Wilhelm wundt theory
One of his three siblings died before he was born and another died when he was very young. Wundt was two years old when Ludwig left home. However, the occupation was somewhat forced upon him as his older brother did not pursue theology. Interestingly, the Wundts who had previously served as pastors had also been heavily involved in higher education.
When she was a child, she had a governess who taught her French. Wundt had a vivid memory of getting disciplined by his mother before being lovingly consoled by his father. Despite his family history, Maximilian was described as a man who lacked ambition and was not a high achiever. This is perhaps due to the fact that he never managed to reach the academic and professional heights of his predecessors.
However, Maximilian did have many fine qualities that his family appreciated. Wundt remembered his father as a very loving and jovial man who was often generous to a fault. When Wundt was between the ages of four and six, his family moved to the more rural town of Heidensheim. As a boy, Wundt did not have many friends who were in his age group.
He had a timid personality and preferred to spend his free time doing useful tasks around the house rather than playing. By the time he was ten years old, he was already reading Shakespeare. As Wundt spent much of his time alone, he often engaged in daydreaming. He also developed a keen awareness of his own mental and emotional processes.
At age thirteen Wundt was sent to boarding school at the gymnasium at Bruchsal. While he was there he was extremely homesick, made no friends, and got very poor grades. Wundt felt so overwhelmed that he once ran away from school, but his mother brought him back soon after. Although Wundt was deeply affected by the death of his father, he managed to make a few friends at school and started participating in extracurricular activities.
He enjoyed his years at the gymnasium in Heidelberg and felt as if he had been reborn. When Wundt left the Heidelberg gymnasium as a nineteen year old, he knew that he needed to decide what type of career he would pursue. Many men in his family had served as pastors, but that career choice was not to his liking.
He considered a literary career, but he decided against it because he felt that such a career was too uncertain and he would need significant financial aid that his widowed mother could not afford. He was also very aware that he had to suggest a university and a career that the Arnold family approved of if he hoped to get their help.
However, Wundt dreaded the idea of going there because he did not want to be compared with his other family members who had also attended that university. The first is that his grades were so mediocre that he did not qualify for state financial aid to attend the local university in Heidelberg. Had he qualified, he would have had little choice but to go.
So while his mother may have been disappointed at this seemingly negative outcome, Wundt was secretly overjoyed by it. Wundt reasoned that if he chose to study medicine, the Arnolds would approve of his career choice and it would seem natural that he would want to study at the institution where his uncle was already located.
He eventually declared his intentions and his family accepted his decision.
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Unknown to the Arnolds, Wundt had concocted the perfect excuse to get away from them while still receiving their financial assistance. Freidrich Arnold had a positive influence on Wundt. With his help and guidance, Wundt became a serious student who had a passion for anatomy. This meant that Wundt had little choice but to follow his uncle to the University of Heidelberg despite his earlier efforts to put some distance between himself and the rest of the Arnold family.
Although Wundt was now a diligent student, he had to make up several courses in science and mathematics when he transferred to the University of Heidelberg. The primary reason for this is that he had neglected these subjects while he was a teenager at the gymnasium. He acquired a private tutor to help him with mathematics while he did lab work and attended lectures in chemistry, anatomy, physiology, and physics.
He was so enthused by Bunsen that he briefly considered switching his career path from physiology to chemistry. Despite the allures of chemistry, Wundt decided to keep his focus on medicine. In , he passed his state exams for admission to the practice of medicine. In addition to the state exams, there were three separate exams in surgery, obstetrics, and internal medicine.
Incredibly, Wundt received the highest test score in each examination. Once Wundt passed his exams, the Arnold family suggested that he should press forward with his medical career and help support his elderly mother. However Wundt doubted his ability to practice medicine long-term. However, no such positions were available.
Wundt eventually agreed to work at a local hospital in place of a colleague who needed to study for his medical exams. He worked long hours to gain as much practical experience as he could. On one occasion, a sleep-deprived Wundt mistakenly administered iodine to a patient who needed narcotics. Although the patient was not harmed, the experience haunted Wundt and made him hesitant about entering medical practice full time.
A second event occurred at the hospital that made Wundt question his future as a medical practitioner. It occurred during the hours he spent observing patients who had sensory paralysis due to leg injuries. Images Images were basically the same concept as sensations, though these were associated with a local stimulus in the cortex rather than an external stimulus outside the body.
Wilhelm wundt born
Feelings The category of feelings represented whatever did not come from the sense organs or a "revival of sensory experience. Any combination of one of each of the sets could describe any feeling. In the edition of Principles of Physiological Psychology, Wundt focused on the central functions, or the central nervous system.
In discussing the research and experimentation that led to his conclusions, Wundt presented what he termed, "General principles of the central functions. Explanation Wundt classified his approach to understanding the nervous system in three different ways: anatomical, physiological, and psychological. In terms of anatomy, the system was made up of many elements that were closely connected to one another.
The nerve cells, or neurons, were controlled by the cell processes. The results of the cell processes often provided clues as to the directions in which the connections are made, Wundt noted. This principle also indicated that every physiological activity was also the sum of many functions, even if the researcher is unable to separate those functions from the whole and from the organism's complex behavior.
Again, as with the other two perspectives, Wundt's described "physical" or psychological contents indicated that each of the complicated nerve processes can be broken down into its basic elements, all of which react in cooperation to create the whole. The indicators of this structure are found in the process of psychological observation itself, Wundt noted, and the fact that any psychical process imaginable—no matter how simple—must have arisen from a large group of interconnected pieces, or elements.
Examples As an example of the anatomical sense of the connection element, Wundt offered that "the merit of the 'neurone theory' to have shown how this principle of the connection of elements is exhibited in the morphological relations of the central nervous system. In the psychological view, Wundt noted that the "arousal of light or tone," is not simply the "action of stimulus upon the peripheral structures, but also and invariably the processes of nervous conduction, the excitations of central elements in the mesencephalic region, and finally certain processes in the cortical centers.
Explanation Just as he theorized that the structure of functions could be broken down into their elements, Wundt outlined all of these five principles with the same understanding. Based on the "connection of elements," Wundt determined that the hypothesis of "wherever the physiological functions of the central elements have acquired a specific coloring or peculiar quality this unique character does not come from the elements themselves but rather from the connections.
First, he stated that the function of the peripheral organs must represent a lengthy, continuous pattern in order for the sensations to appear in a person's consciousness. And, second, the disturbances of the function caused by central lesions could be "compensated [for] without disappearance of the lesions themselves. Examples Wundt's premise in support of the first phenomena was that people born blind or deaf, or who have lost those senses in early childhood, did not have the sensations of light or sound.
He concluded that the complex interaction and relation of the sensory aspects that are part of the "higher mental processes," meaning those more advanced, or complex, were a part of a central nervous system that was comprised, not of the origin of new specific qualities, but rather of the "indefinitely" complex interrelation of specific sensory elements of the mind.
Explanation Wundt used the word "practice" in the standard meaning of the term—as in the repeated performance of a function. With regard to the nervous system, practice indicated that every key element would get better as it went through the ongoing process of being fitted to perform or participate in a particular function. Adaptation would come with the practice and it would cause changes along the way until a different combination was born.
Examples When adaptation occurred with regard to nervous functions, the resulting adaptations that would become most important are those "newly practiced" elements which would take the place of the older ones. Explanation Following directly from the previous principle, "vicarious function" was a special case of practice and adaptation: namely, one with a limited prospect.
In other words, it involved a new structural extension that would be required to perform a function new to the involved elements. The structure has an inherent capability to perform the new task, even though it has never been expressed before. This idea can be broken down into two forms—a substitution by "extension of the area of function" and a substitution that happens by acquiring new functions.
The first substitution was a gradual "compensation" of the disturbances. This occurred as a result of a significant partial impairment due to the increased activity in other areas that also shared in the function. Sometimes these compensations would come from the "higher" centers, and thus wipe out the trouble that was caused by the lesions of the "lower" centers.
Examples In the first form of substitution, Wundt used the example of what happened in certain cases of brain injury that are centered in the cerebellum or in the diencephalic and mesencephalic regions part of the forward part and the middle part of the brain—at least, as much as he knew in the latter part of the nineteenth century. He noted that the disturbances will gradually disappear in these cases of injury.
The forms of vicarious function that involved spatial connection were different, according to Wundt. This difference could be understood by imagining that the speech centers of the brain just do not work. That they did not become atrophied could be a difficult concept to figure out, were it not for a simple explanation: If every complex function was based on the supposition that the central elements cooperate in a very detailed and complex manner, then the evidence suggested that more than just one area was involved in such a function.
If aphasia—the loss of the ability to use or understand language that often accompanies an injury such as a stroke—occurred when the centers for speech in the left side of the brain were destroyed, the conclusion that these speech functions were solely based in that left side of the brain would be incorrect.
Again, in this case, Wundt believed that speech was a cooperative function, with some language processing based in the right side of the brain, even if it was the smaller part of the function. Even though one side of the brain might be used more heavily in a certain task, that side was not the only method the brain used. Because of that statement, substitution by using the functions of the other side was possible.
Explanation Wundt argued that even though the central functions and peripheral organs had their own distinct places, the central organ provided a way that those functions could join together. Titchener's translation of this text said that, "any absolute localization of function" was impossible. Yet, considering the fact that the central location of a system was not fixed, the movements of the various functions would have to be relative to environmental conditions, both internal and external.
Concluding his discussion of this concept, Wundt explained that this principle included all of the preceding principles, and that therefore the idea of absolute localization contradicted all of them. Examples Wundt offered as an example of relative localization the understanding that a reference to the "visual center" was not restricted to the visual cortex; rather, nerve centers outside the brain also played an important role in the function of vision.
These five principles, Wundt noted, were not easily accepted with regard to the development of the central functions theory. Many other researchers had opposing views. Wundt's defense of his principles failed to dismiss that opposition. Wundt did not intend for this theory, or any other of his theories, to be the final word, however.
He simply wanted to foster continued experimentation and exploration that was based in sound scientific judgment. Other theories grew out of Wundt's basic premise of critical introspection. These principles not only guided Wundt in his research, but they also provided Wundt's students and critics with numerous premises to examine.
Five different key approaches emerged as the foundations of his thought. Wundt believed in the notion of consciousness as a natural reality. In order to track his system, the student of his work must also accept that premise—but methods of studying subjective experience were problematic. Wundt understood the immense challenge of such a task.
As he reviewed the trials of his own personal life and growth, however, he believed it could be solved. One biographer noted:. Wundt placed his subject matter in line to be another level following upwards in the series of sciences, physics, chemistry, and biology. Differences of considerable substance, however, separate this next level from the others.
Physical sciences are about objects and energies conceptualized by physical scientists. Consciousness is not a thing—like physical concept. Rather, it is an immediate and transient process, the investigation of which amounts to no less than the study of subjectivity. Consciousness is a continuous flow, a constant unfolding of experience, which according to Wundt's findings cannot be separated into discrete "faculties" as had been done in ancient times.
Explanation Wundt and his researchers determined that consciousness worked in a unique way, and they believed that the elements of that operation could be observed and described. That belief alone provided motivation to push forward in defining the new science of psychology. Included in their discoveries were verifiable limitations of "mental capacities, on span, on the timing of the temporal flow, on the nature of selective attention and short-term memory," as a biographer stated.
They found a limited number, usually six or seven, "attentional fixations" that resulted from each timing measure through which short-term memories were stored. Any differences among those experiences of sensation and emotion revealed a multidimensional aspect. Behaviors were thus motivated by the urges and tensions that had resulted from these combined experiences.
The observation of these phenomena also revealed how these behaviors might fluctuate, which ones resulted from self-control, which took effort to manipulate, and which were automatically performed, similar to natural reflexes. Examples Emil Kraepelin , a student of Wundt's, proposed a theory of schizophrenia in It was based largely on what was beginning to emerge as Wundt's theoretical system.
Kraepelin utilized Wundt's details of what has been described as "processes of central selective attention. This principle of creative synthesis would eventually become known as the principle of creative resultants. Wundt first referred to it in , and it formed the core of his ideas even to his death. This concept states that such sensations as color, touches, musical tones, and words of speech are subjective reactions of the brain rather than either an interpretation of what has been put into the brain by stimulus or the taking in and storing of something brought into the brain from outside.
Such reactions are what he called creative synthesis. One of Wundt's biographers noted:. Sense organ and neural events may be described endlessly in terms of physics and chemistry, but such descriptions do not include do not produce for us the actual psychological qualities known as "sweet," "sour," "heavy," "dark blue," "dazzling crimson," "sharp," "painful," or "meaningful.
Explanation In his autobiography, Wundt explained the thought process that led him to the notion of creative synthesis. He recalled that when he "first approached psychological problems," he "shared the general prejudice natural to physiologists that the formation of perceptions is merely the work of the physiological properties" of the sense organs.
And he went on to say that:. Then through the examination of visual phenomena I learned to conceive of perception as an act of creative synthesis. This gradually became my guide, at the hand of which I arrived at a psychological understanding of the development of the higher functions of imagination and intellect. The older psychology gave me no help in this.
Example Wundt's theory of creative synthesis gradually evolved during his first years in Leipzig. He became more focused on emotions and motivation, as well as on volition, since these issues challenged his ideas of creative synthesis. He wrote in that "The course of both general and individual development shows that desires or urges the German word, Triebe are the fundamental psychological phenomena from which all mental processes derive.
Consciousness itself was seen a process that had two different stages: 1 a large-capacity short-term memory at one time referred to as "the Blickfeld" and, 2 a narrow-capacity focus of selective attention, sometimes known as apperception, and manifested through effort. The latter travels through short-term memory.
Wundt's psychology found its greatest success and acceptance within the field of language. As a consequence, Wundt and his colleagues set forth a linguistic theory that was very detailed and comprehensive and resulted from their psychological principles. By the beginning of the twentieth century, many linguistics scholars and psychologists, especially in America, had adhered to Wundt's extensive writings on the subject.
He first presented his ideas on the psychology of language in his initial lecture upon arriving in Leipzig in In , in his Logik, he wrote extensively on language for the first time in publication. The first two books of his Volkerpsychologie Folk Psychology , published in , contained his treatise on linguistics and language performance.
The section, entitled, "Die Sprache Language ," was revised in and further revised and expanded in — Explanation One biographer noted that the key to understanding Wundt's linguistic theories is the concept that "syntax, the sound systems, and all structures in language are seen as taking their particular form by virtue of the operating characteristics of underlying universal mental processes.
Language's basic unit was the sentence, which served to identify a specific mental state. It represented the way in which the central focal attention process divides and subdivides mental impressions, with an understanding of the relationship between those divisions. No element of language—words or any other building block—could have any meaning except as it was connected to that relationship with the mental sentence that provided the reason for it.
Example Based on his theory, Wundt and others studied language, particularly that of children. Before a child would begin to speak, the impact of emotional gestures and sounds would have begun to form language and the basis for it. As a child was able to increase the focus of attention on emotional urges, the mental activity providing for the creation of sentences would have begun to produce the elements necessary for language.
Wundt contributed to another popular twentieth-century focus of education, tree diagrams, which became a standard form of diagramming sentences. These diagrams formed a shape like a pyramid, starting at the top, in order to show the distinction between the subject and predicate of the sentence. Subject and predicate could be further divided and subdivided into other parts of speech.
In his Sprachpsychologie, Wundt explained this by noting that the sentence was. Rather, it stands as a whole at the cognitive level while it is being spoken. Wundt offered his studied beliefs regarding the emotions in contrast to other theorists of the day, all of whom worked in the traditions of either romanticism or rationalism.
Wundt sided more with the principles of romanticism, meaning that human beings fall into the category of emotional beings rather than intellectual.
Explanation Contemporaries such as William James, who were transforming such romantic tradition into a modern-day behaviorism, took exception to Wundt's approach. But Wundt noted,. First, the definite outer symptoms of emotions do not appear until such time as the psychical nature of the emotion is already clearly established. The emotions, accordingly, precedes the innervation [a stimulation that results in movement] effects which are looked upon by these investigators as causes of emotion.
Second, it is absolutely impossible to classify the rich variety of psychical emotional states in the comparatively simple scheme of innervation changes. The psychical processes are much more varied than are their accompanying forms of expression. Third, and finally, the physical concomitants stand in no constant relation to the psychical quality of the emotions.
This holds especially for the effects on pulse and respiration, but is true also for the pantomimetic expressive movements. It may sometimes happen that emotions with very different, even opposite kinds of affective contents may belong to the same class so far as the accompanying physical phenomena are concerned. When Wundt referred to "feelings," "moods," and "emotions," he was not specifying categories, only intensity levels.
He would later present his ideas about sensory qualities, explaining affective and aesthetic qualities of experience. Example Wundt held to the idea that all mental states were transported through constant fluctuations of emotions, mood, or feeling. Sometimes these would become intense enough to precipitate action.
Inherent in every mood, according to Wundt, was its opposite. Other psychologists moved out of the context of Wundt's ideas to provided their own generation of his tri-dimensional feelings. The three dimensions were ideas to which others basically adhered. The aspects of "pleasure versus displeasure," "high versus low arousal," and "concentrated versus relaxed attention" were explained further by the notions of the opposites of control, potency, and domination as opposed to submission.
An example he used when discussing sensory qualities were a person's reactions to music and rhythms. Through the intensive reaction-time research program Wundt established at Leipzig, he and his fellow researchers were able to study what he called "decision and choice. Kurt Danziger published the first English account of the research in , previously published only by the philosopher Theodore Mischel, who published in a philosophy journal and whose work was not known to psychologists.
Explanation Wundt did not believe that emotions were sensations, or caused by external stimulus activity. He was convinced that they were internal products of the central nervous system with no other influences. Emotional forces were internal forces, ever-changing, and just features of consciousness. Wundt used the terms "volition" and "motivation" interchangeably with emotions.
He thought that what might have been the controlled or voluntary efforts in primal beings could have become automatic mechanisms as humans evolved. Wundt did believe that in such highly evolved creatures as modern humans, "pure impulses or drives" could be contained by attentional control, and consequently become conscious volitions.
A biographer noted:. The automatization of actions, mental or otherwise is, however, a double-edged sword. Rapid articulate speech, for example, is a largely automatized process, but when we focus too intently on some motive or extraneous thought while speaking, we are in danger of losing control of the articulation process. Human beings must continually refocus in order to keep control of the automatic control "wiring" that is inherent.
If it is not "tuned up" lapses occur, just as short-term memory can fade without the appropriate mental exercises. It is not improbable that all the reflex movements of both animals and men originate in this way. As evidence of this we have, besides the above described reduction of volitional acts through practice to pure mechanical processes, also the purposeful character of reflexes, which points to the presence at some time of purposive ideas as motives.
Another biographer observed, "Like most of his other theories, Wundt's views on volition were subject to periodic revision. However, once he had developed the independent position of his mature years, these revisions did not affect his fundamental views. Example The automatic behaviors can be witnessed in considering the skills a person possesses when heading into the study of advanced math.
Had the student not learned the basic rules of algebra so that its operations were automatic, the more complicated steps of higher mathematics would be virtually impossible. The same is true in writing and forming grammatical sentences. The mechanical aspect of language becomes so automatic that the writer can simply focus on content rather than the process—just as in conversations, when a person does not have to stop and focus on each step of the process, but rather only on what is being said.
Still another example of this concept is the pianist who has developed the skill of playing well enough to talk or sing simultaneously, focusing on that behavior rather than the mechanics of playing. People experience such behavior daily even as they lock their houses when they leave, for instance, or do not stop to think how to open their garage doors, instead, simply pressing the opener automatically as they approach their house.
Basically defined, apperception referred to the process of focusing on a particular content in consciousness. This term more specifically described the psychological processes that explained what was involved in patterns of deliberate, voluntary actions. Explanation Within Wundt's concept of the process of mental functions was included, as in his other theories, the polar opposite to the main focus.
In other words, he described the point of focus as well as the rest of the field of consciousness. The polarization is the result of the process of apperception, which was a manifestation of volition. Apperception was the principle that motivated and provided experience to both direction and structure.
It also indicated a "central" process that could operate in two directions, on sensory content that could result in more complex forms of perception, and on the shaping of ideas. While that idea was not so revolutionary, Wundt's additional notion of the opposite, that apperception also operated on the motor apparatus, was more innovative.
This idea meant that not only was the mind constructed with regard to focus and the field that surrounded it, but the actual movement of the body and the skeleton also functioned in the same way, by selectively controlling movements. By the third edition of his Principles of Physiological Psychology, Wundt revised his concept of apperception even more.
He offered the distinction between what he termed "impulsive" apperception, involving the motor direction of apperception; and "reproductive" apperception, indicating cognitive direction. Impulsive apperception, the controlling process, directly affects the motor apparatus. One of Wundt's biographers explained that during the process of development, "movement images are eventually formed by the differentiation and recombination of movement sensations.
It involves only the memory of the movement, and not the movement process itself.
Wilhelm wundt psychology
Examples The sucking of an infant on the mother's breast would be just one such impulsive movement. Such "primitive" activities indicated that the central stimulus would immediately and directly result in particular patterns of motor behavior. The biographer noted, "But such motor activity leads necessarily to the formation of motor images no matter how rudimentary which can be recalled by reproductive apperception.
If I were asked what I thought the value for psychology of the experimental method was in the past and still is, I would answer that for me it created and continues to confirm a wholly new view of the nature and interrelations of mental processes. When I first approached psychological problems, I shared the general prejudice natural to physiologists that the formation of perceptions is merely the work of the physiological properties of our sense organs.
When I then proceeded to investigate the temporal relations in the flow of mental events, I gained a new insight into the development of volition The chronometric investigation of associative processes showed me the relation of perceptual processes to memory images. It also taught me to recognize that the concept of "reproduced" ideas is one of the many fictions that has become set in our language to create a picture of something that does not exist in reality.
I learned to understand that "mental representation" is a process which is no less changing and transient than a feeling or an act of will. As a consequence of all this I saw the old theory of association is no longer tenable. It must be replaced by the notion of relational processes involving rudimentary feelings, a view that results in giving up the stable linkages and close connections of successive as well as simultaneous associations.
Wundt's life spanned 88 years. The world into which he was born in was certainly very different from the world in which he died—a post- World War I Germany. Europe was undergoing enormous political and physical changes. The landscape of what had been a continent of small kingdoms and tiny countries had evolved into a Europe of fewer countries and more deadly wars.
Greece had become an independent state. The medieval cannon-and-sword warfare had evolved into the airplanes, bombs, and the battles of a new century. Medical and scientific advances were slowly making the world a place with increasing life expectancy, wider opportunities for travel, and more accessible education to a class of people who could not have hoped for such intellectual adventures just decades earlier.
The industrial revolution had swept through Europe first, and then the United States, bringing about technological capabilities that few had ever dreamed possible. The year Wundt was born, Michael Faraday 's laws of electrolysis were made public. In , when Wundt was only seven years old, Louis-Jacques-Mand Daguerre developed the first photographic images.
Edward titchener: Wilhelm Wundt (born August 16, , Neckarau, near Mannheim, Baden [Germany]—died August 31, , Grossbothen, Germany) was a German physiologist and psychologist who is generally acknowledged as the founder of experimental psychology.
By the time of Wundt's death, the average person could operate handheld cameras and view motion pictures. This period of significant social change caused a shift in in human consciousness as well—people began to view themselves as living within an ever-changing context. Although Wundt spent a great deal of time alone throughout his childhood, he could not ignore the significance of what was going on in the world around him.
Those events affected him and helped to shape the path he would follow into his profession. Just as his own personal life and development gave cause to his life of research and experiment, so did the changing world around him, especially in academia, medicine, and politics. While serving on the faculty at the university, Wundt also served as an elected representative from his district in Heidelberg, for the Baden diet governing body , beginning on April 26, He would resign about 18 months later because he did not believe the life of his research would be compatible with the necessary demands of political life.
He would become a champion for German unification. Wundt gave a speech to the Heidelberg branch of the Workers' Educational League in , the text of which was found among his papers after his death. One of his biographers documented. Wundt stated that the goal of the entire working-class movement was the freedom and independence of the working class and its salvation from mechanization, but that this goal was indissolubly linked to German unity and freedom.
German workers must therefore rise above their class interests, to fight with a sense of duty for the honor of the nation. Strength in warfare and soundness of character are independent of privilege, Wundt said, and they have more value than gold or possessions. The university's stock consists of 6, volumes in western languages including bound periodicals as well as 9, special print runs and brochures from the original Wundt Library.
The last Wundt biography which tried to represent both Wundt's psychology and his philosophy was by Eisler One can also get an idea of Wundt's thoughts from his autobiography Erlebtes und Erkanntes Later biographies by Nef and Petersen up to Arnold in restrict themselves primarily to the psychology or the philosophy.
Eleonore Wundt's knowledgeable but short biography of her father exceeds many others' efforts. At the start of the First World War, Wundt, like Edmund Husserl and Max Planck , signed the patriotic call to arms as did about 4, professors and lecturers in Germany, and during the following years he wrote several political speeches and essays that were also characterized by the feeling of a superiority of German science and culture.
During Wundt's early Heidelberg time he espoused liberal views. He co-founded the Association of German Workers' Associations. He was a member of the liberal Progressive Party of Baden. From to he represented Heidelberg in the Baden States Assembly. In old age Wundt appeared to become more conservative see Wundt, ; Wundt's correspondence , then — also in response to World War I, the subsequent social unrest and the severe revolutionary events of the post-war period — adopted an attitude that was patriotic and lent towards nationalism.
Wilhelm Wundt's son, philosopher Max Wundt, had an even more clearly intense, somewhat nationalist, stance. The psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin described the pioneering spirit at the new Leipzig Institute in this fashion: "We felt that we were trailblazers entering virgin territory, like creators of a science with undreamt-of prospects.
Wundt spent several afternoons every week in his adjacent modest Professorial office, came to see us, advised us and often got involved in the experiments; he was also available to us at any time. The philosopher Rudolf Eisler considered Wundt's approach as follows: "A major advantage of Wundt's philosophy is that it neither consciously nor unconsciously takes metaphysics back to its beginnings, but strictly distinguishes between empirical-scientific and epistemological-metaphysical approaches, and considers each point-of-view in isolation in its relative legitimacy before finally producing a uniform world view.
Wundt always differentiates between the physical-physiological and the purely psychological, and then again from the philosophical point-of-view. As a result, apparent 'contradictions' are created for those who do not observe more precisely and who constantly forget that the differences in results are only due to the approach and not the laws of reality This knowledgeable representation examines Wundt's main topics, views and scientific activities and exceeds the generally much briefer Wundt reception within the field of psychology, in which many of the important prerequisites and references are ignored right from the start.
The internal consistency of Wundt's work from to , between the main works and within the reworked editions, has repeatedly been discussed and been subject to differing assessments in parts. One could consider Wundt's gradual concurrence with Kant's position, that conscious processes are not measurable on the basis of self-observation and cannot be mathematically formulated, to be a major divergence.
Wundt, however, never claimed that psychology could be advanced through experiment and measurement alone, but had already stressed in that the development history of the mind and comparative psychology should provide some assistance. Wundt attempted to redefine and restructure the fields of psychology and philosophy. None of his Leipzig assistants and hardly any textbook authors in the subsequent two generations have adopted Wundt's broad theoretical horizon, his demanding scientific theory or the multi-method approach.
While the Principles of physiological Psychology met with worldwide resonance, Wundt's cultural psychology ethno-psychology appeared to have had a less widespread impact.
Sigmund freud
But there are indications that George Herbert Mead and Franz Boas , among others, were influenced by it. In its time, Wundt's Ethik received more reviews than almost any of his other main works. Most of the objections were ranged against his renouncing any ultimate transcendental ethical basis God, the Absolute , as well as against his ideas regarding evolution, i.
As Wundt did not describe any concrete ethical conflicts on the basis of examples and did not describe any social ethics in particular, his teachings with the general idea of humanism appear rather too abstract. Leipzig was a world-famous centre for the new psychology after There are various interpretations regarding why Wundt's influence after the turn of the century, i.
A survey was conducted on the basis of more than contemporary and later sources: reviews and critiques of his publications since , references to Wundt's work in textbooks on psychology and the history of psychology from to , biographies, congress reports, praise on his decadal birthdays, obituaries and other texts.
A range of scientific controversies were presented in detail. Wundt's terminology also created difficulties because he had — from today's point-of-view — given some of his most important ideas unfortunate names so that there were constant misunderstandings. Examples include:. A representation of Wundt's psychology as 'natural science', 'element psychology' or 'dualistic' conceptions is evidence of enduring misunderstandings.
It is therefore necessary to remember Wundt's expressly stated desire for uniformity and lack of contradiction, for the mutual supplementation of psychological perspectives. Wundt's more demanding, sometimes more complicated and relativizing, then again very precise style can also be difficult — even for today's German readers; a high level of linguistic competence is required.
There are only English translations for very few of Wundt's work. Such shortcomings may explain many of the fundamental deficits and lasting misunderstandings in the Anglo-American reception of Wundt's work. Titchener, a two-year resident of Wundt's lab and one of Wundt's most vocal advocates in the United States, is responsible for several English translations and mistranslations of Wundt's works that supported his own views and approach, which he termed " structuralism " and claimed was wholly consistent with Wundt's position.
As Wundt's three-volume Logik und Wissenschaftslehre, i. A highly contradictory picture emerges from any systematic research on his reception. On the one hand, the pioneer of experimental psychology and founder of modern psychology as a discipline is praised, on the other hand, his work is insufficiently tapped and appears to have had little influence.
Misunderstandings and stereotypical evaluations continue into the present, even in some representations of the history of psychology and in textbooks. Like other important psychologists and philosophers, Wundt was subject to ideological criticism, for example by authors of a more Christianity-based psychology, by authors with materialistic and positivistic scientific opinions, or from the point-of-view of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and social theory, as in Leipzig, German Democratic Republic , up to Wundt was involved in a number of scientific controversies or was responsible for triggering them:.
There are many forms of criticism of Wundt's psychology, of his apperception psychology, of his motivation theory, of his version of psychophysical parallelism with its concept of "mental causality", his refutation of psychoanalytic speculation about the unconscious, or of his critical realism. A recurring criticism is that Wundt largely ignored the areas of psychology that he found less interesting, such as differential psychology, child psychology and educational psychology.
In his cultural psychology there is no empirical social psychology because there were still no methods for investigating it at the time. Wundt further influenced many American psychologists to create psychology graduate programs. Wundt developed the first comprehensive and uniform theory of the science of psychology. The special epistemological and methodological status of psychology is postulated in this wide-ranging conceptualization, characterized by his neurophysiological, psychological and philosophical work.
The human as a thinking and motivated subject is not to be captured in the terms of the natural sciences. Psychology requires special categories and autonomous epistemological principles. It is, on the one hand, an empirical humanity but should not, on the other hand, ignore its physiological basis and philosophical assumptions.
Thus a varied, multi-method approach is necessary: self-observation, experimentation, generic comparison and interpretation. Wundt demanded the ability and readiness to distinguish between perspectives and reference systems, and to understand the necessary supplementation of these reference systems in changes of perspective.
He defined the field of psychology very widely and as interdisciplinary, and also explained just how indispensable is the epistemological-philosophical criticism of psychological theories and their philosophical prerequisites. Psychology should remain connected with philosophy in order to promote this critique of knowledge of the metaphysical presuppositions so widespread among psychologists.
The conceptual relationships within the complete works created over decades and continuously reworked have hardly been systematically investigated. The most important theoretical basis is the empirical-psychological theory of apperception, based on Leibniz's philosophical position, that Wundt, on the one hand, based on experimental psychology and his neuropsychological modelling and, on the other hand, extrapolated into a development theory for culture.
The fundamental reconstruction of Wundt's main ideas is a task that cannot be achieved by any one person today due to the complexity of the complete works. He tried to connect the fundamental controversies of the research directions epistemologically and methodologically by means of a co-ordinated concept — in a confident handling of the categorically basically different ways of considering the interrelations.
Here, during the founding phase of university psychology, he already argued for a highly demanding meta-science meta-scientific reflection — and this potential to stimulate interdisciplinarity und perspectivism complementary approaches has by no means been exhausted. August in Neckarau bei Mannheim gestorben Januar in Kiel gestorben Contents move to sidebar hide.
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Biography [ edit ]. Early life [ edit ]. Education and Heidelberg career [ edit ]. Marriage and family [ edit ]. Career in Zurich and Leipzig [ edit ]. Laboratory of Experimental Psychology [ edit ]. Wilhelm Wundt seated with colleagues in his psychological laboratory, the first of its kind. Wundt's teaching in the Institute for Experimental Psychology [ edit ].
Wundt's doctoral students [ edit ]. Retirement and death [ edit ]. Awards and Honors [ edit ]. Overview of Wundt's work [ edit ]. Central themes in Wundt's work [ edit ]. Memory [ edit ]. Process theory [ edit ]. The delineation of categories [ edit ]. Psychophysical parallelism [ edit ]. Apperception [ edit ]. Development theory of the mind [ edit ].
Critical realism [ edit ]. Definition of psychology [ edit ]. Physiology [ edit ]. Psychology [ edit ]. Starting point [ edit ]. General psychology [ edit ]. Apperception theory [ edit ]. Cultural psychology [ edit ]. Neuropsychology [ edit ]. Methodology and strategies [ edit ]. Principles of mental causality [ edit ]. Philosophy [ edit ].
Wundt's philosophical orientation [ edit ]. Metaphysics [ edit ]. System of philosophy [ edit ]. The reputation of Wundt had spread and more professionals and academics were traveling to the lab to expand their knowledge base. Of course, those who required the help of skilled psychologists would benefit as well since the laboratory contributed to great improvements on the therapeutic nature of the field.
Wundt was a strong believer in the notion that psychology should emphasize analyzing the consciousness of a person. The relationship between the human mind and worldly experiences was a common focus of his systematic approach to psychology. Introspection was a major part of the therapy that Wundt emphasized. To say this approach to psychology was influential would be a tremendous understatement.
A significant part of modern psychology is based firmly on the inroads Wilhelm Wundt traveled during the early days of establishing his laboratory. Modern psychotherapy might have looked a lot different, and remained far less effective, had Wundt not been a trailblazer in the field. Wilhelm Wundt lived a long, prosperous, and influential life.