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  • That dream about the dinosaur in the leotard, those times that you said that thing that

  • you know you shouldn't have said, or even that thing you didn't even know you were gonna

  • say. The little cogs of your consciousness cranking away, making your life possible,

  • making society function, all of the things that 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 universe that 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 going to stop us from trying!

  • The word 'psychology' comes from the Latin for the "study of the soul." And while its

  • formal definition has evolved over the last several 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 the mid-1800s. But of course, humans have always

  • been curious about themselves and what's going on up here. Aristotle pondered the seed of

  • human consciousness and decided that it was in 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 conducted the world's first psychological exams, requiring

  • public officials to take personality and intelligence tests. And in the late 800s, Persian doctor

  • Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Rhazes, also known as Rhazes, was one of the first to describe

  • mental illness, and even treated patients in what was essentially a very early psych

  • ward in his Baghdad hospital.

  • From the efforts of those early thinkers up until 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 how come we know those things are horrible? Do

  • we have free will, or are we simply driven by our environment, biology, and non-conscious

  • influences? What is mental illness, and what can we do about it? And what is consciousness?

  • Or the notion of self? If I lose my awareness of myself, am I still human?

  • I DON'T KNOW!

  • But over the next 6 months, these are the questions that we're gonna be exploring together:

  • how our brains work, how they can break, how they can be healed, why we behave the way

  • we do, even when we don't want to, and what it means to be thinking and feeling and alive.

  • [Intro]

  • When hearing the word psychology, most people probably think of a therapist listening to

  • a patient unpacking the details of his day while reclining on a couch. Maybe that therapist

  • is wearing glasses, chewing on a cigar, stroking his whiskered chin.

  • Admit it! If you're thinking about psychology, you're probably picturing Freud.

  • Sigmund Freud was one of the most tremendously influential and controversial thinkers of

  • his time, maybe of all time. His theories helped build our views on childhood, personality,

  • dreams and sexuality. And his work fueled a legacy of both support and opposition.

  • His life was long and spanned an important swath 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 course innovation in the field didn't stop with him.

  • In truth, psychology is one of the most wildly diverse sciences in terms of the questions

  • it proposes, the methods it applies, and the different schools of thought and disciplines

  • it contains.

  • Perhaps more than any other science, psychology is just a big old integrated melting pot.

  • For instance, right around Freud's time, there were a lot of different schools of thought

  • of about how the study of the human mind should be tackled. Mainly, there were the ideas of

  • structuralism, functionalism and psychoanalysis.

  • Scientific psychology got its start in 1879 in Germany when physician Wilhelm Wundt set

  • up the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig just a few years after

  • publishing his Principles of Physiological Psychology, considered the first true psychology

  • textbook.

  • Wundt and his student Edward Bradford Titchener took cues from chemists and physicists and

  • argued that if those people could break down all matter into simple elements or structures,

  • why couldn't they do the same for the brain?

  • They tried to understand the structures of consciousness by getting patients to look

  • inward, asking them how they felt when they watched 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 became too subjective. I mean, you may sense and

  • feel something different that I do, even if we lick the same kitten. Psychologists, of

  • course, can't actually observe a patient's inner thoughts or feelings, so ultimately,

  • the structuralist school of thought was fairly short-lived.

  • By contrast, American physician and philosopher William James proposed a different set of

  • questions, focusing on why we think and feel and smell and lick, or whatever. Basically,

  • he focused on the function of behavior. This approach, 'functionalism', was based on Charles

  • Darwin's idea that adaptive behaviors are conserved throughout the evolutionary process.

  • James published his seminal book, The Principles of Psychology, in 1890, defining psychology

  • as the science of mental life, just as Freud was starting to flex his big brain.

  • Sigmund Freud began his medical career at a Viennese hospital, but in 1886, he started

  • his own practice, specializing in nervous disorders. During this time, Freud witnessed

  • his colleague Josef Breuer treat a patient called Anna O with a new talking cure. Basically,

  • he just let her talk about her symptoms. The more she talked and pulled up traumatic memories,

  • the more her symptoms were reduced. It was a breakthrough, and it changed Freud forever.

  • From then on, Freud encouraged his patients to talk freely about whatever came to mind,

  • to free associate. This technique provided the basis for his career, and an entire branch

  • of psychology.

  • In 1900 he published his book The Interpretation of Dreams, where he introduced his theory

  • of psychoanalysis. Now, you probably think of psychoanalysis as a treatment -- the whole

  • patient on the couch scenario. And that's definitely 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 the theory that our personalities are shaped by

  • unconscious motives. Basically Freud suggested that 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. The idea that our minds could be driven by something

  • that our minds themselves didn't know about was hard to grasp. As hard as like, uhh, maybe

  • organisms evolving by natural selection. It was abstract, invisible, and there was something

  • about it that seemed irrational.

  • But the other important part of Freud's theory was 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 therapeutic technique that used dreams, projections and

  • free association to root out repressed feelings and and gain self-insight.

  • So what Freud was really saying was that mental disorders could be healed through talk therapy

  • and self-discovery. And this was a really big breakthrough. Because prior to this, people

  • with mental illnesses would be confined to sanatoriums and at best given menial labor

  • to do and at worst, shackled to a bed frame.

  • After The Interpretations of Dreams, Freud went on to publish over 20 more books and

  • countless papers with an iconic cigar in hand all the while. He believed smoking helped

  • him think, but it also helped him get jaw cancer. During the last sixteen years of his

  • life, he underwent at least thirty painful operations while continuing to smoke.

  • By the late 1930s, the Nazis had taken over Austria, and Freud and his Jewish family narrowly

  • escaped to England. By September 1939, the pain in his cancerous jaw was too great and

  • a doctor friend assisted him in suicide through morphine injection. He was eighty-three.

  • Whether you love him or hate him - and make no mistake, plenty of people vehemently disagreed

  • with him - there is no question that Freud's impact on psychology was monumental. While

  • competing theories in the young field of psychology either fell away or evolved into something

  • else, psychoanalysis remains an important concept and practice today.

  • The next big shake-up rolled in during the first half of the 20th century when behaviorism

  • gained a higher profile. Heavy hitters like Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner

  • were key players here. They focused on the study of observable behavior. You may remember

  • Skinner as the dude who put rats and pigeons and babies in boxes and conditioned them to

  • perform certain behaviors. Right around when Freud escaped to England, Skinner published

  • his Behavior of Organisms, ushering in the era of behaviorism which remained all the

  • rage well into the 1960s.

  • The other major force at the time was, of course, Freud's psychoanalysis, and its many

  • descendents collectively known as the psychodynamic theories. These focused on the importance

  • of early experiences in shaping the unconsciousness and how that process affects our thoughts,

  • feelings, behaviors, and personalities.

  • By the mid-20th century, other major forces in psychology were also brewing -- schools

  • we'll explore later in this course including humanist 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, the study of behavior and mental processes, is

  • a nice amalgamation that pulls from all these different 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, but it also gives credit to our mental processes:

  • what we think and feel and believe while we're tearing it up on our invisible instruments.

  • Because again, the point I really want you to take home is that psychology is an integrative

  • science. Yes, folks still get grumpy and disagree plenty, but the essence of the discipline

  • has everything to do with creating different ways of asking interesting questions and attempting

  • to answer them through all kinds of data-gathering methods. 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 gazed into the distant horizon of space, and even

  • he has acknowledged that the human brain is by far the most complex physical object known

  • to us in the entire cosmos. And we all get to have one! Of our very own! Just knocking

  • around right up in here.

  • We here at Crash Course are really excited to spend the next several months delving into

  • the world of psychology -- how it applies to 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 Crash Course Psychology, and I'd like to especially

  • thank all of our Subbable subscribers, without whom we would literally not be able to do

  • this. Would you like a personalized signed Crash Course Chemistry Periodic Table, or

  • even to see yourself animated in one of our episodes? To find out about these and other

  • perks, go to Subbable.com/CrashCourse.

  • And thanks to our crew. This episode was written by 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 who was also our sound designer, and our graphic

  • team is Thought Cafe.

That dream about the dinosaur in the leotard, those times that you said that thing that

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