The Origins of Modern Scientific Psychology in Germany

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The Origins of Modern Scientific Psychology in
Germany

• Why Germany?
• Englandgentlemen amateurs
• Francedivision between research and teaching
• Germanyfree teaching and learning
• Faculty of philosophynatural philosophy
• Research as a career
• The roots
• Subject matter from philosophy
• Mechanism
• Issue of how we gain knowledge of the world
• Methods from sensory physiology
• Psychophysicscontrolled study of psychological
  phenomena

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Wilhelm Wundt (18321920)

• 1879official dateWundts lab at Leipzig
• Influence
• Focus on psychology
• Institutional
• Texts
• Lab
• JournalPhilosophical studies
• Many students

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Wundts Psychology

• Many ideas
• Focus on consciousness
• (Three psychologies, consciousness, unconscious,
  and adaptation)
• Dynamic synthetic theoryattention
• Analytic atomistic research
• Objectify experience
• Analyze experience into basic elements
• How are elements synthesized
• Voluntarismmind is self-organizing

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Research Method

• Immediate experienceunmodified by past
  experience
• Mediate experienceinformation other than the
  experience itself
• Study immediate experience through internal
  perceptionreport experience under controlled
  conditionsmake internal perception external
  perception
• Observer able to determine when process is
  introduced
• Be in a state of readiness or strained attention
• Able to repeat the observation several times
• Experimental conditions must allow for controlled
  variation of the stimuli
• Judgments of size, intensity and duration of
  stimuli

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Research Program

• Mental chronometryspeed of psychological events
• Reaction time
• Maskelyn and Kinnebrook 1795
• Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (17841846) personal
  equation (individual difference)
• Mental operations take time
• Experimental study of the observer
• Franciscus Cornelius Donders (18181889)
• Complication studies

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• Reaction time
• Apprehension admitting
• stimulus into consciousness
• Apperception focusing
• Reactionvoluntary behavior
• Attention/apperception
• Sensorial versus muscular attitude
• Range of attention/apperception

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• Feelings
• Pleasure/displeasure
• Tension/relief
• Excitement/depression
• Apperception
• Creative synthesis
• Law of psychic resultants
• All actions voluntaryvoluntarism
• Not purely physiological
• Goals important

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• Laws
• Psychic resultants
• Psychological relations
• Psychological contrasts
• Developmental
• Mental growth
• Heterogeneity of ends
• Development towards opposites
• Völkerpsychologie

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Comment

• Wrote fast
• Attempting to establish school
• Heavily philosophical
• Romantic/idealist rather than positivist
• Theoretical not pragmatic
• Human mind rather than individual differences
• Why ignored
• Not American
• Methodological weaknesses
• Emphasis on consciousness
• Surprisingly modern
• Methods still used
• Weakness of introspection

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Outlines of Psychology

• What is the subject matter of psychology?
• How does this differ from the natural sciences?
• How does the focus of psychology differ from the
  natural sciences?
• What are the two basic methods of science?
• What method must psychology use? Why?
• What kind of psychology uses observation?

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Edward Bradford Titchener (18671927 and
Structuralism

• Schools of psychology
• Structuralismcontents of consciousness
• Associationismelements of consciousness
• Positivismavoid theory
• Student of Wundt, but
• Contents over processes
• Qualitative introspection

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• Psychologystudy experience dependent on the
  observer
• Contents not functions
• Consciousnesssum of experiences
• Methodinspection of experience
• Systematic introspection
• Stimulus error focus on stimulus rather than
  experience
• Experimental Psychology A Manual of Laboratory
  Practice
• T

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• Elements of consciousness
• Reduce conscious processes to simplest components
  
• Sensations
• Images
• Affections
• Characteristicsquality, intensity, duration
  (protensity), clearness (attensity)
• Attensity replaces attention
• Meaning context
• Determine the laws of association
• Connect elements to physiological conditions
• Late in life shift to dimensions rather than
  elements
• Phenomenology rather than introspection

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• Criticism
• Subjective method
• Focus on consciousness
• Other approaches reacted against structuralism

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Franz Brentano (18381917)Act Psychology

• Former priest (rejected infallibility) and
  philosopher
• Observational approach relying on logic and
  experience
• Focus on mental activity not contents
• Acts contain the contents/objects
• Intentionality
• Observe internal states indirectly
• Phenomenology
• Carl Stumpf (18481936)
• Edmund Husserl (18591938)

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Hermann Ebbinghaus (18501909)

• Memory and learning
• Higher mental processes
• Methodological innovation
• Nonsense syllables
• Effects of repetition
• Meaning
• Association
• Forgetting curve
• Associationist

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• Georg Elias Müller (18501934)
• Dynamic view of memory
• Subjects organized lists
• Interferenceretroactive, proactive
• Methodologist
• Oswald Külpe (18621915) and the Würzburg school
• Higher mental processes
• Systematic introspection
• Fractionation and repetition
• Imageless thought controversy
• Aufgabedetermining tendency