Psychological evaluation
Modern "Psychological evaluation" has been around for roughly 200 years, with roots that stem as far back as 2200 B.C. It started in China, and many psychologists throughout Europe worked to develop methods of testing into the 1900s. The first tests focused on aptitude. Eventually scientists tried to gauge mental processes in patients with brain damage, then children with special needs.
Kurt Danziger
Danziger had a longstanding interest in the history of psychology and began intensive study of primary sources in the early 1970s. He became particularly interested in Wilhelm Wundt's work. Around the time of psychology’s "centennial", marking the establishment of Wundt’s laboratory in 1879, Danziger published a number of chapters and articles related to this topic (e.g. Danziger, 1979a). However, during the 1980s, he became increasingly interested in the history of psychological research methods (e.g. Danziger, 1985). This interest culminated in what is probably Danziger’s best-known book,"Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research" (Danziger, 1990). Danziger was also interested in the history of psychological concepts and categories, and in a later book, "Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found Its Language" (Danziger, 1997), he traced the historical origins of modern psychological concepts like "behavior", "intelligence", "attitude", "personality" and "motivation". He continued this line of work in his book, "Marking the Mind: A History of Memory" (Danziger, 2008). The book is a wide-ranging history of the concept from Ancient Greece to the present. Much of the book consists of what Danziger calls 'historical psychology'. This field is to be distinguished from history of psychology in that it is concerned not so much with the theories and practices of psychologists but with the subject-matter of psychology and this sometimes has a longer history than the discipline itself (Danziger, 2003).