The history of Psychology

So where to start with the research on the history of psychology? what could be a better place to start with other than Wikipedia...cough cough ;/

What I learned through Wikipedia:

Something I already knew - Psychology's historical birth place is Ancient Greece/Greek culture, with psych thought evidenced in Ancient Egypt - something I didn't know (hard to believe since I have a strong passion for everything Egyptian)

Something I didn't give much though too until now is the connection between the disciplines of psychology and philosophy (just between you and I, I get the terminology mucked up from time to time) In fact Philosophy dates back to the ancient Greeks and since then to 1879 Psychology was considered a branch from Philosophy. Apparently it was the German's and the American's in 1879 which considered the Psychology it's own discipline.

Something I had never really considered is everyday life and human behaviours of past civilisations - how they may have suffered from the same types of issues we currently deal with today - and I guess that because of modernity, industrialisation and more recently the information age, they morethan likely would of dealt with issues that we would not even dream about or experience today. For example what the community may have done in ancient Egypt, Greece, China, India in regards to mental illness

So obviously the issue of mental illness and associated behaviours were apparent in ancient cultures and there answer and contingency was clear and logical consideration to humaln psychology. (Makes me wonder what ever the hell happened in the Middle Ages - it's like all humans becamse dumb and thoughless (Ah! control by religion may of been reflected like this on the middle age society)

Talking about the middle ages it was at this time that the middle east practiced clinical and experimental forms of psychology - well apparently they practice what we would call today clinical phsycology and had infastrucuture which would compare to mental hospitals of today.

AH finally getting somewhere with wikipedia... So we have learned that the psychology that we practice today owes it's roots to the realisation in 1879 that it was a discipline to it's own and the German feller Wilhelm Wundt founded the first lab dedicated to the disciplin. (Somewhere in Leipzig.

Wikipedia also lists "other important early contributors to the field include:
Hermann Ebbinghaus (a pioneer in the study of memory)
William James (the American father of pragmatism)
Ivan Pavlov (who developed the procedures associated with classical conditioning). I know this name and associate it with the behavioural experiments he conducted with dogs, and of course the connections of this type of behavioural theory and learning. The other two - wouldn't have a clue!