Freud In Psychology

Chapter Two
2.1 Freud in the history of psychology To write about a beginning to the history of psychology, perhaps it will be wise to accept what the great German psychologist, Ebbinghaus (1903)said , “psychology has a long past, yet its real history is short.”
The field has a long past form part of the European intellectual tradition extending all the way back to the ancient Greeks. Jacques Lacan argues that “the notion of the ego has been developed over the centuries as much by those commonly known as philosophers.” In fact, Aristotle was the first philosopher to widely treat many topics that were later become part of psychology. Writing the first purely psychological papers, he framed explanations in terms of the assumed

Two events enhanced the popularity of this discipline. The first was in the beginning of the Romantic movement at the late decades of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth century. The second was when Philippe Pinel proposed a new, nonviolent approach to the care of mental patients. Pinel was a French psychiatrist and physician who provided a more humane psychological approach to the supervision and care of psychiatric patients, referred as moral treatment. His treatment came to be called «moral treatment», in the sense of social and psychological factors. He strongly argued for the humane treatment of mental patients, including a friendly interaction between doctor and patient. His treatment was marked by gentleness understanding, and kindness. Pinel expressed warm manner and respect for his patients and declared: “I cannot but give enthusiastic witness to their moral qualities. Never, except in romances, have I seen spouses more worthy to be cherished, more tender fathers, passionate lovers, purer or more magnanimous patriots, than I have seen in hospitals for the insane.

And there can be no doubt but that this has been the chief attraction of the theory for most of its advocates since then - on the face of it, it has the appearance of being, not just a scientific theory, but an enormously strong scientific theory, with the capacity to accommodate, and explain, every possible form of human