A History of Modern Psychology

In the introductory chapter to this book, I emphasized the great role played by physiology, particularly the study of the brain, in early empirical psychology. German experimental psychology began as physiological psychology, and Russian psychology, originating in the study of reflexes, had a physiological basis. French and Austrian clinical psychology grew out of neurology and psychiatry. However, as we have seen in the preceding chapters, as empirical psychology developed, it tended to lose contact with physiology. This was apparent in experimental as well as clinical psychology, and in European as well as American psychology.

One possible reason that psychology and physiology did not become better integrated was that the two studies had not advanced far enough for researchers to visualize how to integrate them in a productive manner. At the beginning of the 1900s, empirical psychology had little to offer physiologists interested in extending their work to include the psychological studies of perceiving, remembering, learning, thinking, emotions, and motivation. Even as late as the mid-1900s, psychology still had little more for physiologists than intelligence tests.

Physiology, in contrast, had made considerable progress at the beginning of the 1900s, though little of it helped register activity going on in the nervous system. That had to be inferred from brain damage in human beings and lesions made in the brains of animals. Although most psychologists probably believed the phenomena they studied had a foundation in physiology, they were not able to see how they could use physiological knowledge productively to advance their study. When techniques for registering brain activity were finally developed in the mid-1900s, there was an explosion of interest in physiological psychology.

In this chapter, I shall begin by reporting on some of the main advances in the study of the brain in the latter half of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s. While these advances by and large were the result of European research, the development of the modern study of physiological psychology was mainly due to the efforts of psychologists of the United States. Then I shall report on two American researchers, Robert Woodworth and Walter Cannon, who both helped clarify the concept of motivation. Cannon also made substantial contributions to the study of emotions and stress. Along with Woodworth and Cannon, Karl Lashley contributed to the study of motivation.