Timeline

1600s – Rise of empiricism emphasizing centrality of human observer in acquiring knowledge

1850s – Helmholz measures neural impulse / Psychophysics studied by Weber & Fechner

1859 – Publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species

1879 – Wundt opens lab for experimental psychology

1883 – First psychology lab opens in the United States

1887 – First American psychology journal is published: American Journal of Psychology

1890 – James publishes Principles of Psychology

1892 – APA established

1894 – Margaret Floy Washburn is first U.S. woman to earn Ph.D. in psychology

1904 – Founding of Titchener’s experimentalists

1905 – Mary Whiton Calkins is first woman president of APA

1909 – Freud’s only visit to the United States

1913 – John Watson calls for a psychology of behavior

1920 – Francis Cecil Sumner is first African American to earn Ph.D. in psychology

1921 – Margaret Floy Washburn is second woman president of APA

1930s – Creation and growth of the American Association for Applied Psychology (AAAP) / Gestalt psychology comes to America

1936- Founding of The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues

1940s – Behaviorism dominates American psychology

1946 – National Mental Health Act

1949 – Boulder Conference on Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology

1950s – Cognitive psychology gains popularity

1954 – Brown v. Board of Education

1957 – Evelyn Hooker publishes The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual

1968 – Founding of the Association of Black Psychologists

1973 – Psy.D. proposed at the Vail Conference on Professional Training in Psychology

1988 – Founding of the American Psychological Society (now known as the Association for Psychological Science)