ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors looks at alternative modes of collating facts of history in psychology, their merits and their shortcomings—all the while keeping in mind Hermann Ebbinghaus’s often-quoted dictum of psychology’s “long past albeit short history still”. Organizing a history of psychology around leading personalities unfolds a scenario of authors considered influential, like W. Wundt, Thorndike, or B. F. Skinner in psychology proper or Sherrington and Wiener from physiology and cybernetics, respectively. The series on the history of psychology by invited autobiographies as initiated by C. Murchison is the classic example, which has been taken as a model also in other language communities. Thus in clinical psychology, for example, a history of psychotherapy will often be organized by reference to major therapeutic methodologies like psychoanalysis, behaviour therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, and their later derivatives.
