A Brief History of Psychology & Ethics

  • First PHD

    G. Stanley Hall becomes the first American to earn a Ph.D. in psychology. Hall eventually founds the American Psychological Association.
  • First Laboratory

    Wilhelm Wundt founds the first experimental psychology lab in Leipzig, Germany. The event is considered the starting point of psychology as a separate science.
  • First Professional Journal

    Wundt forms the professional journal Philosophische Studien (Philosophical Studies)
  • First US Laboratory

    G. Stanley Hall opens the first experimental psychology lab in the United States at John Hopkins University.
  • Freud Happens!

    Sigmund Freud begins providing therapy to patients in Vienna, Austria.
  • APA Begins

    G. Stanley Hall forms the American Psychological Association (APA), which initially has just 42 members.
  • First Female PhD

    Margaret Floy Washburn completes her training under Edward Tichener.
  • Drooling Dogs

    Ivan Pavlov publishes his findings on classical conditioning.
  • First Psychobabble

    Carl Jung begins to depart from Freudian views and develops his own theories, which are eventually known as analytical psychology.
  • A Little Boy is Torturted!

    John Watson and Rosalie Rayner publish research the classical conditioning of fear with their subject, Little Albert.
  • Finally, A Good Guy

    Jean Piaget becomes the foremost cognitive theorist with the publication of his work The Moral Judgment of Children.
  • First DSM

    The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is published.
  • Monkeys are tortured!

    Harry Harlow publishes The Nature of Love, which describe his experiments with rhesus monkey's on the importance of attachment and love.
  • People *think* they torture other people!

    Stanley Milgram publishes Obedience to Authority, which presented the findings of his famous obedience experiments.
  • Human Genome

    2000 - Genetic researchers finish mapping human genes. Scientists hope to one day isolate the individual genes responsible for different diseases.