Week #16 Final Assignment

Final Assignment

I would have never thought that I would become so interested in the history of psychology but, I realized that when we understand the background of our field, we can understand how and why things have happened, along with where psychology can expand today. The structure of psychology has progressed immensely throughout the centuries. The ideal concept of psychology has always been to help people. The minds of human beings and animals are so fascinating, that still today we are discovering new facts about the mind. Developing concepts and theories as to why we as humans emit the behaviors we do are the overall concepts of psychology in my opinion. This course was more than learning about the past, but focusing to improve the present and future. The main three topics I want to focus my interests on that were discussed throughout this semester are; Carl Roger’s client-centered therapy approach, animal behavior, treatment and conditions of asylums.

Throughout the entire reading of the book the most fascinating and interesting topics was about animal behavior and learning. Throughout history we have experimented with animals to understand learning and human behaviors. There are many past experiments with animals that were disturbing and raise some ethical issues in today’s society. However, in that time period ethical considerations were not of much importance. One of the main things I enjoyed learning was the behaviorism of training animals using Skinner’s puzzle-box, and operant conditioning. Conditioning animals has always been a major project, and has been something psychology has focused on through animal intelligence. Rats, cats, pigeons, and dogs are all animals that were used in conditioning a behavior or continuing a desired behavior. Behaviorism can manipulate an animal to the point that changes their daily routines. Both animals and humans need reinforcements for the desired behavior to continue.

Operant conditioning was used by Skinner and Pavlov. When a behavior is emitted it is followed by a consequence and the future chances of that behavior occur again is due to those consequences. When the consequences are positive reinforcements its used as a reward. In animal behavior, a treat or reward is highly recommended to control a behavior in a familiar environment. Stimulus control occurs when an outside source starts to become the stimulus. Trial-and-error takes place continuously in conditioning of both animals and humans. I think that cognitive and behaviorism research in humans and animals will grow tremendously over the years. I’m exited to follow the research and learn what is to come.

The second topic that I found quite interesting was the therapy approach of Carl Rogers. Carl Roger’s believed in client-centered therapy, which was led by the client instead of the therapist. Roger’s used this therapy to provide empathy towards relationships between the patient and therapist. Empathy is one of the best genuine ways to feel what the client is feeling. When a person achieves empathy, they can honestly understand or give accurate advice because they care. Roger’s believed that this humanistic approach to psychology was effective and requires trying to understand how a person views things. I honestly believe that this therapy approach would be something I would personally use when I begin to counsel. I really agree with Roger’s view on empathy and understanding your patient’s thoughts and beliefs. A reflection of the client is important and Roger stressed this to other clinical psychologists, when the approach became popular in the 1960’s. When the client feels like there is someone that shows empathy to their problems, it makes you want to trust that person. Roger’s created a new type of therapy different than Freud that was more logical and worked.

I have always thought that when I begin to counsel that I would use this approach simply because I use the approach already. It’s not hard for me to relate or put myself in another person shoes because of the obstacles I’ve endured. Roger’s therapy is exactly what most people want, wanting someone to listen but give positive regard back. The best type of therapy is when a client can relate to their therapist with trust, which is called transference. When transference occurs, the bond between the two, the client-therapist relationships is strong.



The third topic I chose to discuss was about the treatment of the mental ill held in asylums from around the early 1800’s until now. From the beginning people considered different than what is normal were treated and looked upon with fear and loathing. The mentally ill were considered to be wicked or possessed. If we remember the Salem Witch Trials we can remember that they were even murdered because of their bizarre behaviors. Around the enlightenment period there was a time where bloodletting was a part of treatment for the mentally ill. Bloodletting took place when a doctor would remove the disease infested blood and cure the illness. Benjamin Rush promoted bloodletting treatment and would reduce the tension by removing many ounces of blood. Rush believed that this treatment was working because the symptoms would be reduced. It is hard to picture this kind of treatment happening in today’s society because if anyone tried to perform this horrible act, they would be sued and have their doctoral license withdrew. Rush and many other researchers may have thought this was honesty the best way to treat others “morally.” If they felt like the symptoms were reduced, they felt like they were helping the patients and curing them of their diseased blood.

The first asylums were private and were not very crowded. The patients received the help they needed by using moral treatment programs and placed in outdoor therapeutic activities. These were only available to families and people of wealth, which could afford this “established” kind of help. The poor roamed the countryside and the population of the mentally ill was growing. To picture what the poor were experiencing, when there are homeless on the streets of cities, we may overlook them or frown upon their lifestyle. Many times when the homeless are living on the streets, they develop a mental disorder. The poor are suffering when it comes to finding the best resources to improved care. The asylums did grow to allow both the rich and poor in one state-funded facility, so that was one progressive way to equality within the facility.


Money has always been an issue when discussing healthcare, and providing the best possible care for those who desperately need it. Why should those with money be the ones to receive the best doctors and specialists? What about those families that deserves the best for being good people and struggling to survive. I have never understood why the mentally ill are at the “bottom” of the priority list in helping people. Children, adults, and the elderly are developing mental disorders on a daily basis, and its increasing. The mental ill need housing and care-givers that are supportive and that genuinely want to help them. The people that do perform to the best of their ability are kind hearted and do not care about getting paid extensive amounts of money to help others. In today’s society we can learn from the past treatments and housing conditions of the mentally ill, and continue to change to equality and better conditions. Now there are particular laws and guidelines that must be followed in housing facilities and when treating the mentally ill. As a whole, we have not reached the perfect solutions for the mental ill, but organizations and human rights advocates fight each day to make the experience better for the patients.



In conclusion, these three topics were very appealing to me and I completely understood the history and would like to learn more. The material from the Modern Psychology book has changed my view on many psychologists like Darwin, Pavlov, Watson, and many others. I also learned more about the women and minorities in psychology. This was really intriguing to me because of me being a woman of color. The experiments and research in animal behavior, therapy approaches, and treatment of mentally ill have progressed and have changed due to the mistakes learned from the past along with ethical rights. If I have learned anything it would be not to quickly judge the mistakes of the past but critique it, and understand why psychologists and scientists believed their discoveries were the best. Through the many discussions in class and analyzing research, we can understand modern psychology. There are many concepts such as behaviorism, Skinner, Freudian concepts, many other important concepts that built on from other classes at UNI such as; Behavior Modification, Gender Differences in Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Biological Psychology and etc.



Terminology: skinners-puzzle box, operant conditioning, animal intelligence, Behaviorism, Pavlov, stimulus control, trial-and-error, Carl Rogers, Client-centered therapy, transference, empathy, humanistic approach, reflection, clinical psychologists, blood-letting, Benjamin Rush, asylums, mentally ill, Freud, Skinner, Watson, behaviorism, Animal behavior and learning, ethical considerations, elicit, desired behavior, emitting, Skinner and Pavlov, reinforcement, stimulus, Darwin

Final Assignment

When I first signed up for this class I must admit I was not excited at all, I have taken many history classes throughout my life and it was very hard to enroll in another one. Before I even arrived to class on the first day I had already skimmed through the text and decided it was going to be a bore. Different names, dates, and what I thought were useless facts filled the pages and I was dreading all of the memorization. To my surprise this class wasn’t like that at all, in fact it was just the opposite, and I learned a lot. I found myself reciting facts I had learned to my friends and I was able to start up different educational conversations with friends and family. My parents were in disbelief when I talked to them about google glasses/3D printers and my friends intrigued by the debate on America’s education. A lot of what came up in in-class discussions were my favorite things about this class but I also enjoyed several different things from the text a few including: phrenology, the development of women’s work in psychology, animal research as a whole.

The main reason I was so fascinated by the whole concept of phrenology was mainly because I had never heard anything of it before and it just seems so ridiculous it blows my mind how people became so apt to accept it; in a way it reminds me of palm reading in that it seems like it is all a type of superficial magic. In the early nineteenth century scientists knew little information on the physiology and nature of the brain, it was the phrenologists job however to localize different functions of the brain. According to this science human faculties could be identified and located in precisely defined areas of the brain. Phrenology originated by a physician and comparative anatomist by the name of Franz Josef Gall. Gall developed a successful practice in Vienna and put on public lectures and surgical demonstrations that would later be banned for promoting immorality and atheism. After this he took his work to Paris and continued his research on the brain where he discovered that the two hemispheres were connected by fibers that crossed to opposite sides and confirmed the idea of contralateral function. He also argued that mental abilities of certain species correlated to the size and complexity of their brain, and also he argued that the convolutions formed the same patterns in a given species. The science consisted of five different principles the most important was the fifth that came to be known as the doctrine of the skull: because the skull corresponds roughly to the shape of the brain, the strength of various faculties can be inferred from the shape of the skull. This was the most important concept for phrenologists. After dealing with a few different specific cases phrenologists relied heavily on anecdotal evidence to support their theories. In order to make a reading phrenologists would feel people’s heads for in and out dents and when feeling they would diagnose certain amounts of a specific faculty some including: ideality, tune, hope, firmness, secretiveness, self-esteem, parental love, friendship, and so on. A company by the name of Fowler and Wells, Inc. was even established and people would pay to get their skulls read.

Another topic I found interesting over the span of the semester was women’s progress and achievements in psychology over time. Women in the early twenty-first century often faced much discrimination in the workplace and were unable to seek an education or a high end job. According to the periodic function, women were thought to be intellectually inferior to men, one reason being that they were intellectually incapacitated every month during menstruation. This theory led to the variability hypothesis: men had a greater degree of variability than women on a number of traits, including intelligence. These two ideas lead society to believe that the role of a woman was as a wife, mother, and essentially as a home maker. Women were not accepted into Ivy League schools, and in some cases they even created special colleges just for Women including Smith, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr. An obvious reason why I am so interested in the work of women is because I am a bit of a feminist and I love to see women working hard and exceeding the boundaries society has set for them. In almost any instance I love routing for the underdog and when they come out on top it can be inspiring. A few women who did just this include: Hollingsworth who disproved those ridiculous theories, Calkins, who became the first woman president of the APA of psychology and philosophy, and her work on memory and consciousness; Ladd-Franklin and her work on an evolutionary theory of color vision; Washburn, who did work in comparative psychology; Dorothea Dix and her prison reform movement; Gibson, winning the National Medal of Science for her work on the visual cliff/depth perception; and last Mamie Phipps and her doll studies were very interesting and inspiring. All in all women have made great contributions to the study of Psychology, we tend to be the majority studying in the field today, and there is much potential lying in the future.

Animal research is one last thing that always tends to entice me mainly because it is so foreign to humans. We tend to get in the mindset that we are dominant over all other species, but we do not understand the intellectual capacities of some animals. In some instances I believe humans want to always believe that animals are inferior to us and the idea that they portray such intelligence can scare them. There were many different experiments throughout the book that proved that animals do show intelligence a few including: Harvey Carr and his work on maze learning; Thorndike and trial and error work with cats in puzzle boxes/his law of effect: learning occurring through the creation of connections between situations and responses that are successful in those situations, connections strengthened with repetition; Kohler and his work with apes, especially Sultan, on insight learning; Pavlov’s work with dogs on conditioning, extinction, generalization, differentiation, and experimental neurosis; Watson and his many rat studies; Tolman research on rats in mazes to define latent learning, S-R connections, and reinforcements; and lastly, Skinner and his Skinner box to distinguish between classical and operant conditioning. Also another aspect that isn’t as enjoyable to read about includes the studies done on animals that may not seem ethical. These are always interesting to read about because they bring out new feelings within us a few being sympathy and outrage. The study done by Magendie did just this for me. In order to see the brains different connections and to form the Bell-Magendie Law he severed the spinal cords of dogs in different places to see what the outcome would be; what he found is that there is a distinction between the functions of the posterior and anterior root, the posterior affects sensation while the anterior affects the control of motor movements. It is crazy to think that researchers put science before the welfare of animals, but at the same time it depends what kind of research is being done and who it is benefiting. It also depends what kind of animal it is because for me it is more disheartening to read about experiments done on dogs than on rats, but that is just my own personal bias.

One day in class Professor MacLin called on me to answer a question. I was caught off guard and the spat out the first thing that came to my mind. After I finished my thought I concluded my statement with, “that might not be psychology related but…” and I was quickly disrupted by a long speech about how anything can be psychologically related, and this is so true. Out of everything we learned in this class, this I would say has been the most important. MacLin has taught me how to think more critically and more psychologically, I have learned how to break things down far beyond what they appear to be on the surface and when it comes down to it this is what I believe the founders of our science were doing. This method of thinking has helped me become more interested in the tiniest elements of other classes I have taken at UNI. It makes me see how you can turn any boring subject into something more. The history of psychology isn’t about learning about people’s mistakes and not repeating them. It is more so getting into the psychologists shoes and seeing why they did what they did and learning about the impact it has had on society. The history of psychology may be short, but the impact it has had on our society is huge.

Terms: Phrenology, Franz Josef Gall, contralateral function, convolutions, doctrine of the skull, anecdotal evidence, Fowler and Wells, Inc., periodic function, variability hypothesis, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Calkins, Ladd-Franklin, Washburn, Dorothea Dix, Hollingsworth, Gibson, Phipps, Carr, maze learning, Magendie Thorndike, trial and error, law of effect, repetition, Kohler, Sultan, insight learning, Pavlov, conditioning, extinction, generalization, differentiation, experimental neurosis, Watson, Tolman, latent learning, S-R Connections, reinforcements, Skinner, Skinner box, classical/operant conditioning , Bell-Magendie Law.

For my final assignment I chose to do a documentary I found on Netflix. The documentary was titled: History's Mysteries; Secret Societies. I chose this documentary because it looked very, very interesting, and I enjoyed the video we watched on Ethos that also dealt with Secret Societies.

This documentary went indepth into some of the most secret societies in our world today. It informed us of the more popular ones that are still in existance today, as well as some of the people involved in them. They started out by stating on this documentary that secret societies supposedly control the world, and there are only a few men who have all the power and wealth, and after watching this I could see where people would definitely believe that statement. Some of the secret society groups the named off were; Freemasons, Skull and Bones, Council on Foreign Relationships, Trilateral Commissions, and the Bilderbergs. Of all of these I've just listed, the most secretive of all is the Bilderbergs. There are hundres and hundreds of top level, very powerful people at the core of each and every one of these societies, and their goal is advancing the world government, currency, and army. These groups have various rituals and symbols that are not easily uncovered either. One of the speakers on the film labeled them the "Illumaniti" because thy'er all intertangled in one form or another.

They dated some of the first secret societies back as early as 2500 B.C. In the ancient world, the knowlegde they had would've empowered the people, and that is exactly what they didn't want. That is why these "secret socieities" were formed. Even some of the rituals they perform now still mimic the ones they performed in the ancient world. They even talked about various Illumanati symbols on the documentary as well; one being on our dollar bill! The symbol of the pyramid with the elevated eye, and also the most obvious symbol throughout history being a lighted tourch...illumaniti, illuminate, makes sense doesn't it? The most widely known symbol for this in the U.S. is the Statue of Liberty and her tourch, it doesn't signal freedom said an interviewee but it says "we're running the show here." I'm not one to believe conspiracy theories myself but what they're saying is very interesting and its possible to see how this could have taken place.

The Skull and Bones society was a society that they spent most of their time talking about on this documentary. This society is a well known one and had many powerful and wealthy individuals amongst it, including three former presidents! The Skull and Bones society was founded in 1832 by fifteen seniors at Yale University. The names of the individuals included in this society were published on a yearly basis until the 1960's. Their meeting place was labeled the Tomb and is located on Yale's campus, however what went on inside the Tomb was top secret even thought the members of the society wasn't so secret. It has been told that the initiations of this society were very strange and crazy, and they took place every April in the basement. Some of the more notable members include; William Taft, George Bush, George W. Bush, many senators and embassadors, CIA members, and Industrialists. As you can see many of these members were leaders of the American ruling class and spies for the government as well. Isn't it a big ironic that three of our presidents were memebers of a secret society? Not to mention that CIA members and senators were memebers as well. The Skull and Bones society funneled their members into positions of power and wealth, but they did it so secretly that nobody even realized it was happening.

The documentary then shifted gears to the trifecta of the Bilderberg Society, COuncil on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commissions. They said on the documentary that all three of these societies were intertwined because they all had the same leaders. Also, the head of the world bank and the head of the world trade operations, chancellor of Germany, and the Prime Minister of Britain were all part of these groups as well. Its a little coincidental that these wealthy and powerful men are part of a secret society. They also brought up the point on this documentary that when Reagan was being elected into office he said he wouldn't allow a Bush to be President, two months later he was shot...coincidence? I don't think this was a coicidence because the two Bush men were members of the Skull and Bones club, and they both eventually were elected president. Something was going on behind the sceenes and underground.

The Bildergerg society as I stated before was the most secretive society. They were also the most successful at implementing their policies into the nation and the world. Their agenda they discussed in their meetings soon became reality for the public. Their meetings were held every year, but they were heavily, heavily guarded, and very secretive! Some members of this powerful yet secretive group include; Henry Kissnger, Bill Clinton, Peter Jennings, David Rockefeller, and Tony Blair, among many other powerful and wealthy individuals. Some media members were allowed in on the meetings, but only under the strict circumstance that they would NEVER report on the meetings or the groups. They followed orders, one of the members owned many newspapers in Eurpoe, Canada, and the U.S. I foudn it interesting that they would let some media individuals attend the meeting, especially with it being so top-secret. Yet we have heard nothing more about this group, they really kept to their word.

At the end of this documentary there were a few quotes that I found to be very interesting. The first is; "few people can't control the world, well they can and they are getting away with it too." I found this quote to be interesting because many of us don't think about the fact that there might be those secret societies that are in fact controlling everything that happens in this world and we elect presidents and senators, embassadors, and prime ministers just as coverups or as an "outside" source to tell what to do. The second quote I found interesting was "we will all be living in a global version of Nazi Germany in a few short years." I found this to be kind of unsettling and interesting at the same time. If there are these secret societies that are controlling the world through only a few powerful people, then it will be similar to Nazi Germany if you think about it. Because Hitler and a few of his more powerful soldiers controlled all of Germany and tried taking over the world, maybe he was part of one of these secret societies they talked about and we just didn't know it.

Overall I found this documentary to be extremely intersting and very informative. I think the information presented in it was very eye opening and makes one question alot of things that have happened in the past, and also think hard about what is going to come. Its crazy to think that some of our nation's leaders were involved in these groups, it really makes you think about what really goes on behind closed doors and underground. Things happen that people wouldn't even dream of happening.

As this class comes to a close, there are three main topics I still find the most interesting, and found the most interesting when learning about each topic.

The first thing I found interesting was the “women’s sphere”, and how the growth opportunity for higher education from women was shortened and not equally available. Although it is was not new to learn that women were faced with these troubling opportunities, it was interesting to learn the reasons why many believed women should have these troubles. These ideas integrated from the idea that women were solely for being a wife and a mother, nothing else. From these ideas, women were socialized to believe that this was “their calling”, and they were meant for nothing else. They were also taught that having a higher education would cause physical health issues; that too much brain activity after puberty could damage the development of reproductive organs, leading to them to not be a mother. One specific idea, periodic function, believed that women were intellectually incapacitated every month during their menstrual cycle. Because there was no evidence to disprove, or prove, this idea, it was believed by many. I find this interesting because it was one way for men to prove that they are intellectually more capable then women because men do not go through a menstrual cycle. An evolutionary theory, variability hypothesis, believed that women were physically different from men, allowing men to be more intellectually capable. Darwin’s idea was that some individuals differed from each other, men having a greater degree of variability than women on a number of different traits, leading to higher intelligence in men. Again, I find this interesting because there was no evidence to disprove this idea, nor where there any studies produced to prove or disprove. It just goes to show that when something I believed by enough people, society is influenced and believes the sometimes unbelievable.

The second thing I found interesting was Henry Goddard and his Ellis Island Intelligence Test. Due to a law previously passed prohibiting mentally defective individuals from passing through Ellis Island, Henry Goddard traveled to the island to provide an elimination process. Goddard believed that “feeblemindedness” was a threat to society and needed to be addressed. However, Goddard believed that the offspring of these “feebleminded” people would hinder society as well, for they would pass their negative traits on, hindering society’s advancements. Due to these believes, Goddard formed a series of tests to monitor who entered the island and who was sent back home to Europe. This “selection process” had two steps, each concerning the intelligence of the individual. First, Goddard looked for those that held “feeblemindedness” characteristics. If spotted, these individuals would then be tested on their English. Because many of these individuals were immigrants, they knew little to no English and were deemed unfit for passage to America. I find this testing interesting because it seems utterly ridiculous now, though it made complete sense to everyone back in the early 1900s. This testing amazes me, for the fact that because someone looked “feebleminded”, they were not able to enter society may inherit ideas of racism and ideas that Adolph Hitler founded his army on, that a superior race was needed. This selection process makes me wonder how many intelligence people were turned away, and the possible opportunities they were not able to obtain due to their appearance. I also find this interesting because there are many stories that begin when the individual stepped on the boat from overseas with little to no money, yet ended their life successful due to the opportunities the United States offered them.

The third thing I found interesting was the Von Restorff Effect. Created by Hedwig Von Restorff, she discovered that if people learned a list of three-digit numbers in a series of nonsense syllables, the number sequence would almost always be recalled over the syllables. Meaning that items stand out less bring less of a chance of being remembered, opposed to an item that stands out greater. I find this interesting because I can relate to this, for I have an easy time remembering things that do not belong, or are strangely different from others. This phenomenon of memory has its disadvantages though, for if the item is too strange, the mind will concentrate on this one item, forgetting all the others surrounding it. I can also relate to this, for if the item is extreme, my mind only remembers that one item. However, with time, I can recall a few other items that caused the original item to be so extremely strange. I find this phenomenon most interesting because the brain is so interesting, and the ability it has to remember so much information amazes me. It’s also interesting because I can relate to this idea, and that many others can to, making it seem more realistic than other things we have learned about in this class.

The material I have learned in this class has advanced the way I think about psychology, and the world around me in many ways. I first remember walking into class, already having negative notations about the class because I am not a huge history fan. However, I have thoroughly enjoyed a majority of the topics we have discussed throughout the class, changing my opinion of the class. Not only do I enjoy the set up the hybrid class, I also have learned a lot than if I had attended a different class setting. I find that with each blog I learned more information about psychology that I did not know or did not know within such detail. Because of this, my views of history have changed, for there were many things I may have never learned without this class. From this, I have learned the "don't judge a book by it's cover" holds true even to a class required for my major. I have also learned that becoming knowledgeable in the history of psychology, and any topic, is important to understanding the present of the topic. I have learned that all history, not just major events, can impact an entire topic later. For example, Leta Hollingworth is not a popular name in psychology, but her dedication to the mentally handicapped has widely influenced today, and the way the mentally handicapped are assisted and treated in society. It is important to remember that even the smallest events now may have a much larger impact later. I have also learned that although things seem so simple and obvious know, they were not years and years ago, and needed to be discovered in order for them to be "common knowledge" now. For example, the idea of guillatin, that the brain is center for all consciousness, seems obvious to any one know. However, this idea had to be discovered in order for this to be known now. This holds true with many others things learned this semester, something I have obtained from this class this semester.

The material learned this semester has complemented almost every class I am taking this semester. First, the need to understand psychology's history has coincided with the need to understand the history of art. The feelings I have developed for the importance to understanding the history of psychology has complemented my need to learn the history of art for my Art Survey class. There have been things that have directly related between this classes, especially the psychological advancements before, during, and after war. War and its effects are a large reasoning for many of the pieces that have been produced in history, due to the psychological emotions the public, its participants, and on lookers have felt. This class also complements things I have learned in Biopscyhology, such as Phineas Gage and his accident to the Little Albert experiment. Both these topics, and many others, have been discussed in previous classes, though their history and beginnings were never discussed. From this class, I was able to fill in any gaps I had previous to this class, combining the information I have previous learned to information learned this semester. This class also complements my Applied Psychology class I was taking this semester as well. Things that I was learning in Applied Psychology, like Hugo Munsterberg and Army Alpha and Army Beta, coincided with this class. Between the two classes, I was able to recall what I had learned in this class when we learned about it in Applied Psych, or vise versa. This was very helpful when studying for tests for Applied and applying what I learned for blogs in this class.

Overall this class not only taught me the importance of psychology's history, but taught me the importance of giving any class a chance to change my outlook on the topic it produces.

Terms Used: women’s sphere, periodic function, variability hypothesis, Darwin, Henry Goddard, Ellis Island Intelligence Test, Von Restorff Effect, Hedwig Von Restorff, Leta Hollingworth, guillatin, Phineas Gage, Little Albert, Hugo Munsterberg, Army Alpha, Army Beta

Final
Before the semester began, this class was something I was dreading. The thought of taking a history class on psychology was something that sounded incredibly boring and dry to read from a textbook. However, once the class began I really found a good interest in it. Although I’ll admit I still found the text to be very dry, which was probably inevitable, there were quite a few things that I liked from just about every chapter. A couple of things I found most interesting were Phineas Gage and the speech center, Darwin’s contributions to psychology, and the cognitive learning section.

(Located in Chapter 3)
Although I’ve heard the story of Phineas Gage multiple times, the thought of it never ceases to amaze me. When I think of how long ago 1848 was, I don’t give a whole lot of thought to its contributions to modern science or really science at all. However, this story is something that became incredibly important to studies of the brain. Also, seeing as cerebral localization was even more supported after this case really lead further into the development and continuation of phrenology, a science that is relatively laughable in today’s contexts. This simple accident has really left a large dent in scientific concepts throughout time. Gage’s body also led to analysis post-mortem, resulting in more psychological evidence, which would later become apparent in the speech center.

Paul Broca, a French neurologist would be the first to discover motor aphasia, an inability to articulate ideas verbally, even though the vocal apparatus is intact and general intelligence is normal. Broca discovered this after attempting to treat a patient who had become incapacitated and brought to Broca for a sever case of gangrene. The strange thing about this man was that he was able to hear and understand very well, however, the only thing he could respond was “tan”. Post mortem autopsies done by Broca would reveal the aphasia.

I really find Gage and Broca’s stories and discoveries very interesting. The idea of a man surviving a pipe blasting through his head and living is interesting enough, but from a psychological perspective it’s even more fascinating to see how his personality was so dramatically changed and really see the full effect of how important the brain is to a person’s personality and behavior. In reaction to that, Broca’s aphasia also is an interesting happening of the brain and creates a realization of how important every part of the brain is and how specific it can be.

(Located in Chapter 5)
Another section that I rather enjoyed learning about was about Charles Darwin’s contributions to the field of psychology. Generally, when I think about Darwin, I think of evolution. However, I had never even contemplated how he could have impacted psychology. It was so interesting to read about the domino effect that Darwin had on other sciences after he released his theory of evolution. He even sparked a whole new way of thinking to American psychologist; functionalism was born. This domino effect would have psychologist re- evaluating all kinds of studies, including the need for consciousness, which, after Darwin, was said to serve the adaptive function of enabling individuals to assess a problem situation and solve it quickly. Darwin’s Descent of Man would also have quite an impact on psychology. The text discussed the idea that there was a continuity of mental processes between humans and other species. This interesting idea would create comparative psychology, a systematic study of similarities and differences among species. The individual variation from the book also led to studies of individual differences in psychology, which would condone the need for intelligence and personality measures and scales. I really think that I found this information interesting because it changed the way that I viewed an important historical figure. People discuss Darwin constantly, yet he is only associated with evolution and biological and anthropological science. This section made him relevant to a science that I personally identify with.

(Located in Chapter 11)
A third section that I was very interested in was Tolman’s idea of latent learning. Being an education major, anything that discusses the notion of learning is something that I generally take note of, simply in case I need the information in the future or to better understand something that I already know. However, I also found this section interesting due to how Tolman used his rats to assist him in his conclusion. The idea of reinforcement is nothing new to me, and as future teachers, we’re taught how important reinforcement is when getting kids to pay attention and learn. Tolman proposed the idea that it’s not the reinforcement that gives leeway to the learning but the reinforcement simply gives the subject more motivation to do the learning. The rats would learn the maze no matter what simply by experiencing it. However, the reinforcement would motivate the rats to complete it faster and with more accuracy and skill.

Another theory investigated by Tolman was the idea of cognitive maps. I also think this is an interesting idea because it gives a lot of credit to the rats and less to the reinforcement they are receiving. The rats were recording their own maps to the effect that the food was located in. It is just so interesting to me that Tolman could establish research that rats would create these maps.

All of these interesting sections from the book have been easily applied to my other classes. I’ve been able to more fully understand latent learning in my teaching classes as we discuss positive and negative reinforcement and learning/teaching techniques. I also took a psychology of personality class this semester and this class’s chapters really bounced back and forth off of the readings from that class as well. Recently we’ve discussed specific areas of the brain and briefly discussed the idea of both types of aphasia, something that I was aware of previously, thanks to this class. Lastly, and possibly most specific, I’ve taken quite a few anthropology classes which discuss Charles Darwin much of the time, however, this class really allowed me to see another part of what I’ve learned from those classes.

This class has definitely has changed the way I think about psychology. Previously I’ve just wanted to skip straight to the specifics of psychology, learn the facts and move on. I now have a much deeper understanding of where those facts come from and how they developed. This is really going to continue to help me in the future as I have more evidence to back up my statements and have a deeper reaction and understanding to problems that occur. I also enjoyed the videos that we were required to watch during this class. It gave me a deeper sense of how the world is changing and I will always remember and be waiting for those “Google goggles” to be tested and put to full use. The fact that were going through this technological evolution is something so interesting and very scary to think about. Yet, I’m glad that I was able to be a part of that discussion in class and it’s really given me a lot to think about.

Terms: Phineas Gage, Paul Broca, aphasia, cerebral localization, phrenology, Charles Darwin, comparative psychology, personality measures, individual differences, Descent of Man, functionalism, evolution, Tolman, cognitive maps, reinforcement, latent learning, technological evolution.

I will be writing my final assignment on the documentary we watched in class today about the boy in the bubble.
Although it was strictly for medical reasons that David was initially put into a germ-free bubble at birth, it became obvious (especially in hindsight) that once the initial plan to cure him from SCID had failed, it would be a battle of superiority between medical health and psychological health. David suffered psychologically from developmental issues, isolation, and lack of affection. Harlow's study on Rhesus monkeys found that although his monkeys depended on a "parent" made of wire for sustenance, they also depended on a plush "parent" to provide warmth and affection. Although David was provided with much attention, there was a lack of affection because he never felt a the physical touch of another person.
Another issue is that although he was given lots of attention, it was not necessarily for his own interests. Once the doctors realized that they would never be able to cure David, they used him as the world's first human guinea pig. These ulterior motives became obvious to David, which may have been the jumping off point of his depression. I think that the only person who truly provided David with proper emotional care was his psychologist, who treated his depression and anxiety with dream analysis and play therapy.

In class we came to a consensus that the ethical dilemma sprouted from the time the doctors made too many promises to the grieving parents, saying that if their next child has SCID, they will ensure that he doesn't come into contact with any germs. Of course, had their plan to immediately transplant bone marrow worked, and had that helped David develop an immune system, they would have become very famous and very wealthy...not to mention that they would have performed a miracle for that whole family. However, this is why doctors should also be trained as psychologists, because they enabled grieving parents to produce another child "risk free." Even if they would have eventually decided to take the risk and try to have another baby, a doctor or therapist should have advised the parents to delay trying for another child until after the grieving process was over. This emotional scarring can be seen when David's mother said she did not want to fall in love with her child like she did with the last one, in case he might die. They obviously were not in an emotional state to decide to make another baby if that's her reaction when she finds out her newborn baby has SCID.

One other thing that I found interesting, which says a lot about the way humans act in situations where they want to withdraw, is the fact that all three of David's primary medical doctors gave similar excuses for leaving. This deflected the blame from them, when they really should have been honest with the family and told them that they were sorry for getting their hopes up, but they failed. Either way, the doctors look like cowards to other people, but it is to treat their own cognitive dissonance that they made similar excuses about how they individually weren't competently providing David with the care that he deserved, as to convince themselves that they were honorably doing David a favor by abandoning him and moving on with their lives.

The important thing to take away from this is that if we don't learn from something bad, it was all done in vain. I think that this is why some of David's doctors used him as a research subject, because they were trying to do the best they could in a bad situation, but what we have learned is that doctors shouldn't be too optimistic when a patient's family is literally hanging on their every word in hopes that they save their loved one. David was a hero, and although his life was tragic, he did not live or die in vain.

Terms: Medical, Hindsight, SCID,Psychological, Developmental, Isolation, Affection, Sustenance, Attention, Touch, Human Guinea Pig, Depression, Emotional, Psychologist, Anxiety, Dream Analysis, Play Therapy, Ethical, Immune, Grieving, Therapist, Scarring, Withdraw, Deflected Blame, Cognitive Dissonance, Abandoning, Research Subject, Optimistic.

Documentary: Boy in the Bubble

I chose to watch the in-class documentary of Boy in the Bubble. This film was interesting and showed a number of different psychological concepts that we have learned about and discussed in this History and Systems of Psychology course. I had a lot of mixed feelings and thoughts about this documentary. On one hand I understood that once they decided to have another child their options were limited, but on the other hand the fact they decided to have the child, they should have been able to understand the consequences.

The story of David Phillip Vetter is an interesting and controversial tale. Some see his life as a bizarre and unethical experiment, while others view it as a magnificent contribution to science. David was the last of three born children in his family. He had one older sister, and an older brother who passed away of SCID before he was one year old. One of the first ethical problems I noticed in this film was when the doctors said they believed they could prevent another boy from dying of this disease. This was important because only boys are effected by SCID. The plan was to isolate David immediately after he was born into a bubble type enclosure. In this enclosure the doctors would perform the bone marrow transplant with his sister, which would likely cure the disease and save his life.

After David was born he was placed into the sterile chamber within 30 seconds. As it would later be referred to, the bubble was 5 feet by 3 feet. When the doctor prepared for the surgery, the medical team discovered that, David's sister was not a match and could not be used for the transplant. This was such a surprise to the doctors because David's brother would have been a match. Soon after this discovery the doctors realized they would need a miraculous innovation in order to cure David.

By the time David turned five his life was not only on display to the world, but it was ethically debated. In 1975 doctors met to discuss the ethics of behind David. Some argued that they should remove him from the bubble because it was not ethical to keep him in there and it was not a quality life for anyone.

On one occasion David poked holes in his bubble and at this point his main doctor, Dr. Wilson, decided to explain to David why he was in the bubble. I thought this was a good idea and was also ethical, because if he is living in the bubble he should at least know why. This sparked several psychological issues to arise. For instance, he became more introspective. Murphy, the child psychologist that dealt with David began a sort of play therapy, where David would imagine escaping the bubble.

The next psychological issue I noticed around this point was Davids fear of germs. Immediately after he was explained to about germs and how dangerous they were to him he had an immense fear for them. I believe the fear established in him was almost a way to diminish any chance for him to leave the bubble. I know I would not want to risk leaving the bubble if I would suffer as horribly as he would from germs.

The majority of the psychological problems began when all three of David's primary care physicians left for their own reasons. They all seemed to explain that they felt they could no longer contribute to David. I understand that everyone reaches that point where they feel they cannot do anymore and at that point it seems like it would be a good time to step back and let new people come in and add new ideas to the situation. After this he wanted to be left alone for the majority of the time, he had intense and uncontrollable anxieties, mental anguish, he felt everyone was deserting him, and he was having nightmares. All of these stressful things would likely cause most people to suffer from some sort of depression.

The next doctor to enter young David's life was Dr. Sheerar. He saw David as a failed experiment and wanted to put an end to it by removing David from the bubble and letting nature take its course. He wanted the parents to make a decision and he believed David would deteriorate as long as he was in the bubble. A research team in Boston had found a way to successfully transplant incompatible bone marrow. This meant that David's sister could be the donor. This "bleep of hope" gave David a chance to live a normal life. When David was 12 they performed the first bone marrow transfusion. On February 7th, 1984 David was removed from the tube. After this his condition deteriorated. He went into a coma and his mother was finally aloud to touch him without gloves for the first and last time.

David's life shows a number of different things. First, it shows that people have been conditioned to accept what doctors and other highly educated people have to say. The argument of ethics was also quite interesting to me. I was surprised that people actually just wanted him removed from the bubble even though they knew it was certain death. I believe that David's life was not a failed experiment, but successful life. Who are we to say that David was not given a proper life? Just because his life was different does not mean that it was any less enjoyable.

Terms: ethics, SCID, introspective, play therapy, anxiety, depression, mental anguish, and, conditioned.

I chose to talk about the three things that I enjoyed about the class. I find it hard to narrow done the things that I enjoyed to just three because of all the new information that I retained throughout the semester. I started to think about what i could talk about as my favorite things from this class, and it really came down to the topical blogs that I wrote on Thursdays. I learned so much from researching the different pyschologists. I not only got a better look at what their research was about, but I also got to see who these people were in there individual lifes. I found it fasinating when I was doing the topical blogs that most of them came to what they did in life by the events that they went through early in each of their lifes. From the schooling that they were forced into by their parents or by a sibling dying early in their lifes. When I think about the most influencial people from the book I think about Watson, Freud, and Throndike. The list goes on and on. Who I want to talk about in this blog is the people that I learned most about from the research that I did on them. Not nessacarily the person that was the most famous, but the person who had the most interesting personal life that the book never talked about. The first person that I thought was interesting to read about was Pavlov. The man was a genious and born into a really huge family. The second person that I would like to talk about would be Watson. He was a very smart man, but when it came to his personal life, it was a littel sketchy. The third person that I liked to read about throughout the book was Darwin. He was a man of science, but not from the very beggining. If I had not read this book, and then done the research on him, I would still have bias towards him.

The first person that was interesting was Pavlov. He was famous for his experiments for his work with dogs. The father of operant conditioning which lead to many other influencial people such as bf skinner. The thign that I really appreciated about Pavlov was his rough childhood that he went through. Pavlov was born into a family of eleven, which seven of them died in childhood. His father was a priest and his mother was a daughter of a priest. Pavlov was forced into the seminary at a early age. He left because he did not like the church because of a science class that he took. I believe it is the life experiences like this that shape a persons life. If Pavlov had not taken that class then I feel the world would have missed out on a great psychlogist. His choice in going to the university and then furthering his education by going to get his graduate degree lead to the discovery of classical conditioning. Pavlov and his work became so prominant in the world of psychology that you see it any psychology program at a university. Like I said earlier, I like to do the extra research on the people that we read about in the chapter becasue this is information that you would not be able to read about otherwise. I like Pavlov because of the diversity that he went through as a young person.

The second person that I found really interesting to read about in this book was Watson. He was a behaviorist that had many famous experiments such as the rat maze. Through that rat maze experiment Watson found out that rats learn through trail and error. Further clarifying that throndike was right in his experiments. What I liked about Watson the most was his personal life. At the first university that he was at he fell in love with one of the students. The university that he was at did not approve of the action so he and his wife went to a different towm where watson got a new job. At that university watson fell in love with one of his graduate students and divorced his wife to marry her. The new wife later died and watson went into depression. He quit his job as a professor and became a very successful man in the advertising industry. This by far is one of the ost interesting people that I read about in this book. If you look about his life from the outside you see that this mans life is really messed up. The thing that I loved about him was that he was successful in anything that he did. It was as if a divine power touched him on the shoulder and said "you will be great in life". Whehter he was a professor who came up with behaviorism to a advertising extrodinar, the man made it work. When I was doing my research on him I was really impressed with who he was as a professor, but I did not approve of his social life. However, no matter how messed up his personal life was he was really good at anything that he did.

The third person that I liked to read about during this book was Darwin. When we first stated the book it seemed to be a little disinteresting becuse we had not hit any major names, so I was glad when we got to the section on Darwin. Going into the chapter I had the notion that Darwin was the father of evolution and hated religion. I was totally wrong after reading the book, and even more wrong after I did my continued research on him. Turns out that Darwin was forced to be either a doctor or a member of the church. He was reccommended by someone in the church to go on a trip to the cape of africa. His father let him do so because darwin was interested and his fahter saw it as an only oppurtunity to let his son go. On his journey he took samples of the different places he stopped. It was never in his intial intention to disprove religion or find the theory of evolution. He was just bored on the ship and wanted to collect data whenever the ship docked into port. This was interesting to me becasue every science book that I had read up to this point told me that Darwin was set on fidning the theory of evolution when he went to the galapolos islands. When I went into research about who Darwin was as a family man I became even more stunned and impressed with who he was. Turns out that darwin was very close with his family and made more time with his children than he did with his work. I found this to be very interesting ot read about becasue I had pictured darwin as a scroge type person that was stuck up and only cared for himself. Another thign that I found interesting when reading about darwin was the fact that he was reluctant to even submot his findings because he was worried about what the church would think of him. Like I had said earlier, I thought that it was darwins sole purpose in life to disprove religion. This was information that I foudn in my research that I did not find in the book, so I am glad that I did my topical blog on Darwin that particular thursday.

I think that the information that I have learned in this class has changed my views in psychology in a couple ways. I would say that it changed my thinking in psychology form the standpoint that I gained a deeper knowledge of the truth of each experiment and psychologist. Before this class I had only the breifest introduction of the different psychologists and the experiments that they were famous for, so it was interesting and changing to read about the truth about their experiments and who they were. An example that I can think of would have to be about the person taht I just talked about. Darwin was a person that I had the breif introduction on and the wrong opinion. The subject of evolution is topic that is very touchy, and I had the notion that Darwin was the killer of religion. Turns out he was the exact opposite and my opinion on him was completely wrong. This is the type of information that I learned from this course that was benefiacial and gave me a better understanding of the history of psychology. Another thing that I wanted to talk about that I found out through reading the book and doing these blogs was the fact that psychology is so young. We learned about maybe 125 years of psychology, but in the life time spand of things that is relatively young. The peolpe that I have read about in this chapter build off each other in such a way that they made psychology better. They each took the ideas off the last guy to come up with their own theories and then the different brachches of psychology. If I learned anything from this book/class is that we learn from the people before us. Now it is time to learn from the people before me to form my own ideas and theories.

The stuff that we learned about in this class built off the information that I had learned about in introduction to psychology. I think that introduction to psychology was such a brief intorduction that I was given that wrong or disstorted views on many of the psychologists in our field. If anything this class helped to clarify the wrongs that I learned about the psychologists in that intro class. Also I was introduced to many more psychologists. I think that the blog assignments are such a good idea because the book is not that exciting to begin with, so it is easy to answer questions on the topics that we feel are inportant to us. Whereas intro we were forced to learn about the psychologists that were presented to us. I liked the depth of information that I recieved ffrom the class because the detail that I recieved was far more indepth than any other class that I have taken here at UNI.

Terms: watson, pavlov, darwin, evolution, conditoning, behaviorism, watson/carr maze, galapolos islands, reinforcement, bf skinner, operant conditioning,

BR

This class was definitely one of my favorites, even though I wasn’t too excited about having to talk in class if my name was called. I enjoyed how this class was set up and I enjoyed the conversations that we talked about in class and how there was no restrictions. I felt like I could blog about what I was really interested in as well as whatever came to my mind and I also thoroughly enjoyed that. The three most interesting topics from this class that stuck with me all semester were Sugata Mitra’s Build a School in the Cloud documentary, Phineas Gage, and the Ethos documentary. All three of these sparked my interest as well as got me thinking.

The Build a School in the Cloud documentary was my favorite thing this whole semester because I think Sugata made some interesting discoveries as well as he pretty much just incorporated what has been said by educational psychologists throughout history about how children learn best. He focused on how education, yes is important but the children need to be having more input in what they learn and how they are retaining the information. Schools now should be more of a place to gather and allow children to learn more on their own, and have the teacher more as a bystander or a resource when needed. Teachers should run the show less, and allow kids to explore on their own more to see what knowledge they can obtain on their own, as well with working with each other to progress. I think technology can definitely contribute to education and the workforce significantly and that it will continue to progress more in the future. I think in our education systems we need to make technology more accessible and encourage it more; children are explorers and want to learn, but I think they should teach themselves more than go off a structured curriculum. I think that the structure of learning described in the video would be significant because it could allow for children to learn anywhere, not just at home or in school. This could be an important aspect in the sense that they wouldn’t just “shut off” their brain after leaving school and they could develop questions or curiosity more on their own while away from school. I would definitely agree with Mitra in the fact that he states teachers should just be there to raise the questions in a broad manner, and allow the children to discover the answers and the reasoning behind getting those answers. I don’t think society today gives kids enough credit to learn on their own if given the right resources or technology; this is where we need to change in order to progress to help prepare for the future. His idea of the school of the clouds is a neat idea and I think it’s a really interesting idea that could be significant if followed through. This video just opened my eyes and made me realize that worldwide children can all learn information above their level but it might not be in the same subjects. I don’t believe teachers should have to have a certain curriculum, I think it constricts there imagination to much. The U.S. is always worried about our numbers on education compared to other countries; well i think if we allowed children to explore more and be taught about things they are interested in it would definitely help in the long run with education. This video made me like this class more because Dr. MacLin, you are there just to spark the questions and then you let us take over and you don’t stop us if we get off topic. I enjoy this a lot more then sitting in class and writing down notes and not caring about what I’m learning.

The second thing I found really interesting from this semester was the topic about Phineas Gage. This semester wasn’t the first time I have ever heard of Phineas, but History and Systems was the first psychology class I have taken where we actually learned about his background and what significance his injury had on the field. I’ve always enjoyed learning about him and his crazy story; it never seems to amaze me. Phineas was a railroad worker and an explosion happened and a railroad rod when flying up into his skull. He survived and was up and walking around after the accident. I find it astonishing how he only lost consciousness just for a little bit then walked to the doctors office like nothing had happened. The most interesting part about his case, especially back then, was how this accident completely altered his personality. He used to be energetic and respected before his injury, however; after the damage to his left frontal cortex his personality and behavior were altered. He became mean, irresponsible, stubborn, and an embarrassment. It’s interesting how he survived without having any antibiotics to help treat infection and keep the wound clean. It’s also surprising how he recovered so quickly and could live independently, but with the limit of not being able to work. Phineas Gage’s brain injury led John Harlow to be able to do research on him though and help learn more about the brain and what areas affect us in a psychological manner. His case helped doctors to learn which part of the brain affects one’s personality. This would be a huge discovery back in the day and I find it interesting because without accidents happening like this, I wonder how far back we would be in what we have discovered or what we know about psychology and the brain. This also made me think how miracles can happen and how our bodies can have a really weird way or working or blocking off pain.

The third interesting thing I enjoyed learning about this semester is the Ethos documentary we had to watch on one of our snow days. I am always one to speak my mind when it comes to topics about the government; especially if it’s about conspiracies. This video brought information about the government that I didn’t know to my attention and that’s why I enjoyed it so much. I have always believed the government is behind some pretty eerie stuff that obviously isn’t revealed to the public unless it somehow gets leaked. I had no idea that we were pretty much being ran by a couple guys in a bank, The Federal Reserve, as well as big corporations having such big influences on important political decisions. It’s crazy how much influence they have over the government and us; the citizens. Listening to that part of the documentary got me thinking about our freedoms we supposedly have. I personally don’t think we are free. The definition of freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. I don’t believe we can speak freely or express our opinions without censorship, but odd enough our first amendment states that we can. The Pledge of Allegiance is not allowed to be said in a lot of schools now because the word God is in it and some people don’t believe in God, why is it that those individuals who don’t believe can’t just have the option of not reciting it? Today, I doubt most elementary children in America know the Pledge of Allegiance, all because it’s not seen as important enough to our government to allow us to have our freedom of speech in which we should be able to choose to recite it in school if we want to. Church and state are supposed to be separate but yet if a Muslim wants to wear a wrap on their heads/face it is allowed as well as if they want to practice their religious pray throughout the day they can (I’m not racist I’m just stating a fact). I don’t understand how this is allowed but the Pledge of Allegiance is not said in every school anymore or we don’t have the option for it. Another instance is the push for laws to ban guns, which would be violating another one of our “freedoms.” Yes, we have a military and the police force to protect the people but yet again they are owned by the government and corporation money, so if we don’t have the right to bear arms how can the American people protect themselves from the government if we needed to? This is another example how the government wants to cripple us from our rights and have more power over us. Other examples include: being wiretapped without knowing, watched with surveillance cameras, and withheld from our rights in some situations. It’s wrong and it makes me believe that we only have these amendments to make us think our government is allowing us to live in the land of the free, “freely.” Amendments in my opinion are just there to put our minds at ease and give false comfort to the American people.

This class has made me think about psychology more in depth. It also allows me to know the history of where all the theories that are being talked about in my other classes, which makes it easier to understand how it evolved to what it is today. I love that this class was in accordance with all my other classes, because it helped me to be able to contribute to the conversation in this class and in my other ones. If I didn’t have to take this class I think my other classes would’ve been more challenging with all the theories we learn about as well as all the theorists. In conclusion I really enjoyed this class. I love how it was taught and that it was up to us in what we wanted to take away from it and it wasn’t forced on us. I felt like I could be open in this class with my thoughts and my blogs. I wish all my other classes were set up like this one! Great class!!

Terms: Sugata Mitra, educational psychology, Ethos Documentary, Build a School in the Cloud Documentary, Phineas Gage, John Harlow, personality, corporations, government, brain injury, consciousness, human behavior

When I came into this class I was really dreading the thought of having to go through another history class. The reason I say this is because I would talk to other people who have taken history and systems of psychology and they just had this fear of this class because they had to memorize dates, names, events etc. This insight into a class I had to take was petrifying because of how much knowledge they were supposed to retain. This was the complete opposite of the class I am currently writing a final for. This class was not what I expected and that is what I truly enjoyed about it. I feel like if you can get excited about something you have learned and choose what you want to learn and what you really don’t want to learn it is much better for retention. I’m sure if you asked someone in the previous classes that weren’t taught this way what they retained they may just give you a blank stare. I didn’t retain everything in class, but it wasn’t expected of me and that is why I really enjoyed taking this class- because I won’t give you a lecture on the history and systems of psychology, but I also won’t just give you a blank stare. These are the things that made this class enjoyable and educational beyond the other sections that were being taught this spring.

The first thing that I found very interesting was very recent and made me want to learn more about it because it was just fascinating where the direction of the study of the human mind is going in the future. One of my favorite topics was the video we watched the class previous to the final day. I remember watching a video off of a projector but the sound didn’t work so everyone had to be really quiet in order to hear it off of the laptop. The video part I just found incredible was how the researchers had shown a monkey how to play a type of videogame by making one circle come into contact with the other circle and then it would beep and move to a different spot. The way the monkey controlled the dot was by a robotic arm that would move the circle, best guess was just positive reinforcement taught this monkey how to do this and now he just does it when he is in the chair. The part that gets me interested is how they hooked the monkey up to a brainwave scanner and recorded his brainwaves when he did certain movements, therefore certain movements would produce different types of brain waves. From here they made a computer program that would read the brain waves and decipher what type of movement the monkey was thinking about doing with his hands on the joy stick.
Eventually they hooked the monkey up to the computer and disabled the joy stick and let him play the game. For a while there the monkey was still using the joy stick when in fact he was just having his brain waves deciphered and shown the actions on the monitor. Eventually the monkey just stopped playing with the joy stick and just played the game with his mind.

I found this fascinating because of where we could go in the future with this kind of technology. The way that I thought about this was how people could eventually stop making a user error and really help to save lives and keep our world safer with this kind of technology. An example that I thought of was how people drive cars and if you are about to get into an accident you always know what you should have done in the situation but you always froze up and your body didn’t stop the event from occurring. The way I see it, if your mind is faster than your movements, then this kind of technology could really reduce accidents that happen in our society.

The second topic that I found really interesting I actually saw in class and went out and found other resources by myself. The topic was on sleeping, how it relates to psychology, and how sleep has a function. This topic was also from the video we watched in class and that video showed a rat running a maze with a thing on his head to record brain wave patterns from different things he would do in the maze. Then, these brain waves were color coded by where he would be at in the maze. The part where it gets really interesting is when the rat goes to sleep. When the rat goes to sleep and isn’t in REM sleep he is having bits and pieces of the maze in his head that are matching up but they aren’t quite fluid yet, so it seems like he is basically just putting them together. Then, once the rat goes into REM sleep he has exact patterns of his running the maze as he did when he was awake. So technically what we are seeing is what the rat is dreaming about. With this information it is clear that lower level intelligence species do dream and they use it just like us to solve problems. With the rat he was figuring out ways to solve the problem out of REM sleep and then when he went into REM sleep he was testing out his hypothesis.

The second part of this topic is one that I went out and looked at by myself. I was browsing around Netflix and found a documentary on sleep and psychology. The video was interesting but then started to relate to the rat story more and more but tested through humans. A researcher would take college students and have them play a video game where the person was skiing down a hill and they had to move their bodies on a platform to move the skier in the direction they wanted. The person would then go to sleep and would have brain wave scanners attached to them. The person would actually dream about the new game they were playing and would typically be figuring out ways to do better in the game. What was truly amazing was mostly all of the people that would wake up the next day would go play the game and would do significantly better than he first time they played it the night before. What this means to me is that with proper sleep you can take time to think out your problems and solve them easier. An example that hit home for this with me was people who stay up nearly all night to do finals studying. The idea is that if you get enough sleep you should be able to retain the information better because you’ll be working the problems out in your sleep whether you like it or not. The reason this was an example for me was because I was doing very well in one of my psychology classes and had an A- in the class and if I could get a 90% on the final test I could raise my grade to a solid A. What ended up happening was I stayed up all night and then went to the final exhausted and got an 87% because I didn’t get enough sleep and made stupid mistakes. This is one way this study will help me in the future.

The final topic that I found the most interesting from taking this class would have to be the video we watched on the new type of schooling we should be looking into. This was a snow day assignment and I was dreading having to do anything, but this video turned out to be very interesting and made it seem like no work whatsoever. The video basically covered how people don’t want to be forced to learn, they want to want to learn. From what we have noticed, people are a curious species and if left alone to be curious about things that stimulate them they will learn a lot. This was greatly looked at when comparing the third world children who were teaching themselves English in order to learn about chemistry because they were excited about it. A contrast to this would be asking a criminology student if they want to learn about Mozart, or a music major if they wanted to learn about Merton’s Strain Theory. It just doesn’t make sense to have people learn about things that they don’t want to, it just won’t be effective. So the major point that I liked at the end is how, as humans, we have learned to adapt throughout history for things that work better and technologies that are more productive, so the major question is why isn’t our educational system on the same type of track as all of our other industry models? This is another reason why I liked this class and I felt like it just worked well was because you allowed us to do our own thing and learn about what we wanted to learn about. I felt that this was more successful than forcing us to do something we are going to fight you on every step of the way. A side note to this topic was how I noticed that every one of my topics was a different type of video we had seen in class. This may seem out of place, but, from what I have learned through a study by Chris Caldeira was that film clips help people learn and retain information longer than people who use traditional types of learning. Maybe this is why those are the things that stick out the most in my mind of this class.

The material I have learned in this class has changed the way I think about psychology and the world I currently occupy is that change is inevitable. When we look back at the history in our book and see all these different instances of thoughts and disagreements we tend to notice how they look odd to us now and why they weren’t easily fixed right there on the spot; an example would be women’s rights and the rights of minorities. This is going to happen to us also, eventually things will change and everything we knew will be radically altered into something that is going to be, to the next generation, the simplest and most logical outcome of the problem. This class has helped me to understand and accept that change is necessary for our society to evolve.

The way that this class has complemented other classes I am taking at UNI is that all the other classes have elements of psychology in them. If you honestly take any class that you are enrolled in you can turn it into a behaviorism class or a class on evolution of some species etc. The one good example I can think of is the drugs, crime, and society class that I am in right now. One approach that has been used was a deterrence theory that in which if you make the consequences for the crime too risky for an individual then they won’t commit the crime and this will show deterrence to the possible crime. You can literally turn this whole thing into behaviorism and show that there was an antecedent, a behavior, and a consequence. What the criminology side is trying to do is to eliminate that behavior by making the negative consequence outweigh the positive one. This is just one way in which this class has helped me to make relations to my other classes through the history of psychology.

Terms, Concepts, Names: psychology, retention, positive reinforcement, brain wave, REM sleep, intelligence, species, dreams, Mozart, Merton’s Strain Theory, educational system, Chris Caldeira, women’s rights, rights of minorities, deterrence theory, behaviorism, antecedent, behavior, consequences, history of psychology.

Final Assignment

At the beginning of this class, I wasn’t too excited. I have always found history interesting but dates were never my thing. I usually have a hard time retaining what I have learned in my previous history classes and I typically hate reading any text book no matter the subject. This class was surprisingly different. From day one, I was relieved to learn that we would not be required to learn dates, that this was what not the point of the class. I was still leery about having to reading every chapter. I was for sure the class was doomed after that. Yet again, I happy pleasantly surprised. I really liked reading this book. Not only did I find the material interesting, the writing style was easy to read. This class always kept me interested. I would constantly find myself stopping mid-chapter to search more on a topic while reading. I wanted to know more and I took the effort to research more than what was expected for the Thursday blog. The three topics I found most interesting this semester were Goddard and his intelligence testing, Darwin’s part in psychology and behaviorism but specifically, Thorndike.

I found Henry Goddard and his intelligence testing very interesting and is a topic I have learned in other classes. Goddard used Benet’s intelligence test to his advantage. He translated it to English and had immigrants who travelled through Ellis Island take this test. Benet originally had created this test to distribute to children who grew up on a farm and were moving to the cities. Bennett created this test specifically for children and it was not intended for adults. Benet did not consider the score from the test to be a number that established a person or that could not be change. Goddard used the test for the exact opposite. Benet believed that once you took the test and received a score, that score defined you and the score could not be improved. When Goddard uses this test, it was also very culturally based using American money and American trivia. If you were an immigrant that was not familiar with American customs, you were likely to score low on the intelligence test, deemed “feebleminded” and sent back to your country. Hundreds of immigrants were sent away from Ellis Island. I found this topic so interesting because you never know who Goddard and his test sent away. The test was skewed in favor of those from certain countries and many from other countries were sent away. I also find the intelligence test interesting because it is a test that is widely known and is still used today. Along with the typical IQ test, Benet’s intelligence test paved the way for all standardized testing like the ACTs, SATs and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Another reason Goddard and his use of the intelligence testing was interesting to me is because it was the start of Eugenics in America.

I was surprised to read that studying evolution wasn’t what brought Darwin to the islands. I was always under the impression that studying evolution was Darwin’s intent when traveling to the island but that is not the case. Darwin just stumbled on the idea while he was examining the animals of the islands. "When on board HMS Beagle as a naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species - that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers." Charles Darwin, 1859. Charles Darwin traveled to the Galapagos Islands on the HMS Beagle. The ship spent three years sailing the coasts of South America. During the voyage, Darwin spent his him on land collecting fossils and examining animals. Once on Galapagos Islands, Darwin did the same but stated to notice that there was something different about the birds. Darwin noticed that depending on what island a certain bird inhabited, the beaks would differ. The different type of beak depended on how the birds of that island received food. It was not until Darwin left the islands that he formed the theory of evolution. Darwin returned to the islands years later but was surprised to see that it was not the same. Because of weather change, he was not able to collect the data he was hoping for. His theory of evolution led him to natural selection. Natural selection refers to the survival of the species that can live long enough to reproduce a continue their genes. I would not have expected to hind Darwin in a history of psychology book. I have learned about him numerous times but in my biology classes. This related to psychology because animals and humans are learning to adapt both mentally and physically to their environment. I was interesting to learn about Darwin from a psychologists perspective.

Edward Thorndike was interested in animal intelligence. He is best known for testing cats in his puzzle box. The puzzle box started out as old wooden crates that he would find in alleys. He would then build levers and pullies that would open the door to the box. Thorndike would put a cat in the box and put a plate of food outside said box for the cat as reinforcement. The cat would have to use trial and error in order to escape the box. Thorndike hypothesized that the cat would eventually get faster at escaping the box after multiple trails. The way to measure this is called methodological construct. Eventually, this came to be known as the Law of Effect. The Law of stated that any behavior that is followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated, and any behavior followed by unpleasant consequences is likely to be stopped. This is similar to the foundation of behavior modification—reinforcement and punishment. Thorndike also believed that behaviors were stamped in and stamped out. Behaviors that are stamped in are the ones that helped the cat escape and those that were stamped out were not effective in the escape. This experiment was used to test leaning behaviors. He concluded that animals can learn by trial and error and with reward and punishment just as humans can. This stuck out because it related to my Behavior Modifications class. During my Behavior Modifications class, we learned a lot about changing and manipulating behavior. We touched on the history a little bit but I liked going into more depth with it. I like Thorndike specifically because the animals he used in his experiments were not harmed.

This class has changed the way I think because I look for the psychology in history now. Like I said in a previous chapter, I had no idea that you could relate Darwin and his findings to psychology. Because of this realization, I try to find how other important events in history relate to psychology as well. It has also given me a new perspective on how I have perceived history in the past. We were always taught that we learn history so we don’t repeat the past. This is true but it is more important to learn our history so we can learn from the past and why it happened the way it did.

My three classes: History and Systems, Behavior Modifications and Human Differences went hand in hand all semester. This made the material more reinforcing because it was explained from different perspectives. No matter how many times I hear the same topic, it was still interesting and beneficial because new information was always added.

TERMS: Goddard, Benet, Intelligence testing, standardize testing, Ellis Island, Darwin, Galapagos Islands, Natural selection, HMS Beagle, Thorndike, animal intelligence, puzzle box, trial and error, methodological construct, Law of Effect, behavior consequences, reinforcement, punishment, stamped in, stamped out

I really enjoyed learning more about Darwin and Darwinism. In other psychology classes, I feel like he is never mentioned or discussed. I think I learned more about him in science classes when we discussed the theory of natural selection. I thought it was interesting that all of his life, he was considered an average student, because I am an average student too. I do not believe brilliance can be measured by assigned tasks and other people grading you based on assignments they have picked out. I also believe that one only retains what they find interesting or what comes to them right away. It’s comforting to know that one can still be successful in life even if they aren’t the best as school. The book also included some of his own words and quotes from his writing, which I thought felt more personal, like I was getting to know him in a way.

One of the most interesting parts of what the book had to say about Darwin was the section on the voyage of the Beagle. He lived on the boat for five years, which I could barely imagine. I feel like he had a rare opportunity to be the only one to collect data all around the continent of South America, especially at that time period, when technology was not as advanced as it is today. It was also interesting that he accomplished so much when he was sick the entire trip. Another thing that got to me was that the original goal was to study geology and debate the idea of catastrophism. Charles Lyell had previously debated it saying that geological changes occur slowly, and there are many forces at work to make it so, which was eventually titled uniformitarianism. I think the turning point for Darwin was when he discovered a layer of coral and seashells above sea level, supporting what Lyell had put into theory. He concluded that the world was much older than everyone believed, and supported Lyellian geology. The Galapagos Islands also helped him in his research when he noticed different kinds of Finches on different islands. I thought it was sad that he waited twenty years to publish his work due to the fear of being judged.

Another person I thought was interesting was Gustav Fechner. His main focus was the mind-body problem. I thought a small interesting fact about him was that he earned an M.D. and never practiced medicine. It was also cool that he knew so many languages and earned a living using those skills so he could have time to do what he wanted, which was to lecture in math and physics. However, his main contribution was his research with afterimages. It was sad to me that he lost his sight during these experiments, but I was happy to see that he eventually got it back. When I was little I used to stare at the light and wonder why there were little colored lights that I saw afterward. It was interesting to know that someone had studied this.

A last thing I liked reading about was the women psychologists who were on the scene before women became more accepted in education and the workplace. It is disheartening to know that these women were never truly considered students, but mere guests of the university. Mary Whiton-Calkins had the most written about her in that section. She came off to me as a true woman genius of her time, and it is a shame that Harvard never truly recognized her degree. I enjoyed learning about her studies with paired-associate learning. The method she used was seriously intriguing—the color and number patterns. Christine Ladd-Franklin was my favorite because the book told me she was the only one who was truly outspoken.

What I’ve learned in class is that history can do more than help us to not repeat our mistakes. People sometimes ignore the past on purpose. The most important reason we study history is so we can truly understand the present. If you say you are best friends with a person and know nothing about them, how can that be true? If we look at the events leading up until now, we can more understand how we got to this point as a society—how we’ve advanced, how we’ve stepped back. It’s pretty interesting to see that. I have learned a lot about different people and concepts in this class that have been elaborated for me in other classes. More or less, they were reinforced for me. There were also a lot of concepts that I had no idea that background on, but just the definition. I really enjoyed what I learned in this class, and it was interesting to see how psychology and history tie together.

Terms: Darwin, Darwinism, psychology, theory of natural selection, voyage of the Beagle, catastrophism, Charles Lyell, uniformitarianism, theory, Lyellian geology, Galapagos Islands, research, Gustav Fechner, mind-body problem, afterimages, psychologists, Mary Whiton-Calkins, studies, paired-associate learning, Christine Ladd-Franklin

Documentary: Bubble Boy
What a video to end the class with, what an emotional video. They really pushed the ethical boundaries with the story of a boy who was never allowed to leave his bubble. I think that to start I should do a short explanation of what the documentary was about. The documentary was about a boy named David who was born without an active immune system. This means that even the slightest cold could kill him because he body didn’t have the means to fight off any virus or bacteria. This meant that David would have to live his life in complete isolation within a completely sealed bubble (which is where he got the name “bubble boy”). People were successful in keeping him alive for 12 years up until he received a bone marrow transplant that ended up killing him quite quickly. The bone marrow contained a dormant virus that took over David’s body and ended his life. At this time was also the first time that he was completely free of isolation.

Now that the short summary is out of the way, I can address some of the ethical issues and psychological problems associated with this whole situation. First off I would like to think that this whole situation could have not happened with effective counseling. The risks for this baby to possibly be born with SCID were too high and I personally think that much could have been done to get the parents to realize the extremely depressing road ahead of them. During class I imagined what some of the different psychological theories would have said prior to this child being put captive in this bubble. For the most part, every single one of them would have thought of some sort of developmental issues. For instance, a developmental Freudian would have said something about the child not having the opportunity to fit the Oedipus complex. The child never had contact with his mother and therefore would have had a difficult time bonding with her. A Freudian would have probably also had something to say with the developmental issues with missing out on some of the vital growth stages such as not having proper growth through the oral psychosexual stage. Even though David had toys to play with within his bubble, he didn’t get the chance to explore new objects with his mouth and that could have had a hindrance within his growth.
I think another famous psychological way of thinking that would have a problem with this whole situation would be Jean Piaget. Piaget studied object permanence and perception with children. I’d imagine that David would have learned object permanence somewhat comparable to other children of his age but one thing he did have trouble with was realizing objects outside of his bubble were three dimensional. This is similar to object consistency in the sense that the child was having trouble realizing that seeing things and they existing outside of his world were very different. Imagine having to live in your house all of your life and you never left. Then somebody told you that the trains you saw on tv were not like those in real life. (Say that you had only seen Thomas the tank engine) People told you that this object didn’t have a face and wasn’t a living thing. You would have a hard time understanding this.
This lack of understanding might be in part to not having the capacity of different schemas to manipulate information with. A schema is a thought pattern or mental structure that we use to code and comprehend information. David would have had limited schemas due to his lack of experience in the world. Piaget would also be somewhat responsible for this idea and could see future problems in David’s growth.

I really do wonder what some of the other psychologists would have said such as Ivan Pavlov and his theories of conditioning. What would this kid have been conditioned to that would cause him much trouble within his life if he ever was released from the bubble for good? I’d imagine he would have too much of a cultural shock. He probably wouldn’t understand normal social interactions because his versions of social interactions were mostly with doctors and nurses.

I think Harry Harlow would have had a fit. He was the one who was mostly worried with the connection between children and their mothers. He is the scientist who did the experiment with the two fake mothers and a monkey. The monkey was to choose between a wire mother who provided food and a soft warm mother with no food. The monkey spent most of its time with the warm mother and only went to the one providing food if it needed food. In David’s case, he only had the wire mother. He didn’t get the option of a warm comforting mother, rather he was just fed.
I feel that I need to slip in here the problems with evolutionary psychology. Evolution theory would state that there is a bell curve of people and their attributes. Most people would be very similar and therefore normal. A few people would have attributes that would give them skills that are better than normal and some attributes would hinder life for other. Those who are normal or well-off are to survive and pass off these genes while those who don’t do well do not pass on genes. This in turn will continue the survival of humans.
This is looking a bit past the humanity but the idea stays. Who are we to mess with who lives and who survives? It’s an ethical question that I don’t expect us to answer for a long, long time.

All in all I’m very glad to hear that this won’t be replicated in the future. It crossed too many ethical boundaries. Lucky for us we were able to take something positive from this horrible situation. We learned a lot about cancer and other ailments that this child had to suffer through. But does it really weigh out?

Terms: Freudian, psychosexual, counseling, Oedipus Complex, Piaget, object permanence, object consistency, schema, Pavlov, Harlow, evolutionary psychology,

What are three topics that you found interesting during the semester? Why?
For the most part, I enjoyed most of the chapters in the book, but the three most interesting topics that were my favorite were Pavlov's dog, Watson's experiment with Little Albert, and Francis Galton. Although I knew about Pavlov and classical conditioning, I was interested when I actually read more about it. Just by him noting that the dogs salivated not only when they were actually eating, but whenever they could just smell or see their food, he came up with an experiment. When he started to investigate the links between various stimuli and the responses they elicited. The main reason why I thought his experiment and a lot of experiments is because they are just from everyday life. From everyday life he concluded that an unconditioned stimulus such a food can provoke an unconditioned response, such as salivating. If an unconditioned stimulus is accompanied by a neutral stimulus, like a ringing bell, a conditioned response begins to develop. After many more episodes if ringing the bell, this stimulus provokes a conditioned response and the dogs would begin to salivate, believing it was eating time. Pavlov made psychology into a truly scientific field with this research as well.

John B. Watson was also very interesting to me. His study of Little Albert answered his theories, but was very unethical. Before, Watson had studied rates and monkeys, but he was interested in studying humans. The comparative approach was very popular to psychologists during the early 1900s because behaviorism was very popular. He believed that people have three fundamental emotions; fear, rage, and love, and he wanted to find out if a person could be conditioned into feeling these in response to stimuli. He used a baby and began showing him animals like rats, and bunnies and would produce a loud noise that would scare the baby. After multiple experiments, the baby did end up being fearful of rats because the unconditioned stimuli while being with the animals, elicited a response to fear of the animals; the animals would be considered a conditioned stimuli. I was mainly intrigued by his methods of using a baby and I was also curious about the mother of the child and why she would let Watson do these experiments on him. It was a major breakthrough in psychology, but harmed an infant’s psyche.

My last of the three most interesting topics would be Francis Galton and his nature and nurture theory. I was interested in this topic because he found that there needed to be a necessary balance in the 1800s. Technology was scarce, but that did not stop him from picking someone else's brain. This was one of the first approaches to bio-psychology. In that time, psychologists were more considered philosophers, but he believed that personality is composed of elements from two different sources. Nature is that which is inborn and inherited and sets limits to how far we can develop our talents. Nurture on the other hand is that which is experience from birth onward. He concluded that we can improve our skills and abilities through training and learning, but nature still sets the limits. I think that Galton realizing that nature and nurture both play a part, but nature being the determining factor was ahead of its time. It is interesting to think also that, his theories in the later 1800s are still being argued now.

How has the material you have learned in this class changed the way you think about psychology and the world in general?
The material I have learned in this class has been very beneficial for my future. Learning about history in general is something that I am interested in, but specifying on only psychology was engaging. I think of psychology as being more scientific than just philosophy now after taking this class. I also realize how man uses of psychology there is for so many other areas of the world. It can be used in the business world and can be used in the sports world. Learning theories, behaviorism, and many other topics are involved in psychology because it is so wide. Most people are using their brain toward everything they do and to learn about some of the experiments or why we do the things we do is interesting to me. I talk to my girlfriend about psychology and theories and she is always skeptic and she probably thinks that I may sound like a nerd when I explain things, but I actually use what I learn in everyday life. I analyze many things around me and wonder to myself “why”? Although for most people, psychology is an elective that they may take, I would strongly recommend an intro to psych class. Just that class alone can give you plenty of insight about why people do what they do and I think is beneficial.

How has the material you have learned in this class, complemented what you have learned in other classes at UNI?
I am taking many sports psychology classes because I am double majoring in sports psychology and psychology and have complemented those classes well. We learn about motivation and learning new techniques in my sports psych class and when I learned about learning theories, it made me think about if those theories could be implemented in sports psychology. Obviously psychology and sports psychology have differences, but they are similar at the same time. Reading about Watson and him incorporating psychology into advertising was something that I was curious about as well. This has also been popular in sports psychology because goal-setting and imagery and motivation are all necessary when in the business world. I believe that the topics that I learned in this course will be very beneficial for me in the future. I had not known that psychology and philosophy were one before the 1900s and finally became more scientific because of Pavlov. That experiment was probably my favorite thing to learn because it showed how psychology is all around us in the world and that it is a science as well. I just want to thank for Professor for letting me complete this course this summer and that I am very appreciative. It helped out me finishing school when I need to and it was generous of you to offer.

Terms: learned conditioning, conditioned stimuli, conditioned response, unconditioned response, little Albert, John B. Watson, Ivan Pavlov, Francis Galton, nature vs nurture

Final Assignment

I’ve always found psychology to be interesting, in both its failures and achievements as we look at them today. Ironically I’ve always found psychology’s faults to be the most interesting, such as phrenology or psychoanalysis. However, when asked when to reflect on these past topics, in regards to how we should learn from them, I find it to be a very pointless action. Of course we can learn from out past failures, the achievements we thought were going to change the world, when in reality, about 100 years later we’d be criticized for being idiots by bringing it into the field. This is why I try to appreciate the acclaimed ‘failures’ of psychology, such as Freud for example, for what he had proposed at the time was revolutionary—to him and his colleges as well as his patients, same with Freeman or Pavlov. I believe that was the main lesson that the book was trying to convey: that while we can feel like we can judge our past forefathers of psychology, we can at least acknowledge that whatever achievements we come up with today can and probably will be challenged or even discredited in the future; however people, regardless of their stance, can still learn from those achievements failures or not.

One of the things I’ve learned in class was how the lobotomy actually came to be. I knew of course what a lobotomy is and how it is procedurally done, however I had never heard of Moniz, nor had I thought Freeman was the one who took it as a ‘cure-all.’ Rather I was under the misinterpretation that Watt was the one who took it over, having never heard of Freeman before this class. In fact, no other psychology course had every really gone in depth with how lobotomies came about and how it was carried on.

Thanks to this class, I was inspired to continue pursuing knowledge over the practice and found that, while psychosurgeries are generally not practiced, one similar to lobotomies is still preformed today. It is called a ‘bilateral cingulotomy,’ preformed under the rarest cases and last case scenarios. The procedure is used to cure depression and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Instead of being performed on the frontal lobotomy it is performed on the anterior cingulate gyrus—which is located near the back of the brain. The target is to sever some of the fibers connecting it to other parts of the brain, for it is a center of the brain that is known to regular emotions. The benefit of this over the typical lobotomy is that it doesn’t make the patient exhibit the typical apathetic mood, rather they leave the operation table practically normal and seemingly unchanged. How I feel about lobotomies, in general, I still feel like they could be practiced today, but only as a last resort—because after that you can’t really do a whole lot. It would have to be a treatment conducted after ECT, and even then it might be something to seriously consider. Overall however, with the history that I learned about the practice in class, I appreciate what Moniz’s was trying to accomplish, though I feel like in the hand of Freeman it became corrupted. If it were to become a more common practice today, I would hope we would have more doctors like Moniz.

Another part of psychology I’ve always been interested in was psychoanalysis. I remember just beginning the pursuit of my psychology major as a freshman at Simpson college, and then revealed the crush that psychoanalysis isn’t generally practiced today—rarely at all, and even if I were to pursue I’d have a hell of a time finding patients given that most of the time it isn’t covered by common welfare. So that was discouraging, as a freshman, having to re-evaluate my future plans, however to this day, after all the criticism I was force fed about the practice and about Freud, I still love the practice and if given the opportunity I would practice it myself. Though, then again I’ve always been more fascinated by the philosophy of psychology rather than the hard science. And why shouldn’t I be? I will say that after having read all of these criticisms, Freud did have success with his patients, and I know for a fact that his practices are still used today. I’ve been to therapy sessions and having been a psychology student for a few years I know how to pick up on their tricks, such as when a therapist would use free association to allow myself to talk and after they’d pick up on key moments in my speech to explore more.

It’s always been my personal argument, whenever faced with these criticisms, that Freud was one of the founders for psychology and what he brought to the world of psychology did change it for the better. So, after what we had learned in class, or what I have learned in any class for that matter, hasn’t changed my opinion of Freud, nor has it changed my opinion of psychoanalysis.

Finally, a personal favorite, is my interest in how the mentally ill were treated in asylums. I’ve honestly have had the idea that the mentally ill were really badly treated before reforms in the back of my head, but actually finally reading about has brought it to my attention in a scholarly regard. The idea of a corrupt mental asylum has been incredibly overplayed: in shows, movies, books, videogames, etc. What’s ironic however is that they really didn’t have to do much work with their stigmatization of how awful it actually was, the asylums themselves did most of the work. Before this class the conditions of asylums were never really talked about. It was more or less treated like a skeleton in the closet. Everyone knew about it, but nobody wanted to talk about it lest it would give psychology a poor discredit. So I was glad to finally be able to talk about these conditions. I feel, however, that perhaps a lot of what occurred was and will be left out for future scholarly teachings, like if patients were actually experimented on or not—that just seems like a rumor spread around to scare people. Psychology has to keep a good reputation, so I’m not sure if I’m happy about it being kept in the dark if such things did occur. I would like to learn more, regardless if incredibly unethical procedures did occur, but at the same time I would like for psychology’s good name to be preserved.

Overall, I really did enjoy this class. In my other psychology classes we would always brush over topics very quickly, without any depth, and we were never really allowed to express our particular interest in a certain area. Even in classes in which I was allowed to, Gender Psychology with Professor Hindebrand for example, it was a very close minded class with an incredibly focused teaching style, thus we were more likely to be expected to just go along with the book’s teachings rather than be allowed challenge it. In regards to how this class changed my view on psychology, it really didn’t. I was previously a psychology major, though after changing it for various reasons, I had lost interest completely. This class was enjoyable however, in that I was allowed to take interest in what I thought was interesting, rather than being force fed information I didn’t really care about. So, all in all, this class had little to no effect on my feelings on psychology presently, but it was altogether more enjoyable than most, if not all, other psychology classes I had taken previously and now that I’m at the end of it I’d say that I’m happy I had the opportunity to take it.

Vocabulary words: psychology, phrenology, psychoanalysis, Freud, Pavlov, Freeman, Lobotomy, Moniz, Watt, bilateral cingulotomy, anterior cingulate gyrus, free association, asylums

A question that was posed to us the first week of class was why do we study history? Is it to learn from the mistakes from the past to apply the knowledge to the present, or is for some other reason. The notion that it was to learn from our mistakes was unanimously the class’s thought, however as you had pointed out this was not an original thought, so in this paper I will outline what I think. I believe the thought that we study history to learn from mistakes to avoid them happening is false. There is truth in the first part of the sentence to me, but it isn’t to avoid anything to me, but to build upon and grow.

To begin, what the idea behind applying the mistakes of the past to the present means to me. I understand this thought process and why people say it. In history if somebody attempts to make a bridge, and it collapses under little weight, it could be said that they made a mistake. Now the next person to attempt to build a bridge would look at what the previous person did and build upon it to improve what came before him. He does this to avoid making the same mistake. This is how things in all walks of life work. This is where instead of avoiding mistakes by repeating them; we are building upon the groundwork that has been laid before us. Rome was not built in a day, and Rome more than likely would not have been built in all its magnificence if there was not a lesser city that the builders could have looked at to model the buildings, pathways, etc. after. History teaches us many lessons, and it could be argues that no mistakes have been made in the past because by applying our knowledge to their situation we discredit everything. Instead people experimented, actions were done, and some things worked and others didn’t. If an action did not work, it may still be acted upon to no avail except to learn as to why it doesn’t work instead of accepting it.

One example is seen if we look at any “unethical” study by today’s standards, we dismiss how society operated and what was acceptable to them. Without the groundwork of those studies, we would have ethics that would be based much less strict as nothing has been tested and we wouldn’t have been able to learn and grow. In order to move forward in anything, there has to a base somewhere, and sometimes the base has not yet been established. Let’s look at the study of the mind and the compartments of it. One early psychological practice was phrenology. This was considered by some to be top of the line, and others saw it as a scam. Either way it changed the history of psychology because psychologists after this took what they knew of the study and wanted to advance it. After phrenology took place people were curious as to what parts of the brain actually did affect different actions and motor functions. The study continued and became much more credible and eventually we landed with the knowledge that we have today.

Another example is that done with a study in general. Psychology is one of the youngest “sciences” in the world today. It could be said a lot of mistakes have been made. However these could be looked at as the same concept as a baby’s first steps. Surely the baby doesn’t walk on his first try, but it isn’t a considered a mistake by most but instead a growing lesson. In psychology there have been many experiments and procedures that laid important groundwork even if they are not used to this date. One such experiment was that of the lobotomy. It was used and has a very high significance to the history, but was it a mistake to have performed and practice this? I don’t believe so, I think that it was comparable to the first steps and was merely a growing pain. The science took its knowledge on this; advanced it to the highest potential it could hit, then when they realized it was dangerous and peaked at its usefulness they discontinued it. This is one of many examples of why history is important to study.

Another simpler example is that of technology. In our lifetime we have seen the first cell phones and now phones are essentially a walking computer vs the start where they were little bricks that had a few handy tools. This is a science where even though it is a short history, people made mistakes with designing phones, apps, etc., however, instead of avoiding those mistakes they just built upon them to create what we use to this day.

There are hundreds of examples of how studying history builds upon itself to reach the highest potential of sciences, experiments, or constructions. In the end however, without the base work and the “mistakes” that were done, the present would be a much different place. It is much like the ripple effect theory; that one stone caused the whole lake to change. Without a person asking how the mind worked in ancient Greek times, who knows if our knowledge would be where it is now. We could be hundreds of years behind where we are now, had the initial questions been asked at a later date. It could be said that everything ties into itself together like ripples with the pond, and if this is true than every experiment has led us to the point at which we stand presently.

To finish my opinion on what history helps us with is that history is much like a blueprint. It gives us an idea of how to complete whatever we are working on but it is not finalized nor is it concrete. History changes and so do blueprints neither are perfect, but you can look at each and build upon what is already there and see what has worked and what hasn’t. Beyond this, a person does not remember their first steps as a child, and we need to look back with the help of others to recall what our earliest days gave to us. Any science is the same way; we do not know the beginnings without studying history and rely on information given to us to advance our own theories and ideas on topics.

Term List: Phrenology, Lobotomy, Ripple Effect Theory.