How psychology evolved

Psychology did not arrive fully formed. Different schools asked different questions about what it should study.

• Structuralism (Wilhelm Wundt). Study the structure of the mind, its building blocks. The method was introspection: trained people described their own sensations and feelings in detail. Holding a cold metal cup, one might report 'cold, smooth, heavier in the right hand, reminds me of a prize at school'.
• Criticism: introspection depends on a person's own words, which nobody else can check, so it seemed unscientific.

• Functionalism (William James, laboratory at Cambridge, Massachusetts). Ask not what the mind is but what it does: how it helps us adapt, and above all how consciousness flows and works.
• Gestalt psychology. 'Gestalt' means whole. We perceive things as complete wholes: we read a quick message 'gr8' as 'great' and see three separate corners as a triangle. Experience is more than the sum of its parts.

• Behaviourism (John Watson, later B.F. Skinner). The mind and consciousness cannot be observed, so study only observable behaviour: stimuli and responses. Pavlov's dog learning to drool at the sound of a bell (Chapter 5) belongs to this line of work.
• Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud). Behaviour is driven mostly by the unconscious mind: desires and conflicts from early childhood that we are not aware of. People seek pleasure and avoid pain. You will study it in depth in Class 12.

• Humanistic psychology (Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow). People are basically good and have a natural drive to grow and fulfil their potential; free will and growth, not hidden conflict, guide behaviour.
• Cognitive perspective. Study cognition, 'the process of knowing': how we take in, store, process and use information, somewhat like a computer.
• Constructivism, part of the cognitive view: we keep building and rebuilding our understanding. Piaget stressed the child actively constructing knowledge; Vygotsky stressed that the mind is built together with others through culture and language.

Psychology in India. Indian philosophy has long discussed the mind, but modern psychology began at Calcutta University: the first syllabus came in 1915 (in the philosophy department) and the first department of psychology in 1916. Durganand Sinha described four phases, ending in indigenisation: building theories rooted in Indian culture rather than only borrowing Western ones.