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Psychology can also be seen as a bridge between philosophy and physiology. Where physiology describes and explains the physical make-up of the brain and nervous system, psychology examines the mental processes that take places within them and how these are manifest in our thoughts, speech and behavior. Where philosophy is concerned with thoughts and ideas, psychology studies how we come to have them and what they tell us about the workings of our minds.
心理学仍然被看作哲学和生理学的桥梁。其中生理学是描述和解释大脑和神经系统的构成，心理学是解释精神的发生过程以及如何在我们思想、语言和行为中得到体现的。哲学是关于思想和想法，心理学是解释思想和想法是如何形成的，以及思想观点的工作模式。
"Psychology has a long past, but only a short history".
—Hermann Ebbinghaus
All the sciences evolved from philosophy, by applying scientific methods to philosophical questions, but the intangible nature of subjects such as consciousness, perception, and memory meant that psychology was slow in making the transition from philosophical speculation to scientific practice. In some universities, particularly in the USA，psychology departments started out as branches of the philology department, while in others, notably those in Germany,they were established in the science faculties. But it was not until the late 19th century that psychology became established as a scientific discipline in its own right.
利用科学方法去回答哲学问题，但不可触摸的自然科学（如：意识、知觉和记忆）的所有这些涉及哲学的科学，在从哲学推断到科学实践的转换过程都比较慢。在某些大学中，尤其美国大学中，心理学作为哲学的一个分支，而其他尤其是德国的大学中，心理学是建立在科学院系中。直到19世纪，心理学才作为一个独立的科学学科，占有自己的一席之地。
The founding of the world's first laboratory of experimental psychology by Wilhem Wundt at the university of Leipzig in 1879 marked the recognition of psychology as a truly scientific subject, and as one that was breaking new ground in previously unexplored areas of research. In the course of the 20th century, psychology blossomed; all of its major branches and movements evolved.
1879年，威廉·冯特在莱比锡大学创建了世界上第一个心理学实验室，这意味着对心理学的认知作为一个真正科学主题了，同时也开拓了新的探索领域。在20世纪，心理学蓬勃发展，相关的主要分支和行动都取得了有效进展。
ps:莱比锡大学位于德国萨克森州的莱比锡，创立于1409年，是欧洲最古老的大学之一，也是现今德国管辖地区内历史第二悠久的大学，仅次于海德堡大学（1386年），略高于罗斯托克大学（1419年）
As with all sciences, its history is built upon the theories and discoveries of successive generations, with many of the older theories remaining relevant to contemporary psychologists. Some areas of research have been the subject of study from psychology's earliest days, undergoing different interpretations by the various schools of thought, while others have fallen in and out of favor, but each time they have exerted a significant influence on subsequent thinking, and have occasionally spawned completely new fields for exploration.
正如和所有科学一样，它的历史是建立在连续世代的理论和发现之上的。
The simplest way to approach the vast subject of psychology for the first time is to take a look at some of its main movements in roughly chronological
order, as we do in this book: from its roots in philosophical thought, through behaviorism, psychotherapy, and the study of cognitive, social and developmental psychology, to the psychology of difference.
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Two Approahes
"The first fact for us then, as psychologists, is that thinking of some sort goes on."
——William James
Even in its earliest days, psychology meant different things to different people.In the USA, its roots lay in philosophy, so the approach taken was speculative and theoretical, dealing with concepts such as consciousness and the self. In Europe, the study was rooted in the sciences, so the emphasis was on examining mental processes such as sensory(感觉的) perception and memory under controlled laboratory conditions.
However, even the research of these more scientifically oriented psychologists was limited by the introspective(自省的) nature of their methods: pioneers such as Hermann Ebbinghaus became the subject of their own investigations, effectively restricting the range of topics to those that could be observed in themselves. Although they used scientific methods and their theories laid the foundations for the new science, many in the next generation of psychologists found their processes too subjective, and began to look for a more objective methodology.
In the 1890s, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov conducted experiments that were to prove critical to the development of psychology in both Europe and the USA. He proved that animals could be conditioned to produce a response, an idea that developed into a new movement known as behaviourism. The behaviourists felt that it was impossible to study mental processes objectively, but found it relatively easy to measure behaviour, the manifestation of those processes.
They began to design experiments that could be conducted under controlled conditions, at first on animals, to gain an insight into human psychology, and later on humans. The behaviourists’ studies concentrated almost exclusively on how behaviour is shaped by interaction with the environment; this “stimulus–response” theory became well known through the work of John Watson.
New learning theories began to spring up in Europe and the USA, and attracted the interest of the general public. However, at much the same time as behaviourism began to emerge in the USA, a young neurologist(神经病学家) in Vienna started to develop a theory of mind that was to overturn contemporary thinking and inspire a very different approach. Based on observation of patients and case histories rather than laboratory experiments, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic(精神分析学的) theory marked a return to the study of subjective experience.
He was interested in memories, childhood development, and interpersonal relationships, and emphasized the importance of the unconscious in determining behaviour. Although his ideas seemed shocking at the time, they were quickly and widely adopted, and the notion of a “talking cure” continues within the various forms of psychotherapy today.
New fields of study
"If the 19th century was the age of the editorial chair, ours is the century of the psychiatrist’s couch."
——Marshall McLuhan
In the mid-20th century, both behaviourism and psychoanalysis fell out of favour, with a return to the scientific study of mental processes. This marked the beginning of cognitive psychology, a movement with its roots in the holistic(整体的) approach of the Gestalt psychologists, who were interested in studying perception. Their work began to emerge in the USA in the years following World War II; by the late 1950s, cognitive psychology had become the predominant approach.
The rapidly growing fields of communications and computer science provided psychologists with a useful analogy; they used the model of information processing to develop theories in areas such as attention, perception, memory and forgetting, language and language acquisition, problem-solving and decision-making, and motivation. Even psychotherapy, which mushroomed(快速成长) in myriad(无数的) forms from the original “talking cure”, was influenced by the cognitive approach.
Cognitive therapy and cognitive-behavioural therapy emerged as alternatives to psychoanalysis(精神分析学), leading to movements such as humanist psychology, which focused on the qualities unique to human life. These therapists turned their attention from healing the sick to guiding healthy people towards living more meaningful lives. While psychology in its early stages had concentrated largely on the mind and behaviour of individuals, there was now an increasing interest in the way we interact with our environment and other people; this became the field of social psychology.
Like cognitive psychology, it owed much to the Gestalt psychologists, especially Kurt Lewin, who had fled from Nazi Germany to the USA in the 1930s. Social psychology gathered pace during the latter half of the 20th century, when research revealed intriguing new facts about our attitudes and prejudices, our tendencies towards obedience and conformity(循规蹈矩), and our reasons for aggression or altruism(利他主义), all of which were increasingly relevant in the modern world of urban life and ever-improving communications.
Freud’s continuing influence was felt mainly through the new field of developmental psychology. Initially concerned only with childhood development, study in this area expanded to include change throughout life, from infancy to old age. Researchers charted methods of social, cultural, and moral learning, and the ways in which we form attachments. The contribution of developmental psychology to education and training has been significant but, less obviously, it has influenced thinking about the relationship between childhood development and attitudes to race and gender.
Almost every psychological school has touched upon the subject of human uniqueness, but in the late 20th century this area was recognized as a field in its own right in the psychology of difference. As well as attempting to identify and measure personality traits and the various factors that make up intelligence, psychologists in this growing field examine definitions and measures of normality and abnormality, and look at how much our individual differences are a product of our environment or the result of genetic inheritance.
An influential science
"The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best."
——Paul Valéry
The many branches of psychology that exist today cover the whole spectrum of mental life and human and animal behaviour. The overall scope has extended to overlap with many other disciplines, including medicine, physiology, neuroscience(神经科学), computer science, education, sociology, anthropology, and even politics, economics, and the law. Psychology has become perhaps the most diverse of sciences.
Psychology continues to influence and be influenced by the other sciences, especially in areas such as neuroscience and genetics. In particular, the nature versus nurture argument that dates back to Francis Galton’s ideas of the 1870s continues to this day; recently, evolutionary psychology has contributed to the debate by exploring psychological traits as innate and biological phenomena, which are subject to the laws of genetics and natural selection. Psychology is a huge subject, and its findings concern every one of us.
In one form or another it informs many decisions made in government, business and industry, advertising, and the mass media. It affects us as groups and as individuals, contributing as much to public debate about the ways our societies are or might be structured as it does to diagnosing and treating mental disorders. The ideas and theories of psychologists have become part of our everyday culture, to the extent that many of their findings about behaviour and mental processes are now viewed simply as “common sense”.
However, while some of the ideas explored in psychology confirm our instinctive feelings, just as many make us think again; psychologists have often shocked and outraged the public when their findings have shaken conventional, long-standing beliefs. In its short history, psychology has given us many ideas that have changed our ways of thinking, and that have also helped us to understand ourselves, other people, and the world we live in.
It has questioned deeply held beliefs, unearthed(采掘出的) unsettling(扰乱的) truths, and provided startling insights and solutions to complex questions. Its increasing popularity as a university course is a sign not only of psychology’s relevance in the modern world, but also of the enjoyment and stimulation that can be had from exploring the richness and diversity of a subject that continues to examine the mysterious world of the human mind.
以下是我写的关于The Psychology Book的其他章节，欢迎各位前来观看 ^ ^
