that dream about the dinosaur in the leotard,those times that you said that thing that you know you shouldn't have said, or eventhat thing you didn't even know you were gonna say. the little cogs of your consciousnesscranking away, making your life possible, making society function, all of the thingsthat you're so glad you can do and all of the ones that you wish you could stop doing.excluding other human minds, your mind is the most complicated piece of the universethat humans currently know about. the rules that govern it are mysterious and elusive.maybe our brains just aren't complex enough to understand themselves. but that's not goingto stop us from trying! the word 'psychology' comes from the latinfor the "study of the soul." and while its
formal definition has evolved over the lastseveral decades, today we can safely call it the science of behavior and mental processes.the term 'psychology' wasn't coined until around the turn of the sixteenth century,and the practice that we would actually call science today wasn't established until themid-1800s. but of course, humans have always been curious about themselves and what's goingon up here. aristotle pondered the seed of human consciousness and decided that it wasin the heart, not the head -- being, as we have seen quite a lot here on crash course,absolutely and completely wrong. two thousand years ago, chinese rulers conductedthe world's first psychological exams, requiring public officials to take personality and intelligencetests. and in the late 800s, persian doctor
muhammad ibn zakariya al-rhazes, also knownas rhazes, was one of the first to describe mental illness, and even treated patientsin what was essentially a very early psych ward in his baghdad hospital. from the efforts of those early thinkers upuntil today, the field of psychology has been all about tackling some of the big questions:how can humans do horrible things like commit genocide and torture other humans, and howcome we know those things are horrible? do we have free will, or are we simply drivenby our environment, biology, and non-conscious influences? what is mental illness, and whatcan we do about it? and what is consciousness? or the notion of self? if i lose my awarenessof myself, am i still human?
i don't know! but over the next 6 months, these are thequestions that we're gonna be exploring together: how our brains work, how they can break, howthey can be healed, why we behave the way we do, even when we don't want to, and whatit means to be thinking and feeling and alive. [intro] when hearing the word psychology, most peopleprobably think of a therapist listening to a patient unpacking the details of his daywhile reclining on a couch. maybe that therapist is wearing glasses, chewing on a cigar, strokinghis whiskered chin. admit it! if you're thinking about psychology,you're probably picturing freud.
sigmund freud was one of the most tremendouslyinfluential and controversial thinkers of his time, maybe of all time. his theorieshelped build our views on childhood, personality, dreams and sexuality. and his work fueleda legacy of both support and opposition. his life was long and spanned an importantswath of history from the american civil war to world war ii. but like most great scientists,freud developed his revolutionary ideas by building on the work of others, and of courseinnovation in the field didn't stop with him. in truth, psychology is one of the most wildlydiverse sciences in terms of the questions it proposes, the methods it applies, and thedifferent schools of thought and disciplines it contains.
perhaps more than any other science, psychologyis just a big old integrated melting pot. for instance, right around freud's time, therewere a lot of different schools of thought of about how the study of the human mind shouldbe tackled. mainly, there were the ideas of structuralism, functionalism and psychoanalysis. scientific psychology got its start in 1879in germany when physician wilhelm wundt set up the first psychology laboratory at theuniversity of leipzig just a few years after publishing his principles of physiologicalpsychology, considered the first true psychology textbook. wundt and his student edward bradford titchenertook cues from chemists and physicists and
argued that if those people could break downall matter into simple elements or structures, why couldn't they do the same for the brain? they tried to understand the structures ofconsciousness by getting patients to look inward, asking them how they felt when theywatched the sun set, or smelled a coffee, or licked a kitten, or whatever. titchener named this approach 'structuralism',but despite its rigid sounding name, it really relied so much on introspection that it becametoo subjective. i mean, you may sense and feel something different that i do, even ifwe lick the same kitten. psychologists, of course, can't actually observe a patient'sinner thoughts or feelings, so ultimately,
the structuralist school of thought was fairlyshort-lived. by contrast, american physician and philosopherwilliam james proposed a different set of questions, focusing on why we think and feeland smell and lick, or whatever. basically, he focused on the function of behavior. thisapproach, 'functionalism', was based on charles darwin's idea that adaptive behaviors areconserved throughout the evolutionary process. james published his seminal book, the principlesof psychology, in 1890, defining psychology as the science of mental life, just as freudwas starting to flex his big brain. sigmund freud began his medical career ata viennese hospital, but in 1886, he started his own practice, specializing in nervousdisorders. during this time, freud witnessed
his colleague josef breuer treat a patientcalled anna o with a new talking cure. basically, he just let her talk about her symptoms. themore she talked and pulled up traumatic memories, the more her symptoms were reduced. it wasa breakthrough, and it changed freud forever. from then on, freud encouraged his patientsto talk freely about whatever came to mind, to free associate. this technique providedthe basis for his career, and an entire branch of psychology. in 1900 he published his book the interpretationof dreams, where he introduced his theory of psychoanalysis. now, you probably thinkof psychoanalysis as a treatment -- the whole patient on the couch scenario. and that'sdefinitely part of it. but freud's concept
was actually a lot more complex than that,and it was revolutionary. a radical kernel of psychoanalysis was thetheory that our personalities are shaped by unconscious motives. basically freud suggestedthat we're all profoundly affected by mental processes that we're not even aware of. now that sounds almost obvious to us now,but part of the genius of freud's theory was that in 1900, it wasn't obvious at all. theidea that our minds could be driven by something that our minds themselves didn't know aboutwas hard to grasp. as hard as like, uhh, maybe organisms evolving by natural selection. itwas abstract, invisible, and there was something about it that seemed irrational.
but the other important part of freud's theorywas that the unconscious, literally the thing below consciousness, was still discoverable.even though you weren't aware of it, you could come to understand it through a therapeutictechnique that used dreams, projections and free association to root out repressed feelingsand and gain self-insight. so what freud was really saying was that mentaldisorders could be healed through talk therapy and self-discovery. and this was a reallybig breakthrough. because prior to this, people with mental illnesses would be confined tosanatoriums and at best given menial labor to do and at worst, shackled to a bed frame. after the interpretations of dreams, freudwent on to publish over 20 more books and
countless papers with an iconic cigar in handall the while. he believed smoking helped him think, but it also helped him get jawcancer. during the last sixteen years of his life, he underwent at least thirty painfuloperations while continuing to smoke. by the late 1930s, the nazis had taken overaustria, and freud and his jewish family narrowly escaped to england. by september 1939, thepain in his cancerous jaw was too great and a doctor friend assisted him in suicide throughmorphine injection. he was eighty-three. whether you love him or hate him - and makeno mistake, plenty of people vehemently disagreed with him - there is no question that freud'simpact on psychology was monumental. while competing theories in the young field of psychologyeither fell away or evolved into something
else, psychoanalysis remains an importantconcept and practice today. the next big shake-up rolled in during thefirst half of the 20th century when behaviorism gained a higher profile. heavy hitters likeivan pavlov, john b. watson, and b. f. skinner were key players here. they focused on thestudy of observable behavior. you may remember skinner as the dude who put rats and pigeonsand babies in boxes and conditioned them to perform certain behaviors. right around whenfreud escaped to england, skinner published his behavior of organisms, ushering in theera of behaviorism which remained all the rage well into the 1960s. the other major force at the time was, ofcourse, freud's psychoanalysis, and its many
descendents collectively known as the psychodynamictheories. these focused on the importance of early experiences in shaping the unconsciousnessand how that process affects our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and personalities. by the mid-20th century, other major forcesin psychology were also brewing -- schools we'll explore later in this course includinghumanist psychology, which focuses on nurturing personal growth; cognitive science and neuroscience,all of which contributed their own unique takes on the study of mind. today's formal definition of psychology, thestudy of behavior and mental processes, is a nice amalgamation that pulls from all thesedifferent schools of thought. it recognizes
the need for observing and recording behavior,whether that's screaming, crying or playing air saxophone to an imaginary audience, butit also gives credit to our mental processes: what we think and feel and believe while we'retearing it up on our invisible instruments. because again, the point i really want youto take home is that psychology is an integrative science. yes, folks still get grumpy and disagreeplenty, but the essence of the discipline has everything to do with creating differentways of asking interesting questions and attempting to answer them through all kinds of data-gatheringmethods. the human mind is complicated. there is no single way to effectively crack it open;it must be pried at from all sides. harvard astronomer owen gingerich has gazedinto the distant horizon of space, and even
he has acknowledged that the human brain isby far the most complex physical object known to us in the entire cosmos. and we all getto have one! of our very own! just knocking around right up in here. we here at crash course are really excitedto spend the next several months delving into the world of psychology -- how it appliesto our lives, our minds, and our hearts, and how it deepens our understanding of each other,our world, and ourselves. thanks for watching this first lesson in crashcourse psychology, and i'd like to especially thank all of our subbable subscribers, withoutwhom we would literally not be able to do this. would you like a personalized signedcrash course chemistry periodic table, or
even to see yourself animated in one of ourepisodes? to find out about these and other perks, go to subbable.com/crashcourse. and thanks to our crew. this episode was writtenby kathleen yale and edited by blake de pastino. our psychology consultant is dr. ranjit bhagwat,our director and editor is nicholas jenkins. the script supervisor was michael aranda whowas also our sound designer, and our graphic team is thought cafe.
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