WILHELM WUNDT AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 1875-1914: THE CONTEXT OF A NEW FIELD OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Wilhem Wundt (1832-1920), often called the father of modern psychology, brought his background in experimental physiology to bear on questions of philosophical psychology, with the intention to make psychology scientific. Following his medical education and physiological research in Heidelberg, he launched a program for psychology in the 1870s, by taking advantage of unique opportunities which allowed him to become professor of philosophy in Leipzig in 1875. There Wundt established, in 1879, the Institute for Experimental Psychology, and directed laboratory work related to his general theories of mental processes. The reaction-time experiment, in particular, became a vehicle that spread the new psychology throughout the world.;Some historians have qualified Wundt's achievement, observing that psychology did not achieve separate identity as a discipline in Germany, as it did in America. Wundt, however, successfully promoted experimental psychology as the scientific basis of philosophy and thus as an integral part of the field. Experimentalists attained increasingly more professorships of philosophy, though by World War I, signs were that the arrangement was strained. Wundt's career illustrates a changing context for experimental psychology, from an optimistic to a critical view of broad scientific theories. Even though Wundt's own theories became less popular, experimental psychology had been established.;Psychology was part of philosophy at the time, and Wundt's achievement must be understood in the context of his intellectual and institutional environment, i.e., the requirements of him as academic philosopher and the attitudes of other philosophers, scientists, students, and university administrators toward the idea of an experimental science of mind. Wundt's program was very successful in attracting followers, especially in the 1880s, when there was strong belief that experimental science would continuously open up new areas of research. Wundt's psychological model combined a concept of active mind, a heritage of German idealism, with the promise of experimental science. In the 1890s, however, the philosophy of positivism, for example that of Mach, attracted younger psychologists away from Wundt and general theories.