Psychology From The Perspective Of Modern Intellectuals

The research of Chinese academic history is a widely concerned subject in the past 20 years, which is seen as an important symbol of academic self-consciousness within the Chinese academic circle. As to the influences on contemporary academy, modern academic evolvement is worth particular attention. Modern transition of Chinese academy comes after tremendous socio-cultural transition. Such a transition of academy is a big question, and its settlement enables people to accurately understand the evolvement of Chinese academy and helps the development of contemporary Chinese academy. Psychology is newly introduced into China at that moment, and its developing route resembles that of other disciplines.This thesis begins with a question of Chinese psychological history. Within the circle of this field, there’s a statement mentioned as "double sections" or "double stages" in the development of Chinese psychology, that is, the dichotomy of the history of ancient psychological thoughts and modern psychological thoughts. According to many researchers, double sections or double stages is rarely related to each other, the former originates from Chinese tradition, and the latter is derived from western new disciplines. Therefore, in-between these two there’s a gap.The above mentioned factor makes the author probe into the question whether such a gap exists and the relative causes, and sort out the transition of ancient psychological thoughts and modern psychological thoughts, that is, describe the shape of the latter. The ways to solve the transition question shouldn’t be based on the whole intellectual field rather than psychology in order to figure out the people and knowledge resources and how theses resources are integrated in the early period of psychological development, which brings significant inspiration for current psychological development and reconstruction. Hence, the academic thoughts of Liang Qichao, Wang Guowei, Sun Yisen, Zhou Shuren, Cai Yuanpei, Liang Shoumin, Zhu Guangqian and Pan Guangdan and their activities related to the field are reviewed and discussed, mainly focusing on their understanding(and its knowledge foundation) of psychology and the reason why they are interested in psychology.The main method deployed in this thesis is documentary method, such as the gathering, explanation and analysis of materials and texts. The author not only focuses on texts, but also set texts into a broad context—reading and explaining through socio-cultural context. In addition, case study method and comparison method are also used. The author has knowledge background of history and psychology, and has made some basic studies in this field, so this theme can be well managed. This study on modern history of psychology is a multi-disciplinary study concerning cultural history, societal history and the disciplinary history of psychology. The main method employed in this thesis is documentary method. Firstly, gathering, explaining, and analyzing materials and texts. The author not only focuses on texts, but also put texts into a broad context—reading and explaining through socio-cultural context. In addition, case study method and comparison method are also used. The author has knowledge background of history and psychology, and has made some basic studies in this field, so this theme can be well managed. This study on modern history of psychology is a multi-disciplinary study concerning cultural history, societal history and the disciplinary history of psychology.As above mentioned, the first question of this thesis is to investigate the gap of Chinese psychology history. According to current clues and many materials, Liang Qichao et al have abundant psychological thoughts, and they contributed much to the construction of disciplinary system of Chinese psychology, and they have much in common such as digest, localization and application of knowledge. Their thoughts reflects the massiness of Old Learning and acuteness of New Learning; their thoughts are not only deeply rooted in China but also open to the outside world; their thoughts really link ancient and modern and converge the knowledge of the West and the East. This thesis cannot mention all the understanding and application of psychology achieved by Liang Qichao et al, but their thoughts mentioned here equates that of current Chinese psychology. In face of these achievements, the gap theory of psychology at that time is groundless.The second question focuses on the origin of psychological knowledge of Liang Qichao et al. the author investigate a lot of documents and finds that most of them have the experience of acquiring psychological knowledge, which indicates that psychology is not fresh to them at that time. Then, the author investigates the knowledge background of some other celebrated intellectuals of their time and also finds the trace of psychology. Such a finding brings forward a bold hypothesis, that is, during the period of modern Chinese history, psychology is not rare to China; however, it is a general knowledge background at that time.The last question is to find out why Liang Qichao et al would understand psychology. There’re two factors concerning the question:one is the idea to digest all the knowledge, which widely exists among traditional intellectuals of China; the other is the enthusiasm for New Learning at that time. From the perspective at the micro-level, there’re two other factors:one is the connection between psychology and Chinese ancient heart learning, the other is the attempt of applying psychology to Chinese society. Although Chinese psychology faces various developing route, it finally steps into the traditional route of western psychology because of its privileged position. This can be seen in its natural science tendency and specialization of discipline. If this route is the dominant route, then, the exploration and thoughts of Liang Qichao et al must have gone "astray". As a result, their academic achievements in psychology are marginalized and finally fall out of the vision of Chinese psychological historians.