---
title: "History of psychology"
chunk: 15/15
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:20.149396+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Soviet Marxist psychology ==
In the early twentieth century, Ivan Pavlov's behavioral and conditioning experiments became the most internationally recognized Russian achievements. With the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922, Marxism was introduced as an overall philosophical and methodological framework in scientific research. In 1920s, state ideology promoted a tendency to the psychology of Bekhterev's reflexologist reductionism in its Marxist interpretation and to historical materialism, while idealistic philosophers and psychologists were harshly criticized. Another variation of Marxist version of psychology that got popularity mostly in Moscow and centered in the local Institute of Psychology was Konstantin Kornilov's (the Director of this Institute) reactology that became the main view, besides a small group of the members of the Vygotsky-Luria Circle that, besides its namesakes Lev Vygotsky, and Alexander Luria, included Bluma Zeigarnik, Alexei Leontiev and others, and in 1920s embraced a deterministic "instrumental psychology" version of Cultural-historical psychology. Many works by Vygotsky were not published chronologically because of Soviet censorship but primarily because of Vygotsky's failure to build a consistent psychological theory of consciousness,
A few attempts were made in 1920s at formulating the core of theoretical framework of the "genuinely Marxist" psychology, but all these failed and were characterized in early 1930s as either right- or left-wing deviations of reductionist "mechanicism" or "menshevising idealism". It was Sergei Rubinstein in mid 1930s, who formulated the key principles, on which the entire Soviet variation of Marxist psychology would be based, and, thus become the genuine pioneer and the founder of this psychological discipline in the Marxist disguise in the Soviet Union.
In late 1940s-early 1950s, Lysenkoism somewhat affected Russian psychology, yet gave it a considerable impulse for a reaction and unification that resulted in institutional and disciplinary integration of psychological community in the postwar Soviet Union.

== Cognitivism ==

Noam Chomsky's (1959) review of Skinner's book Verbal Behavior (which aimed to explain language acquisition in a behaviorist framework) is considered one of the major theoretical challenges to the type of radical (as in 'root') behaviorism that Skinner taught. Chomsky claimed that language could not be learned solely from the sort of operant conditioning that Skinner postulated. Chomsky argued that people could produce an infinite variety of sentences unique in structure and meaning and that these could not possibly be generated solely through the experience of natural language. As an alternative, he concluded that there must be internal mental structures – states of mind of the sort that behaviorism rejected as illusory. The issue is not whether mental activities exist; it is whether they can be shown to be the causes of behavior. Similarly, the work by Albert Bandura showed that children could learn by social observation, without any change in overt behaviour, and so must (according to him) be accounted for by internal representations.
The rise of computer technology also promoted the metaphor of mental function as information processing. This, combined with a scientific approach to studying the mind, as well as a belief in internal mental states, led to the rise of cognitivism as the dominant model of the mind.
Links between brain and nervous system function were also becoming common, partly due to the experimental work of people like Charles Sherrington and Donald Hebb, and partly due to studies of people with brain injury (see cognitive neuropsychology). With the development of technologies for accurately measuring brain function, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience have become some of the most active areas in contemporary psychology.
With the increasing involvement of other disciplines (such as philosophy, computer science, and neuroscience) in the quest to understand the mind, the umbrella discipline of cognitive science has been created as a means of focusing such efforts constructively.

== Scholarly journals ==
There are three "primary journals" where specialist histories of psychology are published:

History of Psychology (journal)
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
History of the Human Sciences
In addition, there are a large number of "friendly journals" where historical material can often be found.Burman, J. T. (2018). "What Is History of Psychology? Network Analysis of Journal Citation Reports, 2009-2015". SAGE Open. 8 (1) 2158244018763005: 215824401876300. doi:10.1177/2158244018763005. These are discussed in History of Psychology (discipline).

== See also ==

== Notes ==

== References ==

== External links ==

=== Scholarly societies and associations ===
Cheiron: The International Society for the History of Behavioral & Social Sciences
European Society for the History of the Human Sciences
Forum for the History of Human Science
History & Philosophy Section of the British Psychological Society
History & Philosophy of Psychology Section of the Canadian Psychological Association
Society for the History of Psychology (American Psychological Association Division 26)

=== Internet resources ===
History of Psychology History of Psychology - Poster with visual overview.

==== E-textbooks ====
The History of Psychology - e-text about the historical and philosophical background of psychology by C. George Boeree
Mind and Body: René Descartes to William James e-text by Robert H. Wozniak
History of Psychology Textbook Chapter Archived 2019-10-23 at the Wayback Machine
Gerhard Medicus (2017). Being Human – Bridging the Gap between the Sciences of Body and Mind, Berlin VWB

==== Collections of primary source texts ====
Classics in the History of Psychology - on-line full texts of 250+ historically significant primary source articles, chapters, & books, ed. by Christopher D. Green
Fondation Jean Piaget - Collection of primary sources by, and secondary sources about, Jean Piaget (in French; edited by Jean-Jacques Ducret and Wolfgang Schachner)
The Mead Project - collection of writings by George Herbert Mead and other related thinkers (e.g., Dewey, James, Baldwin, Cooley, Veblen, Sapir), ed. by Lloyd Gordon Ward and Robert Throop
Sir Francis Galton, F.R.S.
William James Site Archived 2008-11-05 at the Wayback Machine ed. by Frank Pajares
History of Phrenology on the Web ed. by John van Wyhe
Frederic Bartlett Archive - A collection of Bartlett's own writings and related material maintained by Humboldt Prize Winner Professor Brady Wagoner (University of Aalborg), the late Professor Gerard Duveen (University of Cambridge) and Professor Alex Gillespie (LSE)

==== Collections of secondary scholarship on the history of psychology ====
History & Theory of Psychology Eprint Archive - Open access on-line depository of articles on the history and theory of psychology
Advances in the History of Psychology - Blog edited by Jeremy Burman of York University (Toronto, Canada), advised by Christopher D. Green

==== Websites of physical archives ====
The Archives of the History of American Psychology - Large collection of documents and objects at the University of Akron, directed by David Baker
Archives of the American Psychological Association directed by Wade Pickren
Archives of the British Psychological Society

==== Multimedia resources ====
An Academy in Crisis: The Hiring of James Mark Baldwin and James Gibson Hume at the University of Toronto in 1889 - 40-min. video documentary by Christopher D. Green
Toward a School of Their Own: The Prehistory of American Functionalist Psychology - 64-min. video documentary by Christopher D. Green
This Week in the History of Psychology - 30-episode podcast series by Christopher D. Green