EDUCATION 807: History and Systems of Psychology

Professor William J. Matthews, Ph.D.
Office 363 Hills; 545-1192, email:shamrock@educ.umass.edu
Office Hours: Monday 1-3, Tues. 1-2:30, Wednesday 9am-11:30, and by appointment

As modern psychology is approximately 150 years old, we as psychologists are under considerable challenge from the other sciences and from the general public to scientifically substantiate our various claims and legitimate our claim to special expertise. Psychology, as well as the other sciences, is under severe attack from the radical social-constructivists, deconstructivists and anti-realists (i.e.there is no objective truth, reality is merely a social construction). Of course, psychology is a science and we need to understand it as such. An important aspect of this understanding is to consider the history of psychology and the history of ideas that have created psychology. That is what we will do.

Required Texts

Karl Popper, The myth of the framework of science
Howard Kendler, Historical Foundations of Modern Psychology
Recommended: The APA Publication Manual, 4th edition.
These books are located in the Jeffrey Amherst college book store in beautiful down town Amherst.
In addition to the above reading, a large packet of the below listed required readings are assembeled into a packet for you at Collective Copies.

Evaluation: There will be three forms of evaluation in this course.

A. This is a seminar and your pariticipation is important. I expect folks to be in class, to be on time, have the readings covered, and ready to share your thinking. I look forward to the interaction.

B. Each week you will be required to submit a 2 page reaction paper based on the readings for that week. The purpose of this paper is two fold: (1) to insure that you do the readings; and (2) to create the opportunity for you to systematically consider those readings (i.e. to write about them). In two pages you need to be able to provide some summary notion of the readings and your meaning making of them.

C. The major form of evaluation for this class will be a 20-25 page paper. The focus of this paper can be fairly wide ranging depending on your particular interests. In this paper, you will pick a topic of interest ( such as race & I.Q., UFO's, eating disorders, psychotherapy, the use of medications in therapy, gender differences/issues, evolutionary psychology, the problem of constructivism, history of science, to name a few) and write a history of the idea, its development and interaction or non-interaction with science and empirical inquiry. This paper may well be part of or a pre-cursor to, your comprehensive paper.

In addition to actually writing this major opus, you will be required to ask one of your classmates to read and critically review it. You of course will do the same for him or her (a written 1-2 page review). The review will be handed in with your paper on the last day of class. Each paper must have an editorial review attached.

Please note that if you take an incomplete in the course and after one calendar year it is turned into an Inc/F, it can not be made up. The course will have to be repeated. The moral of this story is don't let an incomplete be turned into an Inc/F.

Week I & 2: Introduction to Course

Why history
Karl Popper, The myth of the framework
Kendler, Howard Chapter 1 "Psychology from a Historical Perspective"
Ned Block "What is philsophy of psychology?"
J. R. Kantor "History of psychology"
___________ "Psychology: An experiemental science"
T. Khun, excerpt from the The structure of scientific revolutions
C. Sagan "Antiscience"

Weeks 3, 4, 5

Mechanistic Psychology (Materialism, Empiricism, Senstionalism, and Positivism)

Kendler,
W. S. Sahakian, "Ancient Greek and Latin Psychology"
Hernsteing & Boring "Aristotle on the five senses"
J. Brennan, excerpt from Augustine's The confessions
______, excerpt from Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
W. S. Sahakian, on "British empiricism"
Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Berkeley
J.R. Kantor, on the French materialists
Dennis, Rene Descartes "The Passions of the Soul"
J. Brennan, excerpt of Immanuel Kant from The Critique of Pure Reason
___________excerpt of Wilhelm Wundt "Grundriss der Psychologie"
W.Dennis, on Edward Titchener "The Postulates of a Structural Psychology"
_________on William James "What is emotion"
Howard Kendler's Chapter 11 "Cognitive Psychology"

Weeks 6, 7, 8

Behaviorism

Hayes et al. "Finding the philosophical core"
G. Windholz, "Ivan Pavlov"
Wolpe & Plaud, "Pavov's contributions to behavior therapy"
J.R. Kantor, on Clark Hull
N. Block, B.F. Skinner from Science and Human Behavior
N.Block , Noam Chomsky "A Review of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior"

Weeks 9, 10, 11

Evolutionary Psychology (Psychoanalysis, Instinct Theory, heredity/environment,)

Hernstein & Boring, Darwin and the theroy of evolution.
D. Freeman, "Paradigms in collision"
Cosmides & Tooby, "Evolutionary Psychology: A primer"
Frank Miele "The Immoral Animal"
F. Salter, "Sociology as Alchemy"
Harmon Holcomb "Moving Beyond Just-so Stories"
Henry Schlinger "How the Human Got Its Spots"
Neisser et al. "Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns"

Psychoanalysis
J. Masson, "Freud and the seduction theory"
F. Crews, "The unknown Freud"

Weeks 12, 13, 14

Social Constructivism

K. Gergen, "The social constructionist movement in modern psychology"
D. C. Phillips "The good, the bad, and the ugly: The many faces of constructivisim"
S. Kvale, "Postmodern Psychology: A contradiction in terms?"
Gergen & Kaye "Beyond narrative in the negotiation of therapeutic meaning"
P. Lather "Postmodernism and the human sciences.

Critique of post modernism and defense of science
Gross, Levitt, Lewis "The flight from science and reason"
a series of articles by Haack, Koretge, Sommers, Cole, Richards, de Montellano
W. Matthews "Lets get real"

Week 15

Women in psychology

Bernstein & Russo "The history of psychology revisited"
F. Denmark "Psyche"
S. Shields "Functionalsim, Darwinism, and the psychology of women".