The development of psychology includes the rejection of concepts and movements some groups consider undesirable, such as psychical research. One such example was the way psychologists dealt with phenomena such as telepathy and mediumship in the first five international congresses of psychology held between 1889 and 1905. This included papers about telepathy and mediumship by individuals such as Gabriel Delanne, Léon Denis, Théodore Flournoy, Paul Joire, Léon Marillier, Frederic W. H. Myers, Julian Ochorowicz, Charles Richet, Eleanor M. Sidgwick, and Henry (...) Sidgwick. These topics were eventually rejected from the congresses, and provide us with an example of the boundary-work psychologists were engaging during the period to build their discipline. The height of such presentations took place at the 1900 congress, after which there was a marked decline in discussion on the topic that mirrored the rejection science at large showed for psychical research during the period in question. (shrink)

This paper serves to introduce the papers from the symposium by the same title, by describing the sort of work done in philosophy of psychology conceived as a branch of the philosophy of science, distinguishing it from other discussions of psychology in philosophy, and criticizing the claims to set limits on scientific psychology in the largely psychologically uninformed literatures concerning "folk psychology' and "wide" and "narrow" content. Philosophy of psychology as philosophy of science takes seriously and analyzes the explanatory structures, (...) conceptual problems, and evidentiary practices of extant scientific psychology. (shrink)

This chapter challenges the view that psychology emerged from philosophy about 1900, when each found its own proper sphere with little relation to the other. It begins by considering the notion of a discipline, defined as a distinct branch of learning. Psychology has been a discipline from the time of Aristotle, though with a wider ambit, to include phenomena of both life and mind. Empirical psychology in a narrower sense arose in the eighteenth century, through the application (in Britain and (...) elsewhere) of the observational attitudes of the physical and life sciences to mental phenomena. The experimental psychology of the latter nineteenth century was a transformation of this empirical psychology, although the British version was characterized by new theoretical conceptions (including evolutionary ideas) as well as new empirical techniques. After surveying psychology in and out of universities in this period, the chapter reviews a taxonomy of “schools” of psychology from 1923. Notice of anti-psychological attitudes in British philosophy before and after 1900 is balanced by considering positive conceptions of psychology’s role in connection with epistemology and the problem of the external world. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century psychology became the study of "behavior." This article reviews developments within animal psychology, functional psychology, and American society and culture that help explain how a term rarely used in the first years of the century became not only an accepted scientific concept but even, for many, an all-encompassing label for the entire subject matter of the discipline. The subsequent conceptual and linguistic activity of John B. Watson, Edward C. Tolman, Clark L. Hull, and B.F. Skinner, (...) as they attempted to explain "behavior" throughout the course of the twentieth century, is then discussed. Finally, the article suggests the need for greater conceptual and linguistic diversity in psychology. In this last regard, reference is made to cognition and consciousness, to William James and John Dewey, and to the fact that prediction and control might not be the most relevant aims of contemporary psychology. (shrink)