What does the history of psychology teach us about the development of theories?

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I have to write an essay about the history of psychology since its emergence as a discipline in the late 19th century and how studying the history teaches us about the development of theories in psychology. I don't really know where to start. An example was to highlight the shift between behaviourism to cognitivism, but as this was an example, i would prefer to study something else. I need to talk about the kinds of history that can be produced but also their uses. Any ideas?

-- Beth Hayes (bethmhayes@hotmail.com), November 29, 2001

Answers

The possibilities are endless. I myself find it interesting to think about how "clinical" theories shifted from individualistic to interpersonal in the work of Harry Stack Sullivan and his followers, and today we have many "interpersonal psychologies" as well as "family psychologies" that counter individualism. One could do a critical history that argues how such theories are more relevant to real life; or one could do quantitative history, by examining the number of articles in certain journals represent individualistic approaches vs interpersonal approaches; one could do a citation analysis, looking at the number of citations of Sullivan's works; one could look at textbooks to see the relative amount of space devoted to Sullivan vs Freud. ...

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), November 30, 2001.

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