A Historical Timeline of Modern Psychology

Ancient Times:

• 1500 BCE: The Ebers Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian manuscript, mentions clinical depression for the first time.

• 11th Century: Persian physician Avicenna connects emotions and physical responses in a practice called "physiological psychology."

18th Century:

• 1758: William Battie publishes "Treatise on Madness," which some consider the beginning of modern psychology.

19th Century:

• 1869: Sir Francis Galton establishes statistical techniques to study the relationship between variables such as intelligence and personality in heredity studies.

• 1878: G. Stanley Hall becomes the first American to earn a Ph.D. in psychology.

• 1879: Wilhelm Wundt establishes the first experimental psychology lab in Leipzig, Germany.

• 1883: G. Stanley Hall opens the first experimental psychology lab in the U.S. at Johns Hopkins University.

• 1885: Herman Ebbinghaus publishes "Über das Gedächtnis" ("On Memory"), describing learning and memory experiments he conducted on himself.

• 1886: Sigmund Freud begins offering talk therapy known as psychoanalysis to patients in Vienna, Austria.

• 1888: James McKeen Cattell becomes the first professor of psychology in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania.

• 1890: William James publishes "Principles of Psychology," one of the most influential texts in the field of psychology.

• 1892: G. Stanley Hall forms the American Psychological Association (APA).

• 1896: Lightner Witmer establishes the first psychology clinic in America.

• 1898: Edward Thorndike develops the Law of Effect, explaining how behavior is learned.

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20th Century:

• 1900-1950: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung establish the foundation of psychoanalysis, including Freud's examination of the unconscious processes and psychopathology and Jung's analytic psychology.

• 1950-2000: The American Psychological Association publishes the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

• 2002: Steven Pinker publishes "The Blank Slate," arguing against the concept of tabula rasa (the theory that the mind is a blank slate at birth).

• 2003: Genetic researchers finish mapping human genes.

• 2010: Simon LeVay publishes "Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why," which argues that sexual orientation emerges from prenatal differentiation in the brain.

• 2013: The DSM-5 is released, removing "gender identity disorder" from the list of mental illnesses.

• 2014: John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard Moser share the Nobel Prize for their discovery of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain that is key to memory and navigation.

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21st Century:

• Present: Modern psychology has expanded into multiple subdivisions or specializations, including clinical psychology, counseling psychology, school psychology, and industrial-organizational psychology.