhaps history is really a collection of bias opinions of the historians that document it.
I have a feeling that another useful point from this chapter will be understanding the terms “personalistic” and “naturalistic”. Goodwin divides historical psychology using these key terms. The “naturalistic” term talks about history in relation to what was going on at the time in the area or environment. History is based on situations. The personalistic approach seems to be exactly like the word. It’s personal or more directly related to the “Person”. It makes it seem like we all play a role and have some control over history or how we view history (I think I understood that correctly).
The text did a decent job of making McCullough seem interesting. I mean, so far he seems alright and, being a quote person, I have thought that his quotes seem alright so far. Also, on a little different note, I’m in both Industrial and Organizational Psych right now. I think it would be interesting to learn more about I/O psych and its history since I’m kind of a little in the dark on the entire subject and I’m slowly learning.
While reading this chapter, I got this crazy idea that history might not be so bad! I’m more of a present person and most of my interests are in the research that is happening now. I believe that if today’s research is any good, it will reflect yesterdays and even longer before that. I do like to think about what later generations will say about us as they look back. Will we have become the boring ones? It’s sad to think that one day, people will probably care as little about the tiny details of today’s research as we care about out past research details. I think it will all be about the big picture. I wish I could be the fly on the wall in the future that watches everyone as they look back.
One of the topics covered in chapter one that I found to be interesting was the discussion of Robert I. Watson and the influence he had on the history of psychology during the 1960s. Watson virtually created the study by making individuals aware of the importance history has in relation to psychology. He did so through an article that was published in the American Psychologist, which was titled “The History of Psychology: A Neglected Area”. From that point on him and a group of like-minded psychologists began to broaden the field, even creating a new American Psychological Association (APA) division. I truly believe Watson and his colleagues had a lot to do with the current outlook of the history of psychology and in sense we as students have them to thank for having the ability to study it now. I think an important aspect to learning about certain things is first learning where it stems from and that’s why reading about Watson was so intriguing and has given me a better understanding of when this study began to prosper.
Another interesting topic covered in the chapter was the discussion of why it is important to study history. The portion that really stuck out to me was Daniel Boorstin’s quote taken from his essay entitled “The Prison of the Present”. It points out that knowing history can make us more content with the present by giving us a true understanding of the past. For instance, people often wish to go back to “the good old days”, which implies simpler terms of living and happiness. This stuck out to me because I can relate to it. I’m guilty at one time or another wishing for that exact thing or even that I grew up in a different era, with the assumption that it would somehow be better. However, people often say these things not realizing that there were hardships then just as there are now and history can be used help us understand that. Before reading this section in the chapter this was a concept that I had never really put much thought into and it made me aware of how closed-minded it was of me to think that by going back to some previous time would somehow make things easier or better. I’m not saying that I’m unaware of past hardships within our history, I just think a lot of times they tend to get overlooked when individuals wish to go back to a “better” time.
The third topic I found to be interesting was Henry Goddard and his intelligence screenings he performed on immigrants at Ellis Island. This was interesting to me because I have learned about Ellis Island and the immigrants who entered our country there, however, I have never learned about Goddard or the IQ testing that went on there and the amount of immigrants that were deported due to his false findings. The text took a piece of history I was familiar with and put a psychological twist on it, which was something that intrigued me.
I think the most useful information in understanding the history of psychology in this chapter are found in the key issues in psychology’s history section. One key issue in particular that I find to be the most relevant is what George Stocking referred to as presentism and historicism. These concepts are crucial when learning about history. Presentism interprets historical events only with reference to present knowledge and historicism tries to understand the same event in terms of the knowledge and values in existence at the time of the event. Therefore, one can’t exist without the other and both help make sense of past events, making them important aspects when learning the history of psychology.
A topic that in this chapter that I would enjoy learning more about would be how psychology became its own science and what exactly caused it to steer itself away from being labeled a philosophy. I know the text mentions Edwin G. Boring and while he was at Harvard he stressed that psychology become its own department, but I would like to learn in more depth about how the transition occurred.
There wasn’t really any portion of this chapter that really stuck out as being uninteresting. I did lose focus from time to time while reading about the history psychology. While I found the information in this section to be useful; it just wasn’t the most intriguing in my opinion.
All in all, I found myself being able to relate to some of the things I read and in some cases I remember thinking “I’ve never thought of it like that” or “I’d like to learn more about that”.
The topic of presentism versus historicism was very intriguing to me because it serves as a reminder to us to view historical content through a different lens, one from the past. However, the writer also understands that this is a difficult concept to apply because it is challenging to forget what we already know about historical outcomes so that we might better understand the reasoning behind a decision or event at the time it occurred. I was glad to see that the writer also mentioned the book’s propensity toward the historicist view.
In addition, the idea of personalistic and naturalistic history also interested me. I am more of a believer in naturalistic history because it seems that if a discovery were not made by one person, it would have eventually been made by another, though that would be difficult if not impossible to prove. The writer quoted a passage from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, in which Tolstoy suggests that each decision that has made a vast difference in history was not the voluntary choice of man himself, but was an act of fate. I find the concept so interesting because it is easily believable that there is a predestined path for mankind in some sense.
Finally, I hadn’t realized that the Association for Psychological Science had been formed due to infighting within the American Psychological Association. This information has helped me in another psychology course, Clinical Psychology, which I believe is the point of this class. Therefore, I was excited to learn about something that transferred over to other areas of study. In fact, much of the information in this chapter has aided my learning in other psychology courses—I understand now why this course is required.
The least interesting part of the chapter, to me, was the very beginning. After reading the first few paragraphs of the text I realized that I was not going to remember anything I had just read because it was all names of people, journals, etc., and dates. My head was swimming and I was thinking, “This is going to be a very boring book.” Luckily the subject became more interesting and less daunting as I read.
The most useful concept in the chapter seems to be the idea that we can’t take history for fact and that we should try to understand that it is there to help direct us, but not to offer us solid answers for the future. When studying psychology it is common to learn about methods that were eventually discredited and by learning about them we remember to be critical about new ideas so as not to cause harm to people as has happened in the past (e.g. refusal to allow immigrants into the country based on testing that is now known to be somewhat inaccurate).
I would like to learn more about the history of “multiples,” as Robert Merton calls them, or discoveries that were made by different people at about the same time. While an eponym might suggest that one person is singularly responsible for a discovery, it is still interesting to read about others who were close to making the same discovery—it shows that the environment and ideas of the time supported the eventual discovery which supports the reasoning of naturalistic history.
While reading the chapter I was constantly thinking of the similarities between the text and the reading for my other psychology courses. I find that in reviewing the chapter I was able to elaborate on topics based on information from other textbooks. The main idea I had, then, is that a history of psychology is interconnected with and an enhancement to my other courses and vice versa. I typically don’t like introductory chapters because they are often dry and repetitive, but I’m excited to read this particular book.
The topic of presentism versus historicism was very intriguing to me because it serves as a reminder to us to view historical content through a different lens, one from the past. However, the writer also understands that this is a difficult concept to apply because it is challenging to forget what we already know about historical outcomes so that we might better understand the reasoning behind a decision or event at the time it occurred. I was glad to see that the writer also mentioned the book’s propensity toward the historicist view.
In addition, the idea of personalistic and naturalistic history also interested me. I am more of a believer in naturalistic history because it seems that if a discovery were not made by one person, it would have eventually been made by another, though that would be difficult if not impossible to prove. The writer quoted a passage from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, in which Tolstoy suggests that each decision that has made a vast difference in history was not the voluntary choice of man himself, but was an act of fate. I find the concept so interesting because it is easily believable that there is a predestined path for mankind in some sense.
Finally, I hadn’t realized that the Association for Psychological Science had been formed due to infighting within the American Psychological Association. This information has helped me in another psychology course, Clinical Psychology, which I believe is the point of this class. Therefore, I was excited to learn about something that transferred over to other areas of study. In fact, much of the information in this chapter has aided my learning in other psychology courses—I understand now why this course is required.
The least interesting part of the chapter, to me, was the very beginning. After reading the first few paragraphs of the text I realized that I was not going to remember anything I had just read because it was all names of people, journals, etc., and dates. My head was swimming and I was thinking, “This is going to be a very boring book.” Luckily the subject became more interesting and less daunting as I read.
The most useful concept in the chapter seems to be the idea that we can’t take history for fact and that we should try to understand that it is there to help direct us, but not to offer us solid answers for the future. When studying psychology it is common to learn about methods that were eventually discredited and by learning about them we remember to be critical about new ideas so as not to cause harm to people as has happened in the past (e.g. refusal to allow immigrants into the country based on testing that is now known to be somewhat inaccurate).
I would like to learn more about the history of “multiples,” as Robert Merton calls them, or discoveries that were made by different people at about the same time. While an eponym might suggest that one person is singularly responsible for a discovery, it is still interesting to read about others who were close to making the same discovery—it shows that the environment and ideas of the time supported the eventual discovery which supports the reasoning of naturalistic history.
While reading the chapter I was constantly thinking of the similarities between the text and the reading for my other psychology courses. I find that in reviewing the chapter I was able to elaborate on topics based on information from other textbooks. The main idea I had, then, is that a history of psychology is interconnected with and an enhancement to my other courses and vice versa. I typically don’t like introductory chapters because they are often dry and repetitive, but I’m excited to read this particular book.
Good morning. Any comments after this will be considered late. Have a great day.
One thing I found interesting that I’ve contemplated myself is why in the world do I have to study the history of psychology. I never thought it might really be that important. As the book described in the beginning of the chapter how the chemistry majors don’t have to learn about the history of chemistry, but rather the history of science. It’s also curious that the history of science would be taught by a history teacher. Now that I think about it though, I’d rather have someone from the field of psychology teaching about the history of psych than some history teacher who may not be as passionate about it. After reading the section on why we study psychology’s history though I understand why it’s important and interesting.
The second thing I find most interesting is Personalistic Versus Nauralistic History. First I should say that I never knew there so many “branches” of history. I always thought “history is history” and that there were no real differences in how history could be viewed, but I was clearly very wrong. You have new history, old history, presentism, historicism, internal, external, personalistic and naturalistic. The personalistic and naturalisitic are the two I found most interesting. Personalistic history is basically viewing history as important events that resulted from some heroic or evil actions of an individual or individuals and without these actions history would be very different. Naturalistic history is an alternative to personalistic. Naturalistic history really emphasizes the forces of history that act on individuals (according to the book on page 15). So basically Personalistic focuses and the individuals acts and how the make history Naturalistic focuses on the history that makes individuals act the way they do. I really you have to take all sides into account when you’re viewing history and realize that in some instances it may have been the people who changed history and in other instances it may have been that history was already in the making and that’s why the individuals did what they did. It’s really kind of a broad thing to think about.
The third thing I found most interesting while reading is how interpretation of history can be a problem. It’s very true that we all have our own ways of viewing things. What one person might say is right, another may disagree. That’s why it’s very important to have many historians go over what is being interpreted. The book tells us that historians will always have some sort of influence by their preconceptions. This isn’t because they’re trying to persuade the research or whatever is being interpreted one way or another, but it’s because these historians have been predisposed to a certain amount of understand and knowledge they already have in a given area. They also have ways of being influenced by things from the outside world without knowing it. I just thought this was important because there could be so many things out there that we’re just misinterpreting or overlooking, simply due to our own biases.
The topic I found least interesting is sources of historical data. I actually had to read this section twice because I started day dreaming while I was reading it. I feel like I already have a sense of what primary and secondary sources are. I did learn what an archive was, I’ve heard of the term before I just didn’t realize it was a place where unpublished work was stored. I just found this part really hard to read. Maybe it was the fact that I saw the word “data” on the header and was instantly turned off. However, I understand why it’s important to know the different kind of sources and where to look in order to find them.
The most useful thing I read in understanding psychology is just all the different ways you can view the history of psychology like I mentioned above. I’d like to learn more about how our interpretations of research can be different. I guess most of my thinking came when I was reading about all the different branches of history in psychology. Once I read one side versus another I kept thinking how I could see that both of them could be correct in different instances and it’s just such a broad topic to think about. I really enjoyed reading that part!
Chapter 1- Edition 3
1. The most interesting subject in this chapter was the interpretation problems with history. Before reading this chapter I did not realize that specialists in each fields have interrupted history over the years. I thought the passage talking about interpretation problems really helped me understand how history has evolved. Many past psychologist’s works and research are in different languages, which makes it harder to interpret. Many individuals’ works have been reevaluated from the past like Wilhelm Wundt.
2. The second thing I found interesting was learning new vocabulary words like zeitgeist and eponyms. I have never came across those particular terminology before. Zeitgeist is when one emphasizes the overall intellectual and cultural climate of a particular historical era. The eponym’s definition is when historical periods are labeled with reference to people. These two definitions are part of the personalistic part of the history by individuals.
3. The final thing that I enjoyed from this chapter was the elaboration on how psychology is a relatively young science. The history of psychology is still being researched today, and without the history behind ideas and research, modern day psychologists will struggle.
*All three of these subjects are very interesting because I have never read about these issues before/ or thought about it critically. There was not one thing that I did not enjoy about this chapter. I really liked that this chapter introduced and discussed the basic facts of the history of psychology. Yes, at times the chapter got boring to read, but many of the factors listed above were interesting.
*The most useful subject in this chapter was to understand the history of psychology by keeping an open mind. The second useful thing was readers must understand that every subject has a founder and different radical ideas/experiences/beliefs.
*I would love to learn more about Watson’s research methods and discoveries. I have always been interested in Watson and his crazy experiences but most of all I can’t wait to hear more of his past contribution that lead to modern ideas in psychology.
*One idea that I came across while reading this chapter was why doesn’t each major have a required history of the class? – Goodwin describes early on in this chapter how history of psychology is required and taught my psychologists but chemistry history doesn’t exist and is not available by chemists.
The sources of historical data was interesting to me. I never would have thought about something like that before. I didn’t know they cared enough to label something as primary or secondary sources. That was interesting and something that I would have never known about. I also got a better understanding of why we all actually should and need to study psychology’s history. It is a young topic compared to other sciences and it’s important to understand the roots of the theories and concepts. A lot of the things such as the nature vs. nurture as well as freud are still frequently talked about it today’s psychology and people still use that for other research regarding psychology. Another thing that was interesting is that just like all history, psychology’s history is important so we don’t repeat ourselves in studies and helps you understand what is going on in the world of psychology. The thing I found not interesting is hearing about people who write history. That was just boring to me and I would rather spend the time reading about the theories that outline what we, as psychology majors, need to know about concepts vs. who is writing this history. I think the most useful thing in this chapter was the reminder that psychology as a science is still very young. When most people think of history they think thousands of years, where psychology is just in the small hundreds of years. We are still learning and growing as a science and our history is history but is also present in some ways. In general, I want to gain more knowledge of different theories and who did the theories and the concepts of the theories. I want to be able to apply the theories when needed rather than just spitting out the definitions and history based knowledge.
I found a lot of different things interesting in chapter one. First, I thought it was sort of comical of how the APA (American Psychological Association) and APS (Association for Psychological Science) came to be, as well as the fact that there is still some animosity between these two organizations. The split of the practitioners and experimentalist became official after World War II.
Another interesting thing I discovered was really eye opening to me. I always looked at history with a “know the past, predict the future” mentality. I was informed in chapter one that the past can never truly repeat itself. It all comes down to the present. The present is always relative in time. We can’t attack the practices of the past for being incorrect or unethical because it isn’t necessarily ethical or up to correct standards in our point in time. The point is, it was correct and standard practice in that point and time.
The most interesting concept I got from chapter one was how I “used” to look at history. While reading, I learned that history isn’t just about memorizing events of the past. It’s a great opportunity to study human behavior. It seems so simple now, but once you know history, you can look at the different motivations and emotional states people must have been in 2,000 years ago. Once you understand the motivations of people, there subsequent actions don’t seem all that irrational or crazy. I have to also say this concept will be most useful in the process of understanding the history of psychology.
One thing I didn’t really care for was the presentism vs. historicism. I found it relatively hard to grasp, and rather dry material. However, I do feel as if it is an important idea to know. For this reason, I would like to learn more about it so I can understand it better.
One thing that interested me from the chapter was the story of the division of the APA and APS. I found it interesting because I had never heard of the APS before reading the chapter. I wasn’t aware that the scientists and practitioners of psychology had such a deeply rooted rivalry in terms of conflicting goals.
Another thing I found interesting from the chapter was the contrast of the presentist and historicist approaches in interpreting historical events. It never even occurred to me that one would solely use present concepts and values to understand the past. Yet, the presentist perspective is impossible to avoid. Current ideas are shaped by experiences that simply cannot be ignored.
A third topic of interest from the chapter was historiography. I originally didn’t think of the writing down of history to be much more than a historical narrative. However, theoretical issues and methods also have a strong role in historiography.
The thing I found to be least interesting in the chapter was, specifically, the data selection problems section. It was lengthy and a little dry in my opinion. Data selection and other methodical components never seemed to pique my interest in the first place.
The thing I read that will be most useful to understanding the history of psychology is the comparisons of types of history. There were several comparisons made such as old vs. new history, presentism vs. historicism, internal vs. external history, and personalistic vs. naturalistic history. These comparisons were identified as key issues in psychology’s history. Knowing all sides of those viewpoints is critical to understanding the history of psychology.
I would like to learn more about American pioneers in psychology. I hear a lot about earlier European psychologists in most of my psych classes. But, I feel like there are only a handful of American psychologists that get any coverage in my psych classes.
An idea I had while reading this chapter was that I had never heard of “psychology’s most famous historian,” E.G. Boring before reading the chapter. That made me think of how little I really knew about the history of psychology, or at least historians and their professional behavior.
Another idea I had while reading this chapter was that I liked how the book came right out in the first chapter with its point of view. I haven’t read any other textbooks that discuss this outright in such a way. I like that it lets me know what perspective scope I’m seeing through as I read this particular text.
One of the things that stood out most to me was the analogy from historian David McCullough.( Imagine a man who professes over and over his unending love for a women but who knows nothing of where she was born or who her parent were or where she went to school or what her life had been like until he came along.) This stood out to me because it made me realize that in order to understand the present time you need to have some knowledge of the past. Our society is so focused on current events but without past happenings its impossible to understand present occurrences. This made me think about past issues that have happened and how we need both old and new knowledge and experience to fully understand. This part of the chapter was important for me to read because it allowed me to open up my thinking about the history of psych in hopes to better understand it in the present. The field is still using and expanding on several issues that have been around since the beginning of psychology. A example,types of mental illness such as schizophrenia. These issues are still being discussed and expanded on today but the foundation was established years ago.
Another topic I found interesting was the difference between presentism vs historicism. There are two different types of studying and writing history. Presentism is when they write about events only with a reference to modern knowledge and values. Historicism is when they write about the same event while trying to understand the event with knowledge and values from the time of the event. Ex. Understanding the reasons of that time to go to war, rather than our current reasons being applied to 1941 and WWII. It’s hard to not think in presentism terms because our way of thinking has been shaped to think that way. Reading these terms made me realize that when you’re reading about events in history you have to be aware of the type of approach that was taken to see what perspective the writer had. Certain moments in history can be perceived totally differently based on how the writer chose to look at it. We can’t let our own experiences shape how we look at things from a different time frame.
A third topic I found interesting was the section on how they wanted to make you aware of the many problems that can occur when writing history. This section described many different things like author bias’, the type of approach that was used, and the different types of thinking that people have when it comes to the history of psychology. The author wanted the readers to be aware that not everything in black and white print is the 100% truth. This allowed me to be more open minded and ask questions rather than just take the words from the text and believe it. From now on while reading these chapters I’ll be more likely to consider all the sources and make better evaluations of the information. Many authors would not admit to the problems of writings in their field but in this case it allowed me to associate better and realize that a lot of things that are discussed in psychology can have many ways of being looked at not all of them are right or wrong but they can vary based on your knowledge, bias, experiences, ect..
The topic I found the least interesting was the introduction to the history of the history. This was boring because it was just laying the ground work for the field of psychology without giving any new information. It didn’t actually discuss any psychologists or their findings but about the history behind the history. After it gave the brief rundown of psychology and its origin it got more interesting. Topics like this are always hard to read even though it’s the foundation to the actual history and systems of psych.
The main things that I found most useful to helping me understand this history is to acknowledge the history. Until reading the chapter I never really realized that I looked at situations in history based on my time frame and experiences. It made me think much more and allowed me to get a different perspective on things just based on how I perceived the events. It is hard not to use my experiences to gather opinions and thoughts on things that took places decades to a century ago. The short section really made me want to understand in a different light than the one I was using. I also feel that reading the section on inaccurate writings made me look at the information im getting in a different way. Each piece of information is perceived and repeated differently by each individual based on how they read, understand, and translate it. Sometimes just looking at information differently gives you totally different insight. This will allow me to expand and think more in depth about each topic we discuss this semester.
One thing I’m interested in learning more about would be how psychology has advanced so far yet are still studying issues that were found towards the beginning of the field’s existence. It amazes me that certain issues are still discussed and used today while other issues have been tested and changed. It gives a good insight to the psychologists that created these ideas and the psychologists that are still trying to expand on these same ideas decades later. It makes me want to learn more about how generations change and how these theories and ideas have slowly adapted to our changing world. I would also like to learn more about the different types of testing’s and theories of IQ testing’s. The behaviors of people have always really interested me.
Some ideas I had found myself thinking during this reading was that I really hadn't realized all that went into the study of history .I also found myself thinking about the amount of archived information in the AHAPs collection. It would be really interesting to see a few of the 15,000 psychological tests and see how they compared from then to now. I also found myself wondering why certain psychologists documented there data while others destroyed it before they passed. John Watson for example burned all his findings a year before he passed away. It really makes me wonder what new or different findings he had that was never exposed or documented.
I liked part that referenced a commencement address relating past and present. It was explained in a way that we cannot know much about the present if we don’t know a little about our past. It was mind boggling to try to wrap my head around a man who had love for a woman but knew nothing about her really except maybe her name. He didn’t know where she was from or about her parents and didn’t care to know. I think to get to know who a person is now, you have to see what happened in their past to shape who they are or the person they want to be. A person’s past doesn’t necessarily define them, but it definitely can tell about the person they want to be. In relation to that, history isn’t based off our mistakes or accomplishments, but how we came about it after. It’s odd to think we are going to look back on our days as we grow older and see how far we’ve come because of our past or not.
The second part I like was how we are still in the early stages of psychology-or our infancy as the book puts it. I think that means we still have a long ways to go and I mean it’s kind of like how you are at a job and though you’ve worked there for a year, you might still be learning things though you thought you knew it like the back of your hand. Life is a learning experience and I think psychology is the same. We can always grow to improve. I think there will always be days we look back on and say ‘what were they thinking?’
The last part that I liked was about presentism vs historicism because I realize that even though pretty much everyone has a presentist point of view on things, I hardly ever have a historicist point of view. I always think about the present and how things affect me now instead of how they affected me then. They talked about buying a new computer years after buying your first one and how difference in drive space made you wonder ‘what was I thinking?’ in the past. It wasn’t like you learned from your mistake because at the time it wasn’t a mistake because you didn’t need all that space before. It’s almost like when a new couple buys a house and thinks in the present of ‘this is big enough for us’. Then you see down the road the couple has kids and the house grows “smaller” and they wonder what they were thinking buying a small house when actuality-it was the right buy at the time.
The part I thought was the least interesting was about primary and secondary sources because it just didn’t grab my attention. I found myself skipping over sentences. I know understanding the difference between primary and secondary is important because secondary is easier to find and might be processed wrong from previous researchers.
The most useful part of this chapter for me was just learning that psychology as a specialized area is still new in regards to its history. They mentioned serious research started in the 1960s and it’s odd to think that I was boring not even 50 years after that. I think we’ve got a lot more to dig up and learn about the history of psychology and I’m intrigued.
The topic I want to learn more about is actually Industrial/Organizational though it wasn’t mentioned in this chapter. I know I/O psychology is even more new in the field compared to applied or clinical. I want to learn about it because that’s what I’m thinking about going into for grad school.
One of the first things I found interesting from chapter 1 was the discussion of why study history? I never really thought to think twice about why we study the history of things or subjects in this case. For psychology I think we study the history to understand or argue the different perspectives people have about a topic. Also, and one that I find to be the most important, is how everything came to be, how it evolved from someone’s idea to a central reason. Even when meeting someone it is important to know their background, not only to better understand where they came from but maybe to understand where they get their ideas (and to make sure you’re not befriending an axe murderer). Another important reason to study the history of something is for better understanding of the present knowledge of ideas today. Lastly I feel that understanding the history of psychology is also understanding psychology as whole, they’re so many ideas and concepts in psychology today that derived from the past. It’s kind of like a cumulative test, what you learn in the beginning will help you better understand the material at the end of the semester.
Something else I found interesting in this chapter was that the book came right out and discussed the multiple issues there are when writing down history. You wouldn’t think the author would put himself on the spot like that but he did and I liked that, he wasn’t trying to make it look easy.
The last thing I found to be very interesting was the section of sources of historical data, a secondary source and a primary source. I have done a lot of research in my college years and I never thought about sources like this. I think it is very important to recognize primary and secondary sources to know where the source came from and why. Also it will help make what you are researching more applicable because you will know if it is fraud or not.
Something I found to be the least interesting was the discussion on old versus new history, and I found this to be not as interesting because I already had an idea of that. The older the history the more unexciting it is going to be and the newer the history the more exciting, some people don’t agree with that though. I can’t say I don’t agree but some things in the past are intriguing and interesting. I felt like the author was more biased on this section and put a lot of what he felt in this and not as much what everyone would think.
What I read that I feel would be the most useful to understanding the history of psychology wouldn’t be something I found specifically in the book; I think to understand the history of almost anything you need to keep an open mind and be aware that everything you read could have already been written down and copied twenty times and that some things may not be the exact truth. Also to not judge someone because of what they did to obtain certain information because you really do need to know someone before you can judge them.
A topic I would love to learn more about is the section about personalistic versus naturalistic history. What I got from the book this means that “important events in history result from the heroic actions of individuals.” I don’t agree or disagree with this statement it just seems a little off to me, can ordinary people make important discoveries in history? This would be something that would need to be more elaborated for full understanding.
The ideas I had as I was going through this reading were what was going on during this time and what was going through some of the peoples’ minds as well, more personal about the individual, thinking how did they come up with such and such theory. I enjoyed reading this chapter because I never thought about the history of psychology in this sense before, it really did keep me thinking why and that is so true.