A convenient model for the evolution of early psychology as a scientific discipline

Scientific and technological advances by the 1850s serve as a backdrop for an appreciation of early psychology. With the recent resurgence in interest in the history of psychology, there has come an increasing demand for better materials for teaching historical topics. Particularly lacking are aids for those instructors who don't wish to become historians or to devote large portrons of a course to history, but merely to supplement a course with historical readings Below is a convenient historical model, used in a course I teach called "Contemporary Psychology in a Historical Framework,' ' that should be useful for this purpose It takes advantage of a number of historical coincidences to give a coherent, easily remembered account of some of the major steps by which modern scientific psychology evolved in th