Wundt and the Founding of Psychology

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Wundt and the Founding of Psychology
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Wundt's Teachers

• J. Müller 1855 Wundt studied with him for a year
  in Berlin
• G. Fechner 1887 left all his papers to Wundt.
  Wundt shared some of his broader interests
• W. Helmholtz he was his assistant till 1864.

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While Wundt was Helmholtz's assistant

• 1862 Wundt writes his first book
• Contribution to a Theory of Sense Perception
• 1863 writes Lectures on the Minds of Men and
  Animals

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Wundt's Transitional Period (1865-1871)

• Independent physiology tutor and associate
  faculty at Heidelberg
• 1866-1869 elected to the Second Chamber of the
  Baden Parliament
• 1867 he started to teach a course in
  physiological psychology.

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Academia before Leipzig

• 1871 offered a regular faculty position at
  Heidelberg
• 1873-74 publishes Physiological Psychology, a
  most important work.
• 1874-75 Professor in Zurich

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At Leipzig

• 1875 assumes a chair in Philosophy
• 1876 starts teaching experimental psychology.
• 1879 official beginning of lab
• 1883 lab incorporated into the U.
• 1897 lab becomes an a whole building
• 1881 founds first journal in Psychology

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Some of Wundt's important Writings

• Wundt's major work was the 20 volumes
  Völkerpsychologie (1900-1920)
• The book in which he describes his model of the
  mind is the 1894 Outlines of Psychology
• Extremely prolific writer more than 50,000 pages

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Wundt's influence

• Many students supervised 116 psychology theses,
  and 70 philosophy theses
• American students James McKeen Cattell, Frank
  Angell , G. Stanley Hall, Edward Titchener and
  Lightner Whitmer
• One woman student Anna Berliner

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Titchener (1867-1927)

• Was considered the "official carrier" of Wundt's
  influence to the US
• Translated some of Wundt's work
• Much more pragmatic and mechanistic than Wundt.
  Wundt's voluntarism becomes Titchener's
  structuralism.
• Starts a group of Experimentalists in 1904 (no
  women allowed)

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Some Early Women Psychologists

• Christine Ladd Franklin (1847-1930), studied
  under G.E. Müller in Gottingen
• Margaret Floy Washburn (student of Titchener),
  founder of the Comparative Psychology field
• Lucy May Boring (1886-1996), worked w/ her
  husband, a noted historian of psychology.

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THE END