Emergence of Psychology: Schools and Systems
What it is
Unit 1 traces how psychology emerged: as first-person knowledge in Indian systems, as an academic discipline transplanted to India and later indigenised, and as a Western science that grew from Greek philosophy into rival schools. It ends with the philosophy of science behind them. UGC-NET tests attributions, school-to-method matching and paradigm-to-assumption items.
Core concepts
Yoga and the Bhagavad Gita. Patanjali defines yoga as citta-vritti-nirodha, stilling the modifications of mind. The five kleshas are avidya, asmita (I-am-ness), raga, dvesha and abhinivesha (clinging to life), avidya being their root; the eight limbs run yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi; mind is mastered by abhyasa (practice) and vairagya (dispassion). The Gita types personality by three gunas, sattva (clarity), rajas (activity) and tamas (inertia); teaches nishkama karma, action without attachment to its fruits; offers karma, jnana and bhakti yoga; and portrays the sthitaprajna, the person of steady wisdom.
Buddhism and Sufism. The Four Noble Truths name dukkha (suffering), its origin in tanha (craving), its cessation, and the Eightfold Path. The three marks are anicca (impermanence), dukkha and anatta (no permanent self); the person is a flux of five skandhas: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness. Samatha meditation calms; vipassana gives insight. Sufism maps the nafs (ego-self) from nafs al-ammara (inciting) through nafs al-lawwama (self-reproaching) to nafs al-mutmainna (tranquil); guided by a murshid and practising dhikr (remembrance), the seeker moves toward fana (annihilation of the ego in God) and then baqa (abiding in God).
Integral Yoga. Sri Aurobindo (The Life Divine) seeks to transform life, not escape it. Consciousness is concentric (surface being, inner being, and the inmost psychic being, the evolving soul) and vertical, rising through higher mind, illumined mind, intuition and overmind to supermind. The triple transformation is psychic, spiritual and supramental.
Academic psychology in India. Pre-independence: the first department of psychology opened at the University of Calcutta in 1915 under N.N. Sengupta, with an experimental orientation; Girindrasekhar Bose founded the Indian Psychoanalytical Society in 1922 and corresponded with Freud. Post-independence: expansion that largely replicated Western research. 1970s: a turn to social issues such as poverty and deprivation. 1980s: indigenization, marked by Durganand Sinha's Psychology in a Third World Country (1986). 1990s: paradigmatic concerns and an identity crisis. 2000s: Indian psychology entered academia via the Pondicherry Manifesto of Indian Psychology (2002) and the Handbook of Indian Psychology (2008), edited by Rao, Paranjpe and Dalal.
Issues in Indian psychology. The colonial encounter brought psychology as a Western transplant, filing Indian traditions under religion. Postcolonial critique, classically Ashis Nandy's The Intimate Enemy (1983), questions the universality of Western categories and the replication habit they bred. Hence the lack of a distinct disciplinary identity: imitative research and a gap between imported method and Indian concerns.
Greek, medieval and modern heritage. Plato was a rationalist with a tripartite soul (reason, spirit, appetite); Aristotle's De Anima is the first systematic treatise on psyche, with laws of association by similarity, contrast and contiguity. Galen turned Hippocrates' humours into four temperaments. Medieval thought subordinated psyche to theology (Augustine, Aquinas). The modern period opens with Descartes's interactionist dualism, then Locke's tabula rasa (1690) and British associationism, while Fechner's Elements of Psychophysics (1860) and Ebbinghaus's memory studies (1885) supplied method.
Structuralism to behaviourism. Wundt opened the Leipzig laboratory in 1879; his own system, voluntarism, used controlled introspection, and his Völkerpsychologie handled higher processes. His student Titchener named structuralism: elements are sensations, images and affections. Functionalism, shaped by Darwin, asked what consciousness is for: James's Principles of Psychology (1890), Dewey's reflex-arc paper (1896), Angell at Chicago. Freud's psychoanalysis (The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900) added the unconscious and free association. Gestalt began with Wertheimer's 1912 phi-phenomenon paper, with Köhler and Koffka: the whole is different from the sum of its parts. Watson's 1913 manifesto made behaviour the subject matter.
Later forces. Maslow called humanistic psychology the third force: self-actualization and Rogers's unconditional positive regard. Existential psychology (May, Frankl's logotherapy) stresses freedom, meaning and anxiety. Maslow named transpersonal psychology the fourth force (Grof, Wilber; Jung as precursor). The cognitive revolution of the 1950s opened the black box: Miller's magical number seven (1956), Chomsky's review of Skinner (1959), and Neisser's Cognitive Psychology (1967). Multiculturalism, which Pedersen (1991) also called the fourth force, holds behaviour to be culturally situated.
Four founding paths and the crisis. Wundt founded experimental psychology; Freud, clinical depth psychology; James, a pragmatic psychology open to religious experience; Dilthey, a hermeneutic psychology of the human sciences built on Verstehen: "We explain nature; we understand mental life." Only the experimental path became mainstream, and logical empiricism (verification, operational definition) narrowed psychology to the measurable, neglecting meaning and culture: Vygotsky diagnosed this crisis in the 1920s. Indic influences ran the other way: transpersonal psychology drew on Vedanta and Buddhism, and Kabat-Zinn's MBSR (1979) carried mindfulness into therapy.
Knowledge paradigms. Guba and Lincoln (1994) define a paradigm by ontology (what is real), epistemology (the knower-known relation) and methodology (how to find out). Positivism: naive realism, experimental verification. Post-positivism: critical realism (reality known imperfectly), falsification (Popper). Critical perspective: historical realism shaped by power, dialogic method aimed at emancipation (Frankfurt school). Social constructionism (Berger and Luckmann, 1966; Gergen, 1985): knowledge is built in language and relationships. Existential phenomenology (Husserl's epoché, Heidegger's being-in-the-world) describes lived experience. Co-operative inquiry (Heron and Reason) is participatory: research with people, not on them, everyone a co-researcher in cycles of action and reflection. Lincoln and Guba's "Paradigmatic Controversies" (2000) debates commensurability, voice and validity.
Indian paradigms and self-knowledge. Indian systems treat consciousness as primary and knowledge as transformation. The Isha Upanishad asks for both avidya (knowledge of the many, outward empirical knowing, the domain of science) and vidya (knowledge of the One Self, the domain of spirituality), so science and spirituality are complementary. Self-knowledge (atma-jnana) is primary because ignorance of one's real nature is the root of suffering, and it is reached by disciplined first-person practice.
Worked example
Placing one study in each paradigm. Question: how do first-generation students experience exam anxiety? Step 1, ask what is real; step 2, how it can be known; step 3, which method follows.
| Paradigm | Ontology | Epistemology | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|
| Positivism | Anxiety is a real, measurable trait | Objective observer | Experiment, verify |
| Post-positivism | Real, known only probabilistically | Modified objectivity | Survey, try to falsify |
| Critical | Shaped by caste, class, language | Value-mediated | Dialogic inquiry for change |
| Social constructionism | "Anxiety" is talked into being | Co-constructed | Discourse analysis |
| Existential phenomenology | Lived, embodied experience | Bracketed description | Phenomenological interviews |
| Co-operative inquiry | Co-created with participants | Experiential knowing | Students as co-researchers |
Step 4, read the cue: "probably true, open to falsification" signals post-positivism; "research with, not on" signals co-operative inquiry.
Common traps
- Third force is humanistic (Maslow); "fourth force" is claimed by transpersonal psychology and by multiculturalism (Pedersen).
- Wundt's own system is voluntarism; structuralism is Titchener's label.
- Post-positivism is critical realism with falsification; critical theory is historical realism.
- Constructionism is social (Gergen); constructivism is individual (Piaget).
- Fana precedes baqa; nafs runs ammara, lawwama, mutmainna.
Speed technique
- Dates in order: 1879 Wundt, 1890 James, 1900 Freud, 1912 Wertheimer, 1913 Watson, 1915 Calcutta, 1922 Bose.
- Paradigm cues: verify, falsify, emancipate, discourse, bracket, with-not-on.
- Indian decades: 1970s social issues, 1980s indigenization, 1990s identity crisis, 2000s Indian psychology.
Check yourself
- Where and when was India's first department of psychology established?
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University of Calcutta, 1915 — under N.N. Sengupta. - In Patanjali's scheme, which klesha is the root of the other four?
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Avidya — ignorance of one's true nature. - Which paradigm holds a critical-realist ontology and tests hypotheses by falsification?
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Post-positivism — reality is known only imperfectly. - In Aurobindo's ladder of consciousness, which level lies just below the supermind?
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Overmind — above intuition. - Wertheimer's 1912 study of the phi phenomenon founded which school?
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Gestalt psychology — with Köhler and Koffka.
Try it: Emergence of Psychology: Schools and Systems questions
Real questions from the NET Psychology bank on exactly this skill. Pick an answer to see the full solution — the intuition, the worked steps, the faster methods and the traps.
Wilhelm Wundt opened the first formal laboratory for experimental psychology at Leipzig in:
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Answer: option B
Wundt established his psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig in 1879, the date conventionally taken as the birth of psychology as an experimental science.
The other years mark Fechner's Elements of Psychophysics (1860), James's Principles of Psychology (1890) and Watson's behaviourist manifesto (1913).
So Wundt's Leipzig laboratory dates from 1879, option B.
In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali defines yoga as:
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Answer: option C
The second sutra of Patanjali's text defines yoga as citta-vritti-nirodha, the stilling or restraint of the modifications of the mind.
Skill in action and evenness of mind are descriptions of yoga found in the Bhagavad Gita, and union with Brahman is a Vedantic reading, not Patanjali's definition.
So Patanjali defines yoga as the stilling of the modifications of the mind, option C.
India's first department of psychology was set up in 1915 at the:
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Answer: option A
The University of Calcutta opened India's first department of psychology in 1915, under N.N. Sengupta, with an experimental orientation.
That department marks the start of academic psychology in India, and the subject spread to other universities only afterwards.
So the first department was at the University of Calcutta, option A.
Match the authors in List – I with their works in List – II and choose the correct answer from the options. List – I (Author) | List – II (Work) --- | --- (a) Gustav Fechner | (i) Elements of Psychophysics (b) Ulric Neisser | (ii) Review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior (c) Ashis Nandy | (iii) Cognitive Psychology (d) Noam Chomsky | (iv) The Intimate Enemy
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Answer: option A
Fechner published Elements of Psychophysics in 1860 (a – i), and Neisser's Cognitive Psychology of 1967 gave the new field its name (b – iii).
Ashis Nandy's The Intimate Enemy (1983) is the classic postcolonial critique (c – iv), and Chomsky's 1959 review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior was a turning point of the cognitive revolution (d – ii).
So matching List I, from "Gustav Fechner", gives a – i, b – iii, c – iv, d – ii, option A.
Read the following Assertion (A) and Reason (R) and choose the correct answer from the given options: Assertion (A) : Titchener's structuralism treated sensations, images and affections as the elements of consciousness. Reason (R) : Titchener called his own system of psychology voluntarism.
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Answer: option C
The assertion is true: Titchener analysed consciousness by introspection into three kinds of element, sensations, images and affections.
The reason is false: voluntarism is the name of Wundt's own system, with its stress on will and attention; Titchener named his system structuralism.
So the assertion "Titchener's structuralism treated…" is true but (R) is false, option C.
Answer above — every one shows its working.