A history of psychology through its questions about the mind

Asaṅga and Vasubandhu

Yogācāra · India, c. 4th to 5th century CE

Yogācāra develops a model of eight consciousnesses, in which ālaya-vijñāna is often rendered "storehouse consciousness" or "foundational consciousness", while manas is tied to self-grasping. The system describes how experience, habitual tendencies and cognition together construct the world as it is lived.

Do not equate ālaya-vijñāna with the Freudian unconscious, or with a "hard drive" storing memories in a neuroscientific sense. These belong to different metaphysical and soteriological frameworks.

Wilhelm Wundt

Experimental psychology · 1832-1920, Leipzig laboratory 1879

Wundt founded the first laboratory devoted specifically to psychological research at the University of Leipzig, trained a generation of researchers, and established psychology as a discipline with methods of its own. He used controlled introspection under experimental conditions to examine immediate conscious experience, such as sensation and reaction time.

The label "father of psychology" is a simplification. Wundt himself held that higher mental processes such as language, myth and custom could not be studied experimentally, and spent years writing Völkerpsychologie to approach them by other methods. Introspection was later heavily criticised by behaviourism and largely abandoned in experimental psychology.

Contested hypothesis

Julian Jaynes

1920-1997 · The Origin of Consciousness (1976)

The bicameral mind theory proposes that introspection may have developed relatively late, and that ancient people experienced "voices" as commands coming from outside.

This is a fascinating interdisciplinary hypothesis, but it is not accepted as consensus in neuroscience, archaeology or the psychology of consciousness.

Gustave Le Bon

Early social psychology · 1841-1931, The Crowd (1895)

Le Bon popularised an influential theory of crowds: anonymity, emotional contagion and suggestibility can alter individual behaviour.

The claim that crowds are "inevitably stupid and violent" reflects Le Bon's own period prejudices, not the conclusions of contemporary crowd psychology. Modern research emphasises social identity, norms and context.

Sigmund Freud

Psychoanalysis · 1856-1939

The structural model of Id, Ego and Superego describes conflict between drive, adjustment to reality and the internalising of norms. Freud also emphasised the role of early experience and unconscious processes.

The "iceberg" is a popular illustration, not the whole theory. Thanatos appears later (1920), while the Id, Ego and Superego model was systematised in 1923. Many Freudian propositions are not supported empirically by modern standards.

Alfred Adler

Individual psychology · 1870-1937

Adler emphasised purposiveness, lifestyle, feelings of inferiority and the striving for growth. He held that people are interpreting, goal-directed agents rather than merely pushed along by their past.

Social feeling (Gemeinschaftsgefühl) is a central ethical and developmental criterion in Adler's system, not a standardised clinical measure.

Carl Jung

Analytical psychology · 1875-1961

Jung introduced persona, shadow, the archetypes and individuation, a process oriented toward integrating psychological life. These ideas remain influential in depth therapy, culture and art criticism.

The "collective unconscious" and the archetypes do not have the status of demonstrated neural structures. Read them as a framework for interpreting symbols, not as a biological map of the brain.

B. F. Skinner

Behaviourism · 1904-1990

Skinner developed operant conditioning: the consequences of behaviour, such as reinforcement and extinction, change the probability of that behaviour in future. This work underpins applied behaviour analysis.

He criticised metaphysical conceptions of free will, but research on conditioning does not "prove" that human beings are machines without choice.

Viktor Frankl

Existential and logotherapy · 1905-1997

After surviving imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps, Frankl developed logotherapy: a person can find or create meaning even within adversity, and retains a margin of freedom in their attitude.

Meaning is the philosophical and therapeutic pillar of Frankl's work. It should not be used to imply that people who are suffering are at fault for "not having found meaning".

Abraham Maslow

Humanistic psychology · 1908-1970

Maslow studied motivation, needs and self-actualisation, helping bring positive qualities and human potential into psychology.

The "pyramid of needs" is a later popularisation, not a diagram Maslow drew. The rigidity of the hierarchy and its claimed universality face substantial cross-cultural criticism.

Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg

Self psychology, object relations · Kohut 1913-1981, Kernberg born 1928

Kohut described "selfobject" needs and the development of the self. Kernberg studied borderline personality organisation, object relations and narcissistic pathology. The two proposed different models of pathological narcissism.

These are psychodynamic theories, not the only explanation nor a verdict on anyone with narcissistic traits. Diagnosing narcissistic personality disorder requires careful clinical assessment, not inference from isolated behaviour.

Albert Ellis

REBT, forerunner of CBT · 1913-2007

Ellis's rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT), with its A, B, C framework, stresses that interpretation and belief contribute to emotional and behavioural consequences, not the event alone.

The A, B, C framework does not mean emotions are always a "thinking error". Biology, society, trauma and real circumstances all matter. Modern CBT also has other branches, with Aaron Beck as another founding figure.

Aaron T. Beck

Cognitive therapy, foundation of CBT · 1921-2021

Beck trained as a psychoanalyst, but his empirical research on depression did not match that theory's predictions. From there he built the cognitive model: automatic thoughts, distorted thinking patterns and core beliefs help maintain distress. He developed the thought record, the tool the thought journal in An Nhịp descends from, along with measures such as the BDI and BAI.

The cognitive model does not imply that emotions are merely "thinking errors". Beck himself stressed the role of biology, life circumstances and trauma. CBT has a strong evidence base for anxiety and depression, but it does not work for everyone and does not replace professional assessment and treatment where those are needed.

Daniel Kahneman

Judgment and decision making · 1934-2024

With Amos Tversky, Kahneman clarified the heuristics and biases at work in judgment. The vocabulary of System 1, fast and automatic, and System 2, slow and effortful, is a highly useful descriptive tool.

The two "systems" are not two separate brain regions, and the story that "reason is merely the secretary of emotion" is a metaphor stretched well beyond the actual research.

Contested

Steven Pinker and Robert Sapolsky

Evolution, neurobiology · Pinker born 1954, Sapolsky born 1957

Both helped popularise a way of seeing behaviour across layers of time: developmental, endocrine, neural, social and evolutionary. Sapolsky argues for a strong determinist position, while Pinker is prominent in evolutionary psychology, language and cognitive science.

Do not collapse these two authors into a single stance that "rejects free will". The free will question remains a philosophical and scientific debate. A biological explanation does not automatically erase responsibility, the capacity for change, or the influence of environment.

Judson Brewer

Mindfulness and neuroscience · physician and mindfulness researcher

Brewer studies habit, addiction, mindfulness and brain networks, including the Default Mode Network (DMN). His work has helped bring the experience of mindfulness into dialogue with neuroscience.

There is no conclusion that "non-self" is a simple physical disconnection of the DMN. Neuroimaging results are correlational and method-dependent. Meditative experience cannot be reduced to a single brain network.