Pioneers of Psychology

Citation

Fancher, R. E., & Rutherford, A. (2016). Pioneers of Psychology (5th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.

Chapter Summary

A large textbook of about 768 pages that tells the history of psychology through the people who shaped it. The publisher describes it as illuminating major themes and controversies through "carefully crafted stories of real people, their personal journeys, and their intellectual insights", written by historians of psychology and covering roughly the past 400 years. The fifth edition added three chapters: one on how history is studied and why it matters, one on pre-1600 psychological ideas, and one on clinical psychology. The catalogue contents list seventeen parts, given below in order; the sources seen give the titles but not the chapter text, so the notes are limited to what the titles and the publisher's description show.

Introduction: Studying the history of psychology

The opening chapter, matching the publisher's note on a new historiography chapter, asks how history is studied and why it matters. It frames the biographical chapters that follow.

Foundational ideas from antiquity

This appears to be the new chapter on pre-1600 ideas. It gives the long prehistory of the discipline before the early modern philosophers.

Pioneering philosophers of mind: Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz

Three philosophers whose accounts of mind lie behind later psychology, presented together in one chapter.

Physiologists of mind: brain scientists from Gall to Penfield

The line of brain scientists from Gall to Penfield, tracing how ideas about the brain's role in mind developed.

The sensing and perceiving mind: from Kant through the Gestalt psychologists

From Kant through to the Gestalt psychologists, a chapter on theories of sensation and perception.

Wundt and the establishment of experimental psychology

Wilhelm Wundt and the founding of the experimental discipline.

The evolving mind: Darwin and his psychological legacy

Darwin's evolutionary thought and its consequences for psychology.

Measuring the mind: Galton and individual differences

Francis Galton and the measurement of individual differences.

American pioneers: James, Hall, Calkins, and Thorndike

Four figures in early American psychology, including Mary Whiton Calkins.

Psychology as the science of behavior: Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner

The behaviourist tradition from Pavlov through Watson to Skinner.

Social influence and social psychology: from Mesmer to Milgram and beyond

A route from Mesmer's ideas about influence to Milgram's obedience work and later social psychology.

Mind in conflict: Freudian psychoanalysis and its successors

Freud's psychoanalysis and the thinkers who followed him.

Psychology gets "personality": Allport, Maslow and the broadening field

The development of personality psychology and humanistic approaches.

The developing mind: Binet, Piaget, and the study of intelligence

Binet on intelligence testing and Piaget on cognitive development.

Minds, machines, and cognitive psychology

The rise of cognitive psychology and its relation to machines and computing.

Applying psychology: from the witness stand to the workplace

Applied psychology, from legal settings to work organisations.

The art and science of clinical psychology

The closing chapter, matching the publisher's note on a new clinical psychology chapter.

Key Concepts

Foundations to the founding of the laboratory

• Historiography: the study of how history is written, the subject of the opening chapter.
• Mind and brain: the thread running from the philosophers of mind through the physiologists.
• Experimental psychology: Wundt's laboratory discipline.

Schools and fields

• Evolution and individual differences: Darwin and Galton as sources of two major research traditions.
• Behaviourism: psychology as the science of behaviour.
• Psychoanalysis and personality: Freud, his successors, and personality theorists.
• Intelligence, cognition and application: Binet, Piaget, cognitive psychology, and applied and clinical psychology.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Biography as the organising device. Most chapter titles names the people it is about, so the book is easy to navigate by person, and the publisher's description presents the stories as the means of explaining themes and controversies.
• Written by professional historians of psychology. The publisher's description, reproduced in the Internet Archive catalogue record, says the book draws on up-to-date historical scholarship, and the fifth edition adds a chapter on historiography.
• Broad span. The contents run from antiquity through brain science, the founding laboratory, psychometrics, behaviourism, psychoanalysis, social, developmental, cognitive and applied psychology to clinical psychology.

Limitations

• Very long. With 768 pages (the Internet Archive record counts xli + 650 pages of text plus a 76-page back section), it is a full-course text rather than a quick survey, and the figure-by-figure format means topics that cross individuals can be spread over several chapters.
• Pioneer-centred. By design the narrative follows major named figures; readers wanting a history organised by schools or by social forces will find that a different book does this better (see below).
• Edition details vary by source. Catalogue records date the fifth edition 2017 while Norton UK lists 2016; check the printing before assigning page numbers.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the most substantial introductory narrative history in the course list, suited to a first full course in the history of psychology. Wertheimer and Puente's A Brief History of Psychology is a concise first text for readers who want a shorter overview, and Schultz and Schultz's A History of Modern Psychology is also concise but organised around the succession of schools of thought, using biography and excerpts from original writings.

Leahey's A Critical History of Psychology: From Antiquity to Modernity places the discipline's internal arguments alongside the social, economic and political forces around it, and Danziger's Constructing the Subject is a historical study of how psychological experiments came to be organised. Both suit a reader who has read a survey like Fancher and Rutherford and wants an argument. Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams is a primary source for the chapter on psychoanalysis.

How to Use This Book

An introductory psychology course helps, but no history background is needed. It suits undergraduates taking a history-of-psychology course and anyone who prefers to learn the discipline through stories of its founders.

A practical plan for a one-semester course: read the opening chapter on studying history first, then follow the chronological spine, from the philosophers through Wundt and the Darwinian and Galtonian traditions, to the American pioneers, behaviourism and psychoanalysis. The later chapters (personality, developmental, cognitive, applied and clinical) can be chosen according to interest or to match the rest of a psychology programme. For self-study, pick the chapters on the people or approaches you already meet in other courses, and use the primary sources named in the chapter titles to go further.