Today, we revere Wilhelm Wundt as the father of all modern psychology. Often, we overlook what such a designation implies. If the psychology he fathered is modern, there must then be an ancient form of study for the human condition. And if he fathered it, it must mean that modern studies differ dramatically from those bygone. Neither of those statements is exactly correct.
We'll dive into the origins of psychology shortly. That way, you'll better see the bridge Wundt built between ancient schools of study and psychology as we know it today. To do that, we need to describe Wundt's role in the development of psychology:
- he identified psychology as a science apart from biology and philosophy
- he was the first such scientist to call themselves a psychologist
- he established the world's first laboratory dedicated exclusively to psychological studies
- he laid out the parameters for experimental psychology
- he developed several theories, including Process Theory and Development Theory of the Mind
American psychologist B. F. Skinner would take that last theory as his springboard into his own psychology research. He was neither the first nor the only psychologist to build their career on Wilhelm Wundt's work. So ranging were this German psychologist's studies that such a professional today could hardly avoid any of Dr Wundt's conclusions. Clearly, we have a lot of exploration ahead of us.
The History of Psychology
Today, we define psychology as the study of conscious and unconscious experiences. Feelings and thoughts are included on the list of studied phenomena. More broadly and perhaps easier to understand, psychology studies the human mind and behaviour. Other animals may be psychological study subjects, too. For instance, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget studied animal behaviour in their natural habitat.
From Antiquity until about the 15th Century, studies of the mind and feelings generally fell to philosophers. Laozi and Kongzi (Confucius) in China. Plato and Aristotle in Greece. Indian philosophers explored the meaning of awareness and consciousness. In short, every ancient civilisation had philosophers to expound on the human experience.
The word 'psychology' saw its first use in a work by Latinist Marko Marulić, written sometime in the late 15th to early 16th Century. It was titled Psychology, on the Nature of the Human Soul. Enlightenment thinkers took a great interest in psychology. The German polymath Gottfried Leibnitz attempted to apply calculus to solve psychological riddles. He believed that the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness must be a matter of degrees. Maths could resolve the issue, as far as he was concerned.
German philosopher Christian Wolff was the first to identify psychology as a science in its own right. Immanuel Kant embraced that idea but stopped short of agreeing that a psyche - a soul, could never endure experimental study. This type of dithering continued for decades until 1874. That's when Wilhelm Wundt definitively pronounced psychology as a discipline apart from the combined study of philosophy and biology.
Wilhelm Wundt Early Life and Studies
Wilhelm was the fourth child born to Maximilian and Marie Wundt. His father was their southern German town's Lutheran minister. When Wilhelm was four years old, his family relocated to southwest Germany. At that time, Germany enjoyed prosperity and church leaders were well compensated. Young Wilhelm had the freedom and security to explore any topic of interest. That push for the study was in keeping with the German ethos of the day.
At university, Wundt studied medicine. He earned his degree as a doctor of medicine in 1856. He joined his alma mater's staff soon after graduation. Tasked with teaching physiology, it didn't take long for him to earn his associate professorship. His subjects were Anthropology and Medical Psychology. Medico-psychology involves applying psychological principles to medical practice.
Despite his accomplishments, he wasn't interested in medicine. Even his lectures contained more psychological information than medical. In 1874, he went all in, writing the world's first psychology textbook. Unlike other groundbreaking psychologists, nothing in Dr Wundt's background inclined him toward psychology. His fascination with the field seemed to have arisen spontaneously.
What Is Introspection?
Keep in mind that, until Dr Wundt formally established psychology as a legitimate science, it was mostly a philosophical exercise. And what do philosophers do? They reflect on events, feelings and conditions. They process these phenomena through their own biases and experiences. They then render an approximation of wisdom.
Nobody here is criticising either the philosophical process or the great minds of philosophy, past and present. Wilhelm Wundt wasn't either when he disdained naïve introspection. He simply believed that psychology should be made to stand up to scientific scrutiny. So scathing was he on the subject of introspection that he pre-emptively denounced anyone who quoted "uncritical, amateur psychology".
Don't we need introspection, though? Perhaps, but only if we only know what it is. Introspection is internal self-examination; the study of one's own thoughts and feelings. We often introspect to put relationships and events into proper perspective. All of this gives us a hint about why Dr Wundt so disdained it.
For such examinations to be scientifically relevant, they need to be impersonal. Individuals not trained in the scientific examination of phenomena are unlikely to filter out their past experiences and emotional makeup. Thus, he contended that one must have the training to properly analyse phenomena. Furthermore, believed that an event's conditions must be controlled.
What is Experimental Psychology?
Practically anyone who attended school knows how to conduct an experiment. First, there must be a premise to test. And then, the proper conditions must be set up to text for exactly that premise. All variables should either controlled or accounted for. Such experiments yield the purest results. These same methods apply to psychological study.
The methodology is critical in all research, including experimental psychology. A good study will start with empiricism - that hypotheses should be tested against real-world observations. And then, the hypothesis must be testable, particularly in experimental psychology. That clarification is necessary. Recall that many of Dr Freud's theories were found to be false once tested.
Like any scientific test methodology, experimental psychology is rife with assumptions. For one, no matter how strenuously the examiner controls external variables, prior states will impact the experiment's outcome. Determinism and parsimony - searching for the simplest answer are both guiding principles. How the research is designed matters a great deal, too. For instance, Albert Bandura's Bobo Doll Experiment, for all of the controversy it caused, was well designed.
Wilhelm Wundt Contribution to Psychology
Wilhelm Wundt's greatest contribution to psychology is establishing it as a legitimate discipline. And not a moment too soon! He entered the world shortly after The Enlightenment, a time when it was commendable to be a great thinker. And he was born at the height of the Industrial Revolution when the world was forever changed. By some fortune, he caught both of those waves and emerged a pre-eminent scientist of the mind.
He was fortunate that Germany enjoyed a time of economic prosperity when he made his first forays into the professional world. He could establish the world's first laboratory dedicated to psychological study only because the University of Leipzig had the means to do so. Soon, the new lab was filled with graduate students researching the topics Wundt assigned them. That is also a nod to the prosperous times they lived in. Wundt himself had purchased much of the lab equipment; a testimony of his personal wealth.
Wundt established psychology as "an empirical science coordinating natural science and humanities, and that the considerations of both complement one another in the sense that only together can they create for us a potential empirical knowledge." He then set about defining exactly what psychology is and represents.
He determined that psychology deals with conscious processes only. Unlike philosophers who consider the conscious and unconscious minds to be linked, Wundt averred that there could be no scientific method of testing the unconscious. As far as he was concerned, psychology is the science of direct experience.
Despite writing at length on the subject of physiology, Dr Wundt maintained that psychology could never distil into physiology. Brain processes - the physical aspects of how a brain operates, have little to do with mental processes. To put that in more pedestrian terms: how a car's engine works has no bearing on taking you from one point to the next.
Perhaps his greatest contribution to psychology was irrevocably divorcing it from any other scientific endeavour. He maintained that psychology had nothing to do with the soul. In fact, he abhorred the idea of metaphysics infringing on the study of minds; insisting that his views were in no way metaphysical.
He was equally firm in his views on self-education. He was fond of citing humans walking upright as a fundamental example of such, perhaps cheerfully questioning opponents who or what original humans would have learned bipedalism from. Unlike his contemporary, Ivan Pavlov, Dr Wundt had no interest in conditioning test subjects to perform as he wished. He contented himself with testing theories. And giving the world the science of psychology.
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