A Brief History of Modern Psychology

By: Ludy T. Benjamin Jr.

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Synopsis: A Brief History of Modern Psychology is a clear and engaging account of scientific psychology’s origins, evolution, and related professional practice. With a reader-friendly narrative style, author Ludy Benjamin provides the historical and disciplinary context needed to appreciate the richness and complexity of contemporary psychology. Concise chapters apply biographical and historical context to individual psychologists while exploring pre-scientific psychology, physiology and psychophysics, early schools of German and American psychology, applied psychology, behaviorism, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, and more. Thoroughly revised and updated to reflect current scholarship in the field, the fourth edition of A Brief History of Modern Psychology contains new examinations of the connections between phrenology and modern neuroscience, the dangers and proliferation of bogus therapies, industrial psychology, eugenics, intelligence testing, sport psychology, and more. Expanded coverage includes Hermann von Helmholtz’s research on the speed of nerve conductance, Christine Ladd-Franklin’s theory of color vision, Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and its widespread influence on psychology, Sigmund Freud’s impact in America, Charles Henry Turner’s pioneering work in comparative psychology, and Evelyn Hooker’s work that led to the removal of “homosexuality” as a mental disorder from the DSM.