Abstract
Long after the prominence of Wilhelm Wundt as a psychological theorist had faded from the collective consciousness (or collective verbal behavior) of American psychologists, the most successful historian of psychology at mid-20th century, E. G. Boring (1929, 1942, 1950), summarized Wundt’s work with the following dozen or so points: that Wundt’s psychology began as physiological psychology (1950, p. 317); that Wundt claimed psychology as one of the natural sciences (p. 319); that to Wundt scientific meant “experimental” (p. 321); that Wundt made introspection the primary method of his laboratory (p. 328); that Wundt borrowed British associationism and was an elementalist (in the sense of mental chemistry) (p. 329); that Wundt was a mind-body dualist (p. 333); that Wundt opposed the implication of an active agent (p. 339); that Wundt’s psychology was exceptional for its narrowness (p. 343); and that Wundt’s life was withdrawn from the world of the affairs of common men (p. 344).
Attempts to subsume mental processes under the types of laws found in the physical sciences will never be successful.
Wilhelm Wundt, 1866
Volitional activities are the type in terms of which all other psychological phenomena are to be construed.
Wilhelm Wundt, 1908
I must confess that to my mind there is something hideous in the glib Herbartian jargon about Vors tellungsmassen and their Hemmungen and Hemmungssummen, and sinken and erheben and schweben, and Verschinelzungen and Complexionen.
William James, 1890
There are many psychologists who have a predilection for the cortex; my own leaning is towards the sense organ.
Edward B. Titchener, 1908
We need a psychology that is usable, that is dietetic, efficient for thinking, living and working, and although Wundtian thoughts are now so successfully cultivated in academic gardens, they can never be acclimated here, as they are antipathetic to the American spirit and temper.
G. Stanley Hall, 1912
A revised and extended version of a paper originally appearing in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1977.
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Blumenthal, A.L. (1980). Wilhelm Wundt and Early American Psychology. In: Rieber, R.W. (eds) Wilhelm Wundt and the Making of a Scientific Psychology. Path in Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-8340-6_4
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