Foundations of Psychology Lecture Notes

What is psychology?

• To adequately understand what psychology is (and how to use it), we
first need to understand why it came to be studied in the first place

• That means we have to learn a bit about the history of psychology

• Psyche (soul) + logos (to study)

• Psychology as a science only really became popular during the 1800s

,The history of psychology

• People have been thinking about “the mind” since the dawn of
mankind.

• But what is the mind?

• What is the connection between the mind and the body?

,What is the mind?

• Before the 1800’s lots of people speculated about the mind, but one
person’s guess was as good as another’s

, The Birth of Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt proposed that we should study the mind
independently of philosophy and physiology

• Wundt also proposed that this new field of study (psychology) should
be rooted in science

• This new science would concern itself with the study of conscious
and immediate experience