Learning About Famous Psychologists Throughout History

Many famous psychologists throughout history have changed the world's understanding of mental health and formed the basis of current psychological practice. Although psychologists are still studying, testing, and learning to improve their knowledge, their inspiration often comes from theories and therapeutic modalities developed centuries ago. Learning more about these famous psychologists from the past can allow you to learn more about how psychology works today. Below is a list of some of the most influential psychologists of the past two centuries and their contributions to our understanding of human psychology. 

"Pre-psychologists" and philosophers 

Famous psychologists throughout history

Marmaduke Sampson and the natural scientists 

Wilhelm Wundt and experimental psychology

William James and educational psychology

The German Gestalt psychologists

Two years after the death of James in 1910, the school of Gestalt Psychology took off in Germany. Meant to help people rather than study them, the Gestalt school was founded by famous psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler.

The idea for the school was based on the premise that an individual's perception of an event is more complicated than the event itself. Gestalt psychology encourages individuals to focus on their feelings about a topic and why they might be feeling that way while grounding themselves in the facts of what they perceived. It would become an essential forerunner of later psychoanalytic techniques.

Freud, Rorschach, and Jung: The early psychoanalysts

The psychoanalytic technique would be pioneered by Sigmund Freud and his student Carl Jung, two of the most famous psychologists, in the coming decades. Freud famously suggested that humans' actions and attitudes result from the unconscious mind – thoughts and feelings that they are unable or unwilling to confront directly. 

The idea of free association was further pioneered by Freud's contemporary, Hermann Rorschach of Switzerland. Rorschach's famous inkblot tests worked like Freud's word association but relied on inkblots to understand subconscious thought instead of words. 

Carl Jung studied under Freud and agreed that more was happening in the subconscious than in the conscious mind. His methods of interacting with and understanding the subconscious mind differed from Freud's. He suggested that dreams could serve to study the subconscious and could be interpreted with a standard dictionary of symbols. His theories, which he called analytical psychology, helped form the basis of psychodynamic therapy. 

John Watson and the behaviorists

While people like Freud, Rorschach, Jung, and Maslow were making considerable strides in psychology by recording and attempting to understand unseen processes of the mind, another school of psychology called "behaviorism" was developed to deal exclusively with what could be physically observed. Behaviorists often discounted subjective ideas like perception and dream interpretation.

One significant behaviorist is John Watson, who was primarily inspired by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, whose ideas reached the western world at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of Watson's most significant contributions involved learning about the physical changes of the brain during development. 

Another influential behaviorist was the famous psychologist B.F. Skinner. Skinner studied reinforcement in learning, believing it was most efficient when lessons were rewarded. His discoveries in social learning offered insight into how the mind handles tasks, demands, and rewards.

Jean Piaget, child development, and cognitive psychology

While behaviorists focused on how learning influences behavior, another branch of psychology called cognitive psychology was devoting itself to the same ideas. Cognitive psychology focuses on how our thoughts influence our behavior. 

One of the founders, Jean Piaget, was roughly contemporary with Skinner. Piaget studied under Jung briefly and conducted a study of errors in which he tried to determine the reason behind common mistakes. He also contributed to the field of developmental psychology, studying the process by which people comprehend significant ideas by starting with minor concepts and compounding them. Piaget developed an early theory of child development, positing that cognitive development occurs over the course of four stages. 

People like Piaget and Skinner were famous in the late twentieth century, within the living memory of many living individuals. Piaget’s theory of human development influenced many notable psychologists of the 20th century, including Lawrence Kohlberg. Kohlberg built on Piaget’s research when creating his stages of moral development.  

There are still great strides in psychology today, and thousands of psychologists have significantly contributed to the field. 

Other noteworthy and influential people from the 20th century include:

• Albert Bandura, a pioneer of social psychology. Albert Bandrua contributed to the development of social learning theory
• Anna Freud created psychoanalytic child psychology
• Carol Gilligan, who identified differences in moral reasoning between men and women
• Kurt Lewin contributed to Gestalt psychology and human behavior theories—and is considered the father of social psychology
• Gordon Allport, who is considered the father of personality psychology
• John Bowlby, who developed attachment theory
• Stanley Hall, who focused on child and educational psychology
• Albert Ellis, who created rational emotive behavior therapy and helped precipitate the cognitive revolutionary paradigm shift, leading to the development of cognitive behavioral therapies
• Stanley Milgram, who proved that people will act in ways that are incompatible with their values if given instruction by an authority figure
• Daniel Kahneman, who developed the theory of hedonic psychology 

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