1. OVERVIEW.
TEXT 1: WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?
Psychology is the scientific study of behaviors and experiences. It lies at the intersection of
many other different disciplines, including biology, medicine or anthropology. Psychology has
many branches, that have in common the desire to explain the human behavior based on the
workings of the mind. Every psychological branches use scientific methodology: indeed, they
formulate theories, test hypotheses through experiments and observations and analyze the
results through statistical techniques.
TEXT 2: A BRIEF HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY.
Despite psychology is nowadays a scientific issue it began thanks to philosophical tradition.
During the 17th century René Descartes introduced the concept of dualism, which asserted that
mind and body are two separate entities that interacts to form the human experience.
The main distinction between psychology and philosophy happened during the mid-1800s,
when Wilhelm Wundt began to use scientific methodology to investigate behavior and reaction
times. Wundt is really important because he opened the world’s first psychology laboratory in
1879 at the University of Leipzig, in which he investigated psychological issues such times of
reaction, behaviors and thoughts. The event of 1879 is generally considered as the official start
of psychology as a scientific discipline, and the beginning of the use of scientific methodologies
to research into thoughts and behaviors.
Titchener, one of Wundt’s most famous students, gave birth to the first major psychological
school, structuralism. According to structuralism, human consciousness could be divided into
smaller parts and people could be trained to break down their responses and reactions to the
most basic sensations and perceptions. Structuralism was important because it put emphasis on
scientific research, but his main weakness, the method of introspection, was unreliable, limiting
and subjective). This weakness, and Titchener’s death, caused the expire of structuralism.
Psychology thrived in America in mid-to-late-1800, when William James gave birth
functionalism, another important psychological school of thought.
From this moment every psychology had stressed conscious human experience. The Austrian
physician Sigmund Freud changed the face of psychology in a dramatic way, emphasizing the
importance of unconscious mind in every people’s act. Freud’s clinical work led him to believe
that early childhood experiences and unconscious impulses contributed to the development of
adult normal or abnormal personality and way of behavior.
During the first half of 20th century psychology changed dramatically is face again: in this
period, in fact, emerged behaviorism. Behaviorism rejected the emphasis on both conscious and
unconscious mind; besides, it focused only on observable behavior. The most important
behaviorists are Ivan Pavlov, who discovered the classical conditioning process and the
correlation between stimuli and behavior, and Burrhus Skinner, who discovered the operant
conditioning and the effect of punishments and renforcements on behavior. During this first half
of century behaviorism and psychoanalysis dominated psychological scenario.
During the second half of 20th century emerged a new psychological school of thought,
humanistic psychology, born thanks to Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. Humanistic
psychology proposed itself as the “third force” in psychology, an alternative to both
psychoanalysis, too concerned with the neurotic, and behaviorism, too concerned with the
