The “History of Psychology” study abroad course included visits to Sigmund Freud’s homes in both London (pictured) and Vienna.
When 13 University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students boarded flights to Europe in May, they weren’t just traveling for leisure.
They were retracing the roots of modern psychology.
The “History of Psychology” course, led by UTC Department of Psychology Assistant Professor Bret Eschman, took the group on a two-week study abroad experience to England, Germany and Austria.
“As a department, one of our goals is to create experiential learning opportunities,” Eschman said, “and there’s no better way to experience the history of psychology than to actually stand in some of the most psychologically relevant locations in history.
“I went on a similar trip after graduating from undergrad and it changed me.”
In England, students visited the British Museum, Sigmund Freud’s final residence and Down House—home to Charles Darwin. In Germany, they toured the Nuremberg courtroom where Nazi leaders were held accountable for war crimes—experiencing firsthand the origins of the field’s ethical code. They also visited the Center for the History of Psychology in Würzburg and spent an emotional day at the Dachau concentration camp. The trip concluded in Vienna, where Freud and Viktor Frankl once lived and worked.
Rising junior Eleanor Forrest, a psychology major from Nashville, had studied many of the names and places on the trip’s itinerary. But until this experience, they had existed only in textbooks.
“I feel like we can only get so much from a classroom,” she said. “I already had some basic knowledge of the theories of psychology, how it started, where it came from, the big contributors like Freud. But being able to go and see where these theories were originally developed and studied just gave me all that much more insight into the development of them.”
After touring the Freud Museum in Vienna, she said it was easy to feel the weight of history, especially when learning about Anna Freud—Sigmund’s daughter and the founder of child psychology.
It wasn’t just the academics that stuck with Forrest.
“Visiting the concentration camps and learning more about dehumanization and manipulation on such a large scale was really difficult,” Forrest said. “I knew it was going to be hard to learn about it and I knew it was going to be heartbreaking, but I didn’t quite understand how hard the reality hits you until you’re in the moment on the grounds of where all of this occurred.”
Leah Stephens, a rising junior psychology major from White House, Tennessee, said the trip changed how she viewed both the world and her future profession.
“Just seeing the different cultures and the architecture … that really stood out to me,” Stephens said. “I would step out of a Starbucks and there would be this huge beautiful church outside. That was just a little funny to me. You don’t see that here.”
She said visiting Germany was especially powerful.
“We learned about how they used really big buildings to have a sense of intimidation over people,” Stephens said, referring to the Nazis’ use of architecture and propaganda. “It was more of how they used psychology to their advantage to get control over people to establish their authority.”
A trip to London wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Big Ben and Parliament.
Rising junior Anna Elam, a nursing major with a psychology minor, had never traveled outside the U.S. before the trip. She learned about the course after taking a child development course with Eschman.
Elam said she has always been fascinated by individual differences and the way people connect, concepts central to both psychology and nursing.
“My main interest in high school had actually been language and linguistics,” the Murfreesboro, Tennessee, native said. “But nursing ended up being that route of getting to explore connections between people on a very visceral and direct level … constantly engaging with people.”
What made the study abroad experience so meaningful, Elam said, was “stepping beyond my worldview.”
“I think that’s the best way to foster empathy. You have to understand things outside of yourself,” she explained, “and you can’t do that without stepping outside of a comfort zone at some point. And I definitely stepped outside of my comfort zone.”
After the course officially ended, she stayed an extra week visiting Poland and Rome—including two solo days in the Italian capital.
She also had a bus layover in Brno, Czech Republic, which provided an impactful moment. While trying to navigate the bus station, she had difficulty finding anyone who spoke English.
“It’s naive to say, but I had really never experienced that feeling of being a complete outsider,” Elam said. “It helped me realize how hard it must be to live in a place where nothing is made for you.”
As a future nurse, “that kind of empathy is invaluable.”
“You won’t always understand everything about your patients,” she said, “but you have to be completely open to connection and difference. That’s what this trip gave me.”
Amy Brown, a nontraditional student and transfer from Cleveland State Community College, brought a different lens to the experience. Just days before flying to London, she graduated from UTC with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in history.
Brown, who spent 20 years teaching middle school history to homeschool students, said the trip was deeply personal. She had studied the Holocaust for decades, met survivors and even served on the Nashville Holocaust Commission. But she had never set foot in Europe.
After the course ended in Vienna, Brown—who will start UTC’s master’s program in psychological science this fall—took a train to Poland to visit Auschwitz.
“I just felt like I couldn’t be that close and not go,” she said.
“I’ve studied a lot of Jewish culture and Jewish traditions. I’ve taken my students to meet a rabbi. We went through a service. I’ve taken several students to meet survivors before. Even taking it to that level, which at that time was the ultimate level to me … to be able to stand certain places, just like at Auschwitz … the gravity of it, it was really heavy. It made it complete.”
Forrest said what she observed during the “History of Psychology” trip helped her understand how people internalize trauma and how she’ll apply that insight as a future clinician.
“From my background, coming from a small town and coming from a small school, there were just a lot of people who dealt with things very similarly,” Forrest said. “Getting to see firsthand how people’s brains work differently … as I approach treating patients, I gained the understanding that everybody processes things differently. One thing that works for one patient may not work for another.”
For Stephens, the connection to Freud’s legacy was more than symbolic.
“When you are a psych major, you hear about Sigmund Freud in every class you ever take. There’s no way to escape it,” she said with a laugh. “But I think this way I got to actually see it in person and understand the significance of what he did in the field. Instead of just hearing it in class and thinking, ‘Oh, here we go again with Sigmund Freud,’ now I actually got to see it. That was powerful.”
For Brown, who called Frankl her favorite author, visiting his apartment in Vienna brought years of reading into sharper focus.
“To look through his actual thesis of how he came up with logotherapy and stuff was incredible,” she said. “There’s so many experiences that happened on that trip. It’s hard to cover all of them. The trip was completely amazing.”
While students paid for the course, Eschman required them to apply for at least one scholarship to reduce the financial burden.
“This year’s group earned about $35,000 in scholarships,” he said. “One of this year’s students had never even been on an airplane before. To see them grow over just two weeks—to see their awareness, their confidence, their curiosity—it was incredibly rewarding.”
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