Published on 28 October 2021

Who is the Founder of Psychology?

General Psychology who-is-the-founder-of-psychology
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The way one deports oneself, orate, saunter each and every facet depends upon or works on the basis of psychology. Psychology is the aspect that connects the mind to the body to which we counter respond in our quotidian lives.

As the psychology term is derived, the world revolves around it. In accordance with what is previously stated, let`s look at psychology and its discovery more precisely. (Nicolas, S. and Murray, D.J., 1999. Théodule Ribot (1839–1916)

Everything Revolves Around Psychology? What is it?

Psychology is considered as the scientific study of our mind or intellect and acquits or in simple words behavior and usually includes the conscious or unconscious aspects such as thoughts or how we feel or perceive things.

 This mainly comprises several subfields namely social behavior, cognitive process, sports, human development, etc., and are segregated into five main classifications that are; behavioral, psychodynamic, cognitive, biological, and humanistic.

All these components are developed in order to understand the internalized perspective of the human brain i.e. the thought process, how are able to come up with ideas, perseverance, etc. However, all these terms and conditions are been discovered by a personage. Who is he? Let`s enlighten ourselves. (Durmaz, Y., 2014)

History: Who is the Founder of Psychology?

 Who is the Father or psychology or the founder? There is no such distinct persona who has involved his or her own self in the discovery of psychology. Like every other invention and discovery, there are several such people involved in its emergence such as William James, Sigmund Freud, John Bowlby, Kurt Lewin, and furthermore.

However, the person who is significantly called the father of psychology is Wilhelm Wundt, who gained great recognition for his work. Let`s walk in his shoes and know more about his discovery. (McReynolds, P., 1987)

Wilhelm Wundt

Wilhelm Wundt is a well-renowned psychologist, born in Germany in the year 1832; his main goal was to study the consciousness of the human behavior and conscious experience where he eagerly wanted to figure the way out on how all the components of consciousness result in conscious experiences. In order to do so, he also unearths a process wherein one can discern their own conscious experiences to which he named “introspection”.

He was the first person to be well acknowledged for his discovery in psychology mainly due to the formation of “world’s first experimentation on psychology lab” on1879 at the University of Leipzig which sundered psychology from science and became a whole new concept of research. However, to know more about his observational experimentation let`s have a deeper look in the theory of introspection. (Titchener, E.B., 1921. Wilhelm Wundt. The American Journal of Psychology)

Theory of Introspection

As previously said, this theory was mainly brought to light in order to know in-depth about the human`s conscious behavior, and thus, with the prospect to achieve that goal, he managed to create a setup that involved a keen observer who can readily look through the reaction, an external stimuli that would help in producing repeat ably similar reaction or experience that a particular person gained, which would make the reaction more pragmatic, which in-turn would allow the trained observer to record the reaction that would aid in procuring results.

In this experimentation of introspection, Wundt`s main aim was to look into the reaction and conscious experiences that would come internally from the subject and thus, help in gaining more knowledge related to it.

Wundt would also indulge their students in psychology even more by teaching them with significant experimentations, in order to receive their subject`s reaction. Thus, this attempt of figuring out the characteristics of the mind was also called as structuralism.

Now that we know about Wilhelm and his theory of introspection, let`s see how did he come up with other ideologies.

Wundt: The Founder of Structuralism?

 Wilhelm Wundt is been considered as the founder of the idea behind structuralism however, he more likely tends to call the concept voluntarism. Nonetheless, this concept of structuralism was not discovered or invented by Wundt himself rather was contrived by his student Edward Titchener and named the conception as Structuralism.

Even though, the idea behind it was of Wundt, Edward completely structured it. The notion behind Wundt`s voluntarism was that the mind can be structured into conscious experiences by breaking it down into small parts and scrutinizing it however, Edward decided to revamp the ideology. According to his concern, conscious experiences cannot be easily administered and thus, concentrate on the quantitative measures.

Now that we are well aware of the discovery and how did these theories emerge, let`s see the contribution of Wundt.

His Contributions

  • He established the laboratory of experimental psychology.
  • Wrote a book called “principles of philosophical psychology”
  • Emerged the concept of introspection.
  • Brought in the idea of voluntarism. 

Other Great Aid To The Field of Psychology

  1. John Bowlby

 He invented the theory of attachment.

 Discovered the theory of psychoanalysis, also called the father of psychoanalysis.

  • Williams James

He gained recognition through his book “The Principles of Psychology” and is also called the father of American psychology.

  • Kurt Lewin

He introduced the scientific methods in order to study social behavior and is called the father of social psychology.

  • Gordon Allport

He was the first person who studied personality psychology and is also called the father of personality psychology.

THE ENDING

Thus, these are the founding fathers of psychology, who not only discovered theories but a guerdoned to us with a whole new concept that could help one gain knowledge in that particular field.  Due to these psychologists, we are now able to detect and cure all the obstacles related to mind, thoughts, and human behavior. Thus, psychology is to the win.