Psyco

INTRODUCTION TO

PSYCHOLOGY

CLASS #1

Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit

Welcome to Introduction to Psychology

Lecturer: Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit

Email: [email protected]

Province of Quebec

French Canada

City of Trois-Rivières

How did I came to Poland?

Bachelor Degree in Pharmacology

Sherbrooke University

Sherbrooke, Canada: 2002 – 2005

Exploring the brain

Master Degree in biological neuroscience

Douglas Institute

Montreal, Canada: 2006 – 2010

Research at the master level

The genetic of memory

Doctoral studies in Europe

University of Finance and Management

Warsaw, Poland: 2010 - 2011

Max Planck Institute

Leizpig, Germany: 2011 - 2012

Euromov

Montpellier, France: 2013 - 2015

PhD in psychology

Research at the doctoral level

Effect of rhythm and music on Parkinson’s disease

Post-doctoral fellowship

Catholic university of Louvain

Brussels, Belgium: 2016 - 2018

Post-doctoral research

+

Pupil dilatation and mental fatigue

Respiratory rhythm

Nasal breathing

- Generate a respiratory-

entrained rhythm affecting

important memory brain

areas.

- It positively modulate

encoding, consolidation

and recall of momory.

preBötzinger

complex

- Molle & Benoit, J Neuroscience 2019

Altered respiration

- Molle & Benoit, J Neuroscience, 2019

preBötzinger

complex

Locus Coeruleus

Fast or irregular nasal or

mouth breathing

Modulate noradrenalin who

play a role in memory,

awereness and attention.

Now we turn to you!

Where are you guys from??

What to expect for this class.

 10 x classes of 3h.

 9 lectures and an exam preparation

 1 exam only

Class structure – Big thematics

 History of human reasoning

 From the first civilisations to early experimental psychology

 Modern cognitive psychology

 A quick view of the brain

 Psychological research and methods

 Disease of the mind

 Perception and attention

 Effects of music on the brain

 Thinking and reasoning

 Consciouness and artificial intelligence

Sources

 B. R. Hergenhahn-An Introduction to the History of

Psychology -Wadsworth Publishing (2008)

 Michael W. Eysenck, Mark T. Keane-Cognitive

Psychology_ A Student's Handbook-Psychology

Press (2010)

 2 copies of each at the library

Today’s Lecture

 What is psychology?

 An overview of most early marking figures in

psychology up to the renaissance.

What is psychology?

 The term psychology comes from the Greek roots

psyche meaning soul or mind and logos meaning word

or study.

 Psychology is the science of human behavior and

mental processes.

 Behavior is anything we do

 Actions and reactions

 Mental processes are our internal experiences

 Thoughts, feelings, memories, sensations, dreams.

No evil in knowing yourself.

The symbol for psychology

represents letter of the Greek

alphabet, psi, which is also the

first letter of the Greek word

psuche (psyche).

What is psychology?

At various times in history, psychology has been

defined as the study of the psyche or the mind, of the

spirit, of consciousness, and more recently as the study

of, or the science of, behavior.

What is science?

 From the Latin word scientia, meaning "knowledge“.

 In other word, is a systematic enterprise that builds

and organizes knowledge in the form of testable

explanations and predictions about the universe.

 From science’s inception, its ultimate authority has

been empirical observation.

Importance of the scientific methods

Today’s look through time

 Ancient Egypt

 Ancient Greece

 Roman Empire

 Rise of Christianity

 Islamic Golden Age

 Renaissance

 The first documented psychology experiment

trace back to the 7th century BC in the 26 th

dynasty (Saite period) in ancient Egypt.

Ancient Egypt

Great Sphinx of Giza Isis

Goddess of healing and

protection.

Wahibre Psamtik I (664 – 601BC)

 The pharaoh who tried to discover the

origin of language.

 He gave two newborn babies to a

shepherd, with the instructions that no one

should speak to them while listening to

determine their first words.

 The hypothesis was that the first word

would be uttered in the root language of

all people

Egyptian or Phrygian?

 When one of the children cried "βεκός" (bekós) with outstretched arms, the

shepherd concluded that the word was

Phrygian because that was the sound of

their word for "bread".

 They concluded that the Phrygians were

an older culture than the Egyptians, and

that Phrygian was the original language

of men.

 Phrygian language (8th century BC to 5th

century AD) vs Egyptian language (2690

BC – 6th century BC).Egyptian

Phrygian

 Magic, superstition, and mysticism, in one form or another,

dominated attempts to understand nature for most of early

history.

 It was therefore a monumental step in human thought when natural

explanations were offered instead of supernatural ones.

Ancient Greece

Acropolis in Athens

Asclepius

God of medicine, healing,

rejuvenation and physicians.

Life during ancient greece

 Democracy was for Athenian citizen man only (no more than 30%)

 A citizen completed his military training had right to vote

 They had a voice and it was to them to be listened and thus eloquence was

key to have influence

 Total population is estimated around 100 000 habitants

 Arranged marriage between young women and older man.

 The women had limited rights and privileges, restricted movement in public,

and were very segregated from the men.

 Slavery was very much a thing

 Quality of life through commerce

Importance of Greek philosophers

 The Greeks were important because they broke loose from the

accepted religious traditions and produced what they considered

to be better stories about the origin of the world.

 They engaged in open, critical discussions of one another’s ideas

and speculated.

 A life spent thinking

 The first philosophers were

called cosmologists because they

sought to explain the origin, the

structure, and the processes

governing the universe.

 These philosophers asked

questions about "the essence of

things“. (e.g. How might we

describe nature mathematically?)

 We have only fragment or

scripture

Pre-Socratic philosophy

Thales of Miletus

624 – 546 BC

Considered the first to

have engaged in scientific

philosophy

Pythagoras of Samos

570 – 495 BC

Credited with many

mathematical and

scientific discoveries.

Gem cutter to geometry

 His father was an engraver of gems

 Pythagoras saw the pure shapes of nature

 Sees the nature of reality as mathematic

The four elements

 Were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all

matter in terms of simpler substances

 Greek philosophers debated which substance was the

primordial element from which everything else was made

 Socrates used a method sometimes called inductive

definition, which started with an examination of

instances of such concepts as beauty, love, justice, or

truth and then moved on to such questions as: What

is it that all instances of beauty have in common?

 In other words, Socrates asked what it is that makes

something beautiful, just, or true.

 What Socrates sought was the essence, it’s basic

nature, its identifying, enduring characteristics.

 Cultivation of the soul, developing yourself by our

ability to reflect on things.

Socrates (470 – 399 BC)

Importance of values at the central element of human reflection by engaging on

rigorous arguments. Asking questions where there is questions to be asked.

Plato (427 – 347 BC)

 Founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of

higher learning in the Western world.

 Theory of forms: ultimate reality consists of abstract ideas

that correspond to all objects in the empirical world.

Knowledge of these abstractions is innate and can be

attained only through introspection.

 Plato created a dualism that divided the human into a body,

which was material and imperfect, and a mind (soul), which

contained pure knowledge. Furthermore, the rational soul was

immortal.

 Because science depends on empirical observation, his

philosophy did little to promote science and much to inhibit it.

Aristotle (384 – 322 BC)

 Student at the Academy in Athens for 20 years while later

he founded his own school called the Lyceum considered

the world’s first university.

 In his vast writings, he covered memory, sensation, sleep,

dreams, geriatrics, and learning. He also began his book

De Anima (On the Soul) with what is considered to be the

first history of psychology.

 Instead of urging the avoidance of sensory experience,

he claimed that it was the source of all knowledge.

 Introduced a fifth element: Ether (quintessence, is the

material that fills the region of the universe above the

terrestrial sphere)

Differences in view

 For Plato, first principles were arrived at by pure thought; for

Aristotle, they were attained by examining nature directly.

 For Plato, essences corresponded to the forms that existed

independently of nature and that could be arrived at only by

ignoring sensory experience and turning one’s thoughts inward

(introspection).

 For Aristotle, essences existed but could become known only by

studying nature. He believed that if enough individual manifestations

of a principle or phenomenon were investigated, eventually one could

infer the essence that they exemplified.

The fall of Athens

 Aristotle’s death marked the end of the Golden Age

of Greece

 Philosophers either began to rely on the teachings of

past authorities or turned their attention to questions

concerning models for human conduct.

 It was not until the Renaissance that the critical

tradition of the early Greek philosophers was

rediscovered and revived.

Sparta defeated Athens in the

Ponnesian War (431–404 B.C.)

A search for the good life

 In this time of great personal strife, complex and

abstract philosophies were of little comfort.

 A philosophy that addressed the problems of

everyday living was needed.

 The major questions were no longer,

 What is the nature of physical reality?

 What and how can humans know?

But rather

 How is it best to live?

 What is the nature of the good life?

 What is worth believing in?

Philosophy as a way of life

Skepticism

Pyrrho of Elis

360 – 270 BC  Skepticism: The belief that all beliefs

can be proved false; thus, to avoid

the frustration of being wrong, it is

best to believe nothing.

 His primary goal was the

achievement of a state or freedom

from worry, and that could be brought

about by avoiding beliefs about

thoughts and perceptions.

 More about doubt than about

negative assertion to reach a serinity.

Cynicism

Diogenes the Cynic

214 – 323 BC

 Cynicism: The belief that the best life is

one lived close to nature and away from

the rules and regulations of society.

 Diogenes made a virtue of poverty.

 Tansform your life to achieve freedom,

self-sufficiency and happiness through the

simple pleasures of life.

Stoicism

Zeno of Citium

334 – 262 BC

 Stoicism: The belief that one should

live according to nature’s plan and

accept one’s fate with indifference

or, in the case of extreme hardship,

with courage.

 Believed that the world was ruled

by a divine plan and that

everything in nature, including

humans, was there for a reason.

 Emphasis on goodness and peace of

mind gained from living a life of

Virtue in accordance with Nature.

Epicureanism

Epicurus of Samos

214 – 323 BC  Epicureanism: The belief that the

best life is one of long-term pleasure

resulting from moderation.

 The good life for the Epicurean

consisted more of the absence of

pain than the presence of pleasure at

least while living a modest life.

 Wise individuals attempt to live their

lives unnoticed to reach serenity.

Roman Empire

Stoicism won out over Epicureanism, perhaps because it was

compatible with the Roman emphasis on law and order.

The rise of Monotheism

 A major influence on Roman thought was

Judaism. The Jews believed in one supreme

god who, unlike the indifferent Olympian

and Roman gods, was concerned with the

conduct of individual humans.

 The Jews had a strict moral code, and if an

individual’s conduct was in accordance with

this code, God rewarded the person; if it

was not, God punished the person.

 The early Christian church is best thought of

as a blending of the Judeo-Christian

tradition with Platonism.

Jesus of Nazareth

6 BC – 33c

Emperor Constantine

 Changed the course of Christianity by pretenting to have

a vision to inspire his troups. He instructed his soldiers to

mark their shields the word “Christ,” while they were

greatly outnumbered, they won the battle decisively.

 He attributed his victory to the Christian god.

 In 313, he signed the Edict of Milan, making Christianity a

tolerated religion in the Roman Empire.

Constantine the Great

272 – 337

Battle of the Milvian Bridge

The fall of Rome

 Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 lead by king Alaric.

 Rome, although not the capital, was "the eternal city" and a

spiritual center of the Empire.

 The sack was a major shock to friends and foes of the Empire.

 It is considered by many as the beginning of the dark ages.

Dark ages (410 – 1000)

 Greek and Roman books were lost or destroyed; little or no progress was made in

science, philosophy, or literature.

 The Christian church became increasingly powerful. Europe was dominated by mysticism,

superstition, and anti-intellectualism.

 Church dogma was no longer challengeable, it wielded tremendous power. People were

either believers or heretics, and heretics were dealt with harshly.

Other parts of the world

 The dark ages only refer to the Western world.

 Other cultures expended their minds during that time

Islamic Golden Age

Chinese early

experimentations

Confucius (551 – 479 BC)

 He provided rich psychological thoughts

whose teaching has for centuries exerted

a profound influence on China’s cultural

history.

 He emphasize on human nature, education,

human development and interpersonal

relationship.

 He categorize people into 3 classes:

superior, medium an inferior, and argue

that everyone should be educated

according to their abilities.

Early psychological testing

 Various methods for measuring talents and

behaviors such as response speed, eliciting

personality across situations and

measuring mental attributes in interview

trace back to 3000 years.

 In the 6th century, Xin Lie designed what

appeared to be the first experimental

psychological test in the world.

 He asked people to draw a square with

one hand and at the same time draw a

circle with the other to show that with

interference, neither task could be done

correctly.

Islamic Golden Age

 Islam was a powerful force in the world.

 Within 30 years after Muhammad’s death, the

Muslims had conquered Arabia, Syria, Egypt,

Persia, Sicily, and Spain.

 Within 100 years, the Islamic empire extended

to an area larger the Roman Empire.

 This brought the Muslims into contact with

ancient works long lost to the Western world

(Greek and Roman).

Muhammad

570 – 632

Islamic Golden Age

 The end of the 7th century is marked the

inauguration of the House of Wisdom in

Baghdad.

 Scholars from various parts of the world

were mandated to gather and translate

all of the world's classical knowledge into

the Arabic language.

Islamic Golden Age

 Prodogy who memorized the Koran at age

10 and could cite by heart Aristotle’s work

as an adolescent.

 He wrote books on many topics, including

medicine, mathematics, logic, metaphysics,

Islamic theology, astronomy, politics, and

linguistics.

 His book on medicine, The Canon, was used

in European universities for more than five

centuries.

 He described phenomena we now

recognize as neuropsychiatric conditions.

Abu Ali Sina aka Avicenna

980 – 1037

Reconciliation of Christian faith and reason

 Scholasticism: The synthesis of Aristotelian

philosophy with Christian teachings.

 He argued effectively that reason and faith

are not incompatible and that God could now

through examination of inner experience, or

through logic, reason, and the examination of

nature.

 Aquinas at least partially shifted attention

away from the heavens and back to earth,

although his emphasis was still on the heavens.

 This shift had to occur before the Renaissance

could take place however at that point the

church still controlled most human activities.

Thomas Aquinas

1225 – 1274

Sicily, Italy

Renaissance (1450 – 1600)

 Renaissance means “rebirth,” and during this

period, the tendency was to go back to the more

open-minded method of inquiry.

 It was a time when Europe gradually switched from

being God-centered to being human-centered.

 If God existed, he existed in nature; therefore, to

study nature was to study God.

Florence, Italy

Humanism

 Individualism: Concern with human potential. The belief

in the power of the individual to make a positive

difference in the world created a spirit of optimism.

 Personal religion: Although all devout Christians, they

wanted religion to be more personal and less ritualistic.

 Intense interest in the past: The works of the early

Greek and Roman philosophers were of special interest.

They sought to assign correct authorship to old

manuscripts. These activities introduced Renaissance

scholars to a wide range of viewpoints from the past.

Francesco Petrarca

1304 – 1374

Tuscany, Italy

Challenge of the Church

 He was an ordained priest but had no taste for a

monastic life, preferring instead a life of study, travel,

and independence.

 Erasmus was opposed to a fanatical belief in anything.

 He completed his book The Praise of Folly in 1512.

 Attacked the church and the papacy, philosophers,

nobility, and superstitions of all kinds.

 More precisely the excesses of the Catholicism

 His philosophy had much in common with ancient

Cynicism

Desiderius Erasmus

1466 – 1536

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Reformation

 Reformation: The attempt to reform the Christian church.

This effort resulted in the division of western European

Christianity into Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

 He was disgusted by what Christianity had become in his

day, especially the sale of indulgences, which allowed

sinners to reduce the retribution for their sins by paying a

fee to church officials.

 For Luther, a major reason for the downfall of Catholicism

was its assimilation of Aristotle’s philosophy.

 When Luther was excommunicated in 1521, the protest

that he represented grew into a new religious movement.

Martin Luther

1483 – 1546

Saxony-Anhalt, Germany

Protestantism

 The new religion denied the

authority of the pope and insisted

that every individual had the right

to interpret the Bible.

 It insisted on accepting the

existence of God on faith alone;

attempting to understand him

through reason or empirical

observations was foolish and to be

avoided thus being regressive.

 However, Protestantism was a

liberating influence the belief that

individual feelings can provide the

only truth needed in life.

The notion of free Will

vs

 In 1524 Erasmus wrote The Free Will, and

in 1525 Luther responded with The

Bondage of the Will.

 Erasmus defined free will as “the power of

the human will whereby man can apply to

or turn away from that which leads unto

eternal salvation” Erasmus quoted numerous

Biblical passages where God indicates to

humans what is good and what is evil and

encourages them to choose the former.

 Contrarily, Luther said, “God foresees,

purposes and does all things according to

His immutable, eternal and infallible will.

This thunderbolt throws free will flat and

utterly dashes it to pieces”

When science challenge dogma

 Born in Torun.

 Published his book De Revolutionibus

Orbium Coelestium (The Revolutions of the

Heavenly Spheres).

 Copernicus did argue successfully that,

rather than the sun revolving around the

earth (the geocentric theory), the earth

revolved around the sun (the heliocentric

theory).

 To challenge the geocentric theory was to

challenge church dogma and was therefore

heretical.

Nicolaus Copernicus

1476 – 1543

Kuyavian-Pomeranian , Poland

When science challenge dogma

 Like Copernicus, he was seeking the simple

mathematical harmony that describes the

universe.

 He is best known for his laws of planetary motion.

 Perhaps Kepler’s most important contribution to

science, however, was his insistence that all

mathematical deductions be verified by empirical

observation.

Johannes Kepler

1571 – 1630

Stuttgart Region, Germany

When science challenge dogma

 He viewed the universe as a perfect machine

whose workings could be understood only in

mathematical terms.

 He used a telescope to discover the mountains of

the moon, sunspots, and the that the Milky Way is

made up of many stars not visible to the naked

eye. He also discovered four moons of Jupiter,

which meant that there were at least 11 bodies in

the solar system instead of 7, as claimed by the

church.

 Most refused to look through the telescope

because they believed it to be an act of heresy.

 With his studies of the dynamics of projectiles, he

demonstrated that the motions of all bodies

under all circumstances are governed by a single

set of mathematical laws.

Galileo Galilei

1564 – 1642

Tuscany, Italy

Exploration of the humanities

 Renaissance humanism was a response to the utilitarian approach associated with medieval

scholasticism.

 This was to be accomplished through the study of the studia humanitatis, today known as the

humanities: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, art and moral philosophy.

Leonardo Da Vinci

A renaissance man

 He was at one time or another a soldier,

mathematician, philosopher, scientist, and

psychologist. In addition, he was a man of the world

who enjoyed gambling, dancing, and adventure.

 Descartes showed how geometry and algebra could

be integrated, making it possible to represent

astronomical phenomena such as planetary orbits

with numbers.

 Descartes concluded that the only thing of which he

could be certain was the fact that he was doubting;

but doubting was thinking, and thinking necessitated

a thinker. Thus, he arrived at his celebrated conclusion

“Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am).

René Descartes

1596 – 1650

Loire, France

Dualism – The mind-body interaction

 Descartes believed that he had discovered the fact

that the mind was nonmaterial, and thus could not be

located anywhere.

 Dualist: One who believes that a person consists of

two separate entities: a mind, which accounts for

one’s mental experiences and rationality, and a

body, which functions according to the same

biological and mechanical principles as do the

bodies of nonhuman animals.

 Interactionism: The version of dualism that accepts

the separate existence of a mind and a body and

claims that they interact.

His contribution to psychology

 He attempted a mechanistic explanation of bodily

functions (reflex actions) are the beginning of both

stimulus-response and behavioristic psychology.

 He focused attention on the brain as an important

mediator of behavior, and he specified the mind-

body relationship with such clarity that it could be

supported or refuted by others.

 By investigating the bodies of animals to learn more

about their functioning and thus about the functioning

of human bodies, he gave birth to both modern

physiological and comparative psychology.

 He made subjective experience respectable again,

Descartes paved the way for the scientific study of

consciousness.

That’s it for today!

Renaissance was the path to a new vision of the world.