Library: Psychology by Credo Reference: History

General History

Key Dates in Psychology, 1846-2002
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather guide
1846 E H Weber reports on his pioneering quantitative investigations of touch in On Touch and Common Sensibility...
Psychology Before Psychology
From Handy Answer: The Handy Psychology Answer Book
The study of mental processes as a science is relatively new because it is dependent on the scientific revolution. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) is credited with first establishing psychology as an independent science.
Psychology in the 19th Century
From Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century
At the start of the nineteenth century the term “psychology” was not in general use, and no disciplinary specialty for the study of mental events existed.
Bedlam
From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Originally, a lunatic asylum or madhouse, and hence a place of hubbub and confusion. The priory of St Mary of Bethlehem outside Bishopsgate, London, was founded in 1247 and began to receive lunatics in 1377.

Historical Treatments

Acupuncture: Topic Page
Technique of traditional Chinese medicine, in which a number of very fine metal needles are inserted into the skin at specially designated points.
Bloodletting
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Also called bleeding, practice of drawing blood from the body in the treatment of disease. General bloodletting consists of the abstraction of blood by incision into an artery (arteriotomy) or vein (venesection, or phlebotomy).
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): Topic Page
In psychiatry, treatment of mood disorders by means of electricity; the broader term "shock therapy" also includes the use of chemical agents.
Exorcism
From The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
An exorcism is a ritual, formalized by the Catholic Church during the seventeenth century, performed on a person exhibiting signs of demonic possession. Possession is said to occur when the Devil enters and takes over the physical and mental faculties of the victim.
Hydrotherapy
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Use of water in the treatment of illness or injury. Although the medicinal and hygienic value of water was recognized by the early Greeks, hydrotherapy attained its widest use in the 18th and 19th cent. through the practice of the British physician Sir John Floyer and an Austrian peasant, Vincenz Priessnitz.
Insulin coma therapy
From Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Psychology
A now defunct form of physical treatment, at one time advocated for schizophrenia patients, in which patients were repeatedly administered insulin (see s. 2) in order to induce a comatose state.
Lobotomy
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Surgical procedure for cutting nerve pathways in the frontal lobes of the brain. The operation has been performed on mentally ill patients whose behavioral patterns were not improved by other forms of treatment.
Psychosurgery
From The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
Psychosurgery, by definition, implies the destruction of brain tissue for the relief of severe, persistent, and debilitating psychiatric symptomatology.
Trephination or Trepanation
Trephination involves the production of a defect in the skull vault to create communication between the cranial cavity and the environment, whose success depends upon avoidance of injury to the meninges, brain and blood vessels.

Historical Disorders

Hysteria: Topic Page
In psychology, a disorder commonly known today as conversion disorder, in which a psychological conflict is converted into a bodily disturbance.
Lunacy
From Chamber's Dictionary of the Unexplained
A form of insanity once thought to come with the changes in the moon.
Idiocy
From Encyclopedia of Special Education
Idiot is an archaic term used from the turn of the century through the 1950s to denote an individual with mental retardation whose measured IQ fell below 25 or 30. It (...) was used comparatively with lesser degrees of retardation (i.e., imbecile and moron).
Madness
From Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850
Madness was a highly topical subject in Britain during the earlier years of the Romantic era.
Melancholia
From The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis
In his very first works between 1895 and 1897, Freud understood melancholia as a form of depression of variable intensity, linked to a loss of mental energy – he mainly drew on the popular theory of neurasthenia.
Neurasthenia
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Condition characterized by general lassitude, irritability, lack of concentration, worry, and hypochondria. The term was introduced into psychiatry in 1869 by George M. Beard, an American neurologist; he believed it to be a neurosis with a fatigue component.

Historical Theories

Humor
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
According to ancient theory, any of four bodily fluids that determined human health and temperament. Hippocrates postulated that an imbalance among the humors (blood, phlegm.
Individuation
From The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis
As a scientific term, this was used by Jung to describe the core concept of his psychological theory.
Mesmerism
From Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850
The physician Franz Anton Mesmer developed his theory of animal magnetism to account for his therapeutic successes in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Vienna and the agitated culture of prerevolutionary Paris (1778-84).
Phrenology
From The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
Phrenology, now an outmoded theory of personality, originated with the speculations of the physician-anatomist Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828).

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