Basic Biographical Information
Born: July 24, 1879; Died: February 25, 1958
Langfeld’s early education was gained in Philadelphia schools and Haverford College. His first career was as a secretary to the US Naval attaché in Germany. There, in 1903, he decided to pursue advanced studies in psychology under Carl Stumpf in Berlin, receiving the doctorate in 1909. One of the last Americans to study psychology in Germany, he returned to America and taught at Harvard until 1924, mentoring Floyd Allport whose dissertation he supervised. Langfeld also counseled Gordon Allport. When E. B. Titchener complained about Allport’s choice of personality traits as a subject for research, Allport said that Langfeld remarked “You don’t care what Titchener thinks,” confirming him in his vocation (Allport 1967). In 1924, after the arrival of E. G. Boring at Harvard, Langfeld became Howard C. Warren’s colleague at Princeton University, bringing with him Leonard Carmichael and also enticing E. B. Holt out...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Allport, G. (1967). Autobiography. In E. G. Boring & G. Lindzey (Eds.), A history of psychology in autobiography (Vol. 5). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Langfeld, H. S. (1920). The aesthetic attitude. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Howe.
Langfeld, H. S. (1931). A response interpretation of consciousness. Psychological Review, 38, 87–108.
Langfeld, H. S. (1945). Introduction to symposium on operationism. Psychological Review, 52, 241–248.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this entry
Cite this entry
Devonis, D.C. (2012). Langfeld, Herbert Sidney. In: Rieber, R.W. (eds) Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8_101
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8_101
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-0425-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-0463-8
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science