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.
Insanity in Ancient and Modern Life
Although psychology as an independent scientific study was largely discredited by well-known scientists and philosophers such as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), scientists such as Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841), took the issue as a reason to invent a mathematical basis for scientific psychology. Despite his unsuccessful attempts to quantify behavior, his efforts were taken up by the scientists Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–18 78) and Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), aiming to measure the mathematical relationships between the physical magnitudes of external stimuli and the psychological intensities of the resulting sensations. Their vast and unique insights are later coined by the term "Psychophysics". Meanwhile, the breakthroughs in neuronal structure and physiology (the five most important listed above), evidenced a physical and biological nature of human functioning that can serve as the basis for scientific experiments in studying behavior. One of the principal founders of experimental physiology, Hermann Helmholtz (1821–1894), conducted experimental studies of a wide range of topics that would later be of huge interest to psychologists. The speed of neural transmission, the physical natures of sound and color and our perception of them count as some of the most important insights. Together with the German physiologists, psychologists and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) he addressed more complicated psychological questions than had not been investigated experimentally in the past. Of particular interest for both was the nature of apperception, which is defined as the point at which a perception occupies the central focus of conscious awareness. To conduct all the studies, in 1879, Wundt founded the first laboratory worldwide that was specifically dedicated to original research in experimental psychology. Tuke himself as a physicist was largely interested in the practical and experimental part of psychology and psychiatry but contributed to the development of experimental psychology mainly by providing theories and hypothesis about biological and environmental factors that influence the mind and also cause mental illnesses. His research and findings are majorly based on observational studies and analysis of existing literature and statistics.