ABSTRACT
The science of psychology began with studies of individuals. In 1860, Fechner published one of the first studies in sensory perception. He established the just noticeable difference (or the minimum distance) between two objects before an individual can determine whether one or two pinpricks have been given (described in Boring, 1950). Fechner was also one of the first to apply statistical methods to psychological problems (Hersen & Barlow, 1976). Wundt, Ebbinghaus and others followed suit in working with individual subjects, and from such work came important findings with wide generality (ibid.). In neurology, Broca (1861) published his famous case of ‘Tan’, so called because this was the only ‘word’ the patient could say. ‘Tan’ had a lesion in a particular part of the brain, now known as Broca’s area, that results in expressive aphasia. Most patients with lesions in this area have problems with expressive language, so, again, the study of an individual led to findings that go far beyond the individual. Coming closer to our own time, another famous neurological patient, H.M., described by Scoville and Milner (1957), had bilateral hippocampal lesions that resulted in dense amnesia. The finding that such lesions result in severe memory problems is robust, and any patient with hippocampal damage is almost certainly going to have significant memory problems.
