History of Psychology Lectures

Please find all of my lectures from a History of Psychology class that I taught in graduate school. While prepping for the course, I struggled to find really any lecture materials that I wanted to use for my class (it is probably that I just wanted to teach the class in a different way). Therefore, I wanted to post them online for anyone to use.

I don't claim that they are the best lectures, but I tried my best to create lectures that were accurate and contained what I thought was the most important information for students to hear (of course, history is always interpreted through the eyes of whoever is writing it, so I know that there is bias in my lectures).

In my class, I taught it as a hybrid history of psychology and history/philosophy of science class. I did this because the students taking my class were pretty much all psychology majors and heard about a lot of the history of psychological thought in other classes. Therefore, I spent the first half of the class discussing the history of science up to Wundt, and the second half of the class from Wundt to modern day psychology.

While crafting my lectures, I try to put all of the material for a single section in one PowerPoint, so they are pretty long. Pretty much every lecture had enough material to cover 2 or 3 class meetings. However, feel free to break them up as you see fit.

My lectures come from two sources: first, much of the material came from John Greenwood's A Conceptual History of Psychology (Amazon link). While, in my opinion, this is more of a graduate-level book, I think he does a really good job of tracing the history of science before the formal development of psychology. Second, I received several lectures from Andrew Tungate, who was a graduate student in my department who taught the class before me.

Finally, please excuse typos, bad jokes, etc. Given the complexity of the material, and the fact that I am not an expert on the history of psychology (although, I wish I were), there is a high likelihood that I did not write something clearly, told a joke that wasn't funny, included a video that did not relate as well to the material as it could, etc. If you notice any typos/unclear wording, inconsistencies between lectures, Youtube link that is no longer valid, or just plain wrong information, please let me know, and I will update the lectures accordingly. I want these to be the best lectures that they can be!

If you do use these lectures, please shoot me an email letting me know! I love making new connections, and I'd love to get feedback from your students on how the material could be improved.

Here are the lectures:

Lecture 1 (Histiography): PPT

Lecture 2 (Science & Psychology): PPT

Lecture 3 (Ancient Greece): PPT

Lecture 4 (Rome & The Medieval Period): PPT

Lecture 5 (The Scientific Revolution): PPT

Lecture 6 (The Enlightenment): PPT

Lecture 7 (Physiology & Psychology): PPT

Lecture 8 (Evolution): PPT

Lecture 9 (Early German Psychology): PPT

Lecture 10 (Behaviorism): PPT

Lecture 11 (Psychoanalysis): PPT

Lecture 12 (Psychology between the World Wars): PPT

Lecture 13 (Neobehaviorism & Psychoanalysis): PPT

Lecture 14 (Humanistic & Cognitive Psychology): PPT