Rudolph Goclenius, a German scholastic philosopher, is credited with conceiving the term “psychology” in the 1590s. The word psychology comes from the Greek word psyche, which means “soul” or “spirit.” Earlier, psychology was also considered a study of the soul. Until the end of the 19th century, psychology was considered to be a part of philosophy.
In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt established a laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany mainly to pay attention to the study of psychology. Later on, William James published his book in 1890 entitled Principles of Psychology, which established a number of practicalities for the sort of questions that psychologists would focus on for years to come. Other important early contributors to the field included Hermann Ebbinghaus, who led the way in studies on memory, and the Russian Ivan Pavlov, who revealed the learning process of classical conditioning. In the meantime, Sigmund Freud, who was qualified as a neurologist and had no recognized training in experimental psychology, established a functional method of psychotherapy known as psychoanalysis.
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