[0:00] That dream about the dinosaur in the leotard,
those times that you said that thing that
[0:04] you know you shouldn't have said, or even
that thing you didn't even know you were gonna
[0:08] say. The little cogs of your consciousness
cranking away, making your life possible,
[0:12] making society function, all of the things
that you're so glad you can do and all of
[0:17] the ones that you wish you could stop doing.
Excluding other human minds, your mind is
[0:21] the most complicated piece of the universe
that humans currently know about. The rules
[0:25] that govern it are mysterious and elusive.
Maybe our brains just aren't complex enough
[0:30] to understand themselves. But that's not going
to stop us from trying!
[0:34] The word 'psychology' comes from the Latin
for the "study of the soul." And while its
[0:38] formal definition has evolved over the last
several decades, today we can safely call
[0:43] it the science of behavior and mental processes.
The term 'psychology' wasn't coined until
[0:48] around the turn of the sixteenth century,
and the practice that we would actually call
[0:51] science today wasn't established until the
mid-1800s. But of course, humans have always
[0:56] been curious about themselves and what's going
on up here. Aristotle pondered the seed of
[1:01] human consciousness and decided that it was
in the heart, not the head -- being, as we
[1:05] have seen quite a lot here on Crash Course,
absolutely and completely wrong.
[1:09] Two thousand years ago, Chinese rulers conducted
the world's first psychological exams, requiring
[1:14] public officials to take personality and intelligence
tests. And in the late 800s, Persian doctor
[1:19] Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Rhazes, also known
as Rhazes, was one of the first to describe
[1:23] mental illness, and even treated patients
in what was essentially a very early psych
[1:28] ward in his Baghdad hospital.
[1:30] From the efforts of those early thinkers up
until today, the field of psychology has been
[1:34] all about tackling some of the big questions:
How can humans do horrible things like commit
[1:38] genocide and torture other humans, and how
come we know those things are horrible? Do
[1:42] we have free will, or are we simply driven
by our environment, biology, and non-conscious
[1:47] influences? What is mental illness, and what
can we do about it? And what is consciousness?
[1:52] Or the notion of self? If I lose my awareness
of myself, am I still human?
[1:57] I DON'T KNOW!
[1:58] But over the next 6 months, these are the
questions that we're gonna be exploring together:
[2:01] how our brains work, how they can break, how
they can be healed, why we behave the way
[2:05] we do, even when we don't want to, and what
it means to be thinking and feeling and alive.
[2:16] [Intro]
[2:21] When hearing the word psychology, most people
probably think of a therapist listening to
[2:25] a patient unpacking the details of his day
while reclining on a couch. Maybe that therapist
[2:29] is wearing glasses, chewing on a cigar, stroking
his whiskered chin.
[2:33] Admit it! If you're thinking about psychology,
you're probably picturing Freud.
[2:37] Sigmund Freud was one of the most tremendously
influential and controversial thinkers of
[2:40] his time, maybe of all time. His theories
helped build our views on childhood, personality,
[2:46] dreams and sexuality. And his work fueled
a legacy of both support and opposition.
[2:50] His life was long and spanned an important
swath of history from the American Civil War
[2:54] to World War II. But like most great scientists,
Freud developed his revolutionary ideas by
[2:58] building on the work of others, and of course
innovation in the field didn't stop with him.
[3:02] In truth, psychology is one of the most wildly
diverse sciences in terms of the questions
[3:07] it proposes, the methods it applies, and the
different schools of thought and disciplines
[3:11] it contains.
[3:12] Perhaps more than any other science, psychology
is just a big old integrated melting pot.
[3:16] For instance, right around Freud's time, there
were a lot of different schools of thought
[3:20] of about how the study of the human mind should
be tackled. Mainly, there were the ideas of
[3:25] structuralism, functionalism and psychoanalysis.
[3:28] Scientific psychology got its start in 1879
in Germany when physician Wilhelm Wundt set
[3:34] up the first psychology laboratory at the
University of Leipzig just a few years after
[3:38] publishing his Principles of Physiological
Psychology, considered the first true psychology
[3:44] textbook.
[3:45] Wundt and his student Edward Bradford Titchener
took cues from chemists and physicists and
[3:49] argued that if those people could break down
all matter into simple elements or structures,
[3:54] why couldn't they do the same for the brain?
[3:56] They tried to understand the structures of
consciousness by getting patients to look
[4:01] inward, asking them how they felt when they
watched the sun set, or smelled a coffee,
[4:06] or licked a kitten, or whatever.
[4:07] Titchener named this approach 'structuralism',
but despite its rigid sounding name, it really
[4:11] relied so much on introspection that it became
too subjective. I mean, you may sense and
[4:16] feel something different that I do, even if
we lick the same kitten. Psychologists, of
[4:20] course, can't actually observe a patient's
inner thoughts or feelings, so ultimately,
[4:25] the structuralist school of thought was fairly
short-lived.
[4:27] By contrast, American physician and philosopher
William James proposed a different set of
[4:32] questions, focusing on why we think and feel
and smell and lick, or whatever. Basically,
[4:38] he focused on the function of behavior. This
approach, 'functionalism', was based on Charles
[4:43] Darwin's idea that adaptive behaviors are
conserved throughout the evolutionary process.
[4:47] James published his seminal book, The Principles
of Psychology, in 1890, defining psychology
[4:52] as the science of mental life, just as Freud
was starting to flex his big brain.
[4:58] Sigmund Freud began his medical career at
a Viennese hospital, but in 1886, he started
[5:02] his own practice, specializing in nervous
disorders. During this time, Freud witnessed
[5:07] his colleague Josef Breuer treat a patient
called Anna O with a new talking cure. Basically,
[5:13] he just let her talk about her symptoms. The
more she talked and pulled up traumatic memories,
[5:18] the more her symptoms were reduced. It was
a breakthrough, and it changed Freud forever.
[5:23] From then on, Freud encouraged his patients
to talk freely about whatever came to mind,
[5:28] to free associate. This technique provided
the basis for his career, and an entire branch
[5:33] of psychology.
[5:34] In 1900 he published his book The Interpretation
of Dreams, where he introduced his theory
[5:39] of psychoanalysis. Now, you probably think
of psychoanalysis as a treatment -- the whole
[5:44] patient on the couch scenario. And that's
definitely part of it. But Freud's concept
[5:48] was actually a lot more complex than that,
and it was revolutionary.
[5:52] A radical kernel of psychoanalysis was the
theory that our personalities are shaped by
[5:57] unconscious motives. Basically Freud suggested
that we're all profoundly affected by mental
[6:02] processes that we're not even aware of.
[6:05] Now that sounds almost obvious to us now,
but part of the genius of Freud's theory was
[6:09] that in 1900, it wasn't obvious at all. The
idea that our minds could be driven by something
[6:14] that our minds themselves didn't know about
was hard to grasp. As hard as like, uhh, maybe
[6:20] organisms evolving by natural selection. It
was abstract, invisible, and there was something
[6:25] about it that seemed irrational.
[6:26] But the other important part of Freud's theory
was that the unconscious, literally the thing
[6:30] below consciousness, was still discoverable.
Even though you weren't aware of it, you could
[6:35] come to understand it through a therapeutic
technique that used dreams, projections and
[6:39] free association to root out repressed feelings
and and gain self-insight.
[6:44] So what Freud was really saying was that mental
disorders could be healed through talk therapy
[6:48] and self-discovery. And this was a really
big breakthrough. Because prior to this, people
[6:54] with mental illnesses would be confined to
sanatoriums and at best given menial labor
[6:58] to do and at worst, shackled to a bed frame.
[7:01] After The Interpretations of Dreams, Freud
went on to publish over 20 more books and
[7:05] countless papers with an iconic cigar in hand
all the while. He believed smoking helped
[7:10] him think, but it also helped him get jaw
cancer. During the last sixteen years of his
[7:14] life, he underwent at least thirty painful
operations while continuing to smoke.
[7:19] By the late 1930s, the Nazis had taken over
Austria, and Freud and his Jewish family narrowly
[7:24] escaped to England. By September 1939, the
pain in his cancerous jaw was too great and
[7:29] a doctor friend assisted him in suicide through
morphine injection. He was eighty-three.
[7:34] Whether you love him or hate him - and make
no mistake, plenty of people vehemently disagreed
[7:38] with him - there is no question that Freud's
impact on psychology was monumental. While
[7:43] competing theories in the young field of psychology
either fell away or evolved into something
[7:47] else, psychoanalysis remains an important
concept and practice today.
[7:51] The next big shake-up rolled in during the
first half of the 20th century when behaviorism
[7:55] gained a higher profile. Heavy hitters like
Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner
[8:00] were key players here. They focused on the
study of observable behavior. You may remember
[8:05] Skinner as the dude who put rats and pigeons
and babies in boxes and conditioned them to
[8:10] perform certain behaviors. Right around when
Freud escaped to England, Skinner published
[8:14] his Behavior of Organisms, ushering in the
era of behaviorism which remained all the
[8:19] rage well into the 1960s.
[8:21] The other major force at the time was, of
course, Freud's psychoanalysis, and its many
[8:25] descendents collectively known as the psychodynamic
theories. These focused on the importance
[8:30] of early experiences in shaping the unconsciousness
and how that process affects our thoughts,
[8:35] feelings, behaviors, and personalities.
[8:37] By the mid-20th century, other major forces
in psychology were also brewing -- schools
[8:41] we'll explore later in this course including
humanist psychology, which focuses on nurturing
[8:46] personal growth; cognitive science and neuroscience,
all of which contributed their own unique
[8:51] takes on the study of mind.
[8:53] Today's formal definition of psychology, the
study of behavior and mental processes, is
[8:57] a nice amalgamation that pulls from all these
different schools of thought. It recognizes
[9:02] the need for observing and recording behavior,
whether that's screaming, crying or playing
[9:06] air saxophone to an imaginary audience, but
it also gives credit to our mental processes:
[9:11] what we think and feel and believe while we're
tearing it up on our invisible instruments.
[9:15] Because again, the point I really want you
to take home is that psychology is an integrative
[9:20] science. Yes, folks still get grumpy and disagree
plenty, but the essence of the discipline
[9:24] has everything to do with creating different
ways of asking interesting questions and attempting
[9:29] to answer them through all kinds of data-gathering
methods. The human mind is complicated. There
[9:34] is no single way to effectively crack it open;
it must be pried at from all sides.
[9:40] Harvard astronomer Owen Gingerich has gazed
into the distant horizon of space, and even
[9:44] he has acknowledged that the human brain is
by far the most complex physical object known
[9:49] to us in the entire cosmos. And we all get
to have one! Of our very own! Just knocking
[9:55] around right up in here.
[9:56] We here at Crash Course are really excited
to spend the next several months delving into
[9:59] the world of psychology -- how it applies
to our lives, our minds, and our hearts, and
[10:04] how it deepens our understanding of each other,
our world, and ourselves.
[10:08] Thanks for watching this first lesson in Crash
Course Psychology, and I'd like to especially
[10:12] thank all of our Subbable subscribers, without
whom we would literally not be able to do
[10:17] this. Would you like a personalized signed
Crash Course Chemistry Periodic Table, or
[10:22] even to see yourself animated in one of our
episodes? To find out about these and other
[10:26] perks, go to Subbable.com/CrashCourse.
[10:28] And thanks to our crew. This episode was written
by Kathleen Yale and edited by Blake de Pastino.
[10:33] Our psychology consultant is Dr. Ranjit Bhagwat,
our director and editor is Nicholas Jenkins.
[10:38] The script supervisor was Michael Aranda who
was also our sound designer, and our graphic
[10:42] team is Thought Cafe.