Università Roma Tre

Objectives:
The course aims to provide a critical understanding of the historical development of the main themes, problems and models of scientific explanation of behavior and psychological processes, from the earliest naturalized conceptualizations of mind and behavior to experimental psychology and contemporary neuroscience. The evolution of the sciences of behavior, mind, and neuroscience will be discussed in its relationship to the history of philosophical ideas and other human sciences such as sociology and anthropology, in its close intertwining with the natural and biological sciences, and situated in the context of concrete historical transformations of material, economic, and technological kinds.
The course will also examine the history of the cultural and moral impact of developments in the behavioral sciences and neurosciences with special emphasis on the applications of neuroscience in the social and economic spheres, and neuropsychopharmacological and neurotechnological applications in the 20th century.
Within the framework of this course, teaching aims to provide:
An organic knowledge of the main research programs, concepts, and issues in behavioral sciences, experimental psychology, and neuroscience;
The ability to contextualize, analyze, and critically interpret ideas and explanatory models in behavioral sciences and neuroscience, also in relation to other research disciplines, material history, culture, ethics, and technological evolution;
The lexical and conceptual tools necessary for studying the history of behavioral sciences and neuroscience, useful for acquiring good analytical and argumentative skills in both written and oral form.

Program

Institutional Part on the General History of Behavioral Sciences and Neurosciences:

I) History of Science and History of Psychology
Why Study the History of the Sciences of the Mind
Historiography of Science: Continuity and Scientific Revolutions
Normal Science and Paradigms
Historiography of Psychology and Neuroscience

II) Prehistory of Behavioral Sciences:
Mind and Behavior in Ancient Philosophy
The First Scientific Conceptions of Behavior during the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution
From Descartes to the "Idéologues"
Theories of Mind and Behavior in Empiricism
The Advent of the Biological Perspective in Behavioral Theories: Evolutionism

III) The Birth of Experimental Psychology: From Helmholtz to Wundt
The Birth of Experimental Psychology
Helmholtz: Specific Nerve Energy and Unconscious Inference
The Phenomenological Innatism of Ewald Hering
Wilhelm Wundt and Physiological Psychology
Titchener and North American Structuralism

IV) American Functionalism, Between Evolutionism and Pragmatism

V) The Psychodynamic Perspective and Psychoanalysis
Introduction
From Organic to Psychodynamic Conceptions of Mental Illness
Janet's Theory
Psychoanalysis from Freud to the 1950s
Jung's Theory
Adler's Theory
Themes in Late 20th Century Psychoanalysis and New Topics
Phenomenological Psychiatry
Theories of Personality
Integrated Models of Mental Health and Pathology

VI) The Behaviorist Perspective
Introduction
American Psychology at the Beginning of the Century: Structuralism and Functionalism
Behaviorism from Watson to the 1950s
Skinner and the Behaviorist Utopia
Operationalism in Psychology
Personality, Psychopathology, and Social Learning in the Behaviorist Perspective

VII) The Cognitive Perspective
Introduction
The Study of Cognitive Processes: From the Würzburg School to Bartlett
Theories of Intelligence
Theories of Psychological Development
Piaget's Theory
Probabilistic and Ecological Theories of Mental Processes
Cognitivism
Cognitive Science

VIII) The Historical-Cultural Perspective
Introduction
The Historical-Cultural Theory of Mind from Vygotsky to the 1960s
Activity Theory
Social Constructionism: Cultural Psychology

IX) The Biological and Neuroscientific Perspective
Introduction
Animal and Comparative Psychology: Ethology
Early 20th Century Research on Brain Functions
Bechterev's Reflexology
Pavlov's Theory of Higher Nervous Activity
Holistic Theories of Mind and Brain Function in the Early 20th Century
Hebb's Neuroconnectionism
Research on Brain Functions and Behavior: 1950-1970
Luria's Theory of Functional Brain Systems
Cognitive, Affective, and Social Neurosciences

X) The Contemporary Debate
Crisis of Theories or Crisis of Psychology?
Empirical Verification in Psychology
Common-Sense Psychology and Alternative Psychologies
The Primacy of Neuroscience
The Discomfort of Psychotherapy
Psychology and Contemporary Society



Monographic Part:
Mind, Nature, and Emotions. History of Philosophical and Scientific Thought on Emotions

The Concept of Passion from Ancient Philosophy to Empiricism
The Invention of the Modern Psychological Category of Emotion
The First Biological Conceptions of Emotions: Evolutionists and Darwin
Somatic Theories of Emotions
Emotions and Language: Constructionist Theories of Emotions
The Neurobiology of Emotions
Emotions and Illness: The History of Psychosomatics
Modulating Emotions: The History of Psychopharmacology and Neurotechnologies for Intervening in Disturbing Emotions

Mecacci L. (2019). Storia della psicologia dal Novecento a oggi. Roma- Bari: Laterza (capitoli: 4; 5; 7; 8).

For the monographic part
Professor's handouts