Lecture 1 - Why Study Psychology?

Question 1

What does eminent mean?

Answer 1

famous and respected

Question 2

Are women under-represented in psychology? Are men statistically overrepresented in psychology historically?

Answer 2

yes

Question 3

What is history?

Answer 3

the study of the past

Question 4

What is historiography? Why is this relevant to psychology?

Answer 4

the study of how history is written.

Choices about how historical events are recorded/presented interact with gender.

Question 5

What did Ebbinghaus mean when he said that “psychology has a long past but only a short history”

Answer 5

If we were to only look at the past of people who called themselves psychologist it
would only go back 200 years but psychology goes way further than that

Question 6

What was happening with Psychology in the 1920’s?

Answer 6

In the 1920s, psychology was becoming a new and distinct
discipline (separate from philosophy, anthropology, political
science…)

Need for history “to provide markers of identity and to bolster
claims to legitimacy and relevance.” (Capshew, 2014)

A historical narrative was created that positioned modern
psychology as a science and a product of:

• the intellectual legacy of the ancient Greeks
• the rise of experimental science esp. physiology

This positioning of psychology united an
“epistemologically unruly field” (Capshew)

Psychology has a lot of ways of deciding what is knowledge

Question 7

Discussion questions:

What perceptions do people have of Psychology today?

How might this be related to the history and historiography of
Psychology?