WUNDT, WILHELM. — Born on 16 August 1832 at Neckarau near Mannheim and died on 31 August 1920 at Leipzig. He is considered the founder of modern experimental psychology.
He began, after extensive preparation in the fields of medicine, physiology, physics, and chemistry, by obtaining his qualification in physiology in 1857. In the first period he was influenced especially by the work of the great physiologist J. Müller; from 1858 he worked at Heidelberg alongside Helmholtz, until 1871; in 1874 he accepted the chair of inductive philosophy at Zurich, and in the following year became full professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin. W.’s academic career also indicates the principal stages of his thought, which progressed from strictly scientific and positivist studies to his own philosophical conception of the principal manifestations of the human spirit. In 1879 he moved to Leipzig, where he founded the first laboratory, or « Psychologisches Institut », of experimental psychology, according to rigorously scientific criteria; in 1881 he began the publication of the Philosophische Studien, which from 1905 became the Psychologische Studien, devoted for the most part to problems of psychology.
Around W. the greatest constellation of modern psychology took shape, not only in Germany, with Kraepelin, Lehmann, Külpe, and Neumann, but also in the Anglo-American world, which would become the most fertile soil of experimental psychology, with Stanley Hall, Cattell, Scripture, Titchener, Witmer, Warren Stratton, and Judd. Among his assistants from 1881 to 1909 were scholars of psychological tendencies that would later acquire their own distinctive character, but which retained the unmistakable mark of their common teacher: Mc K. Cattell (the first voluntary assistant), L. Lange, O. Külpe (founder, with Marbe and Messer, of Denkpsychologie at Würzburg), W. Möbius, W. Wirth (founder of the Archiv f. die ges. Psychologie), E. Dürr, F. Krüger (founder of Ganzheitsspsychologie), and O. Klemm (historian of psychology).
Principal works: Beitr. z. Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung (Leipzig 1862); Vorles. über die Menschen u. Tierseele (7ᵃ–8ᵃ ed., ibid. 1922); Grundzüge der physiol. Psychologie (definitive ed. in 3 vols., ibid. 1908–11); Logik (4ᵃ definitive ed. in 3 vols., Stuttgart 1919–20); Ethik (definitive ed. in 3 vols., ibid. 1923–24); System der Philosophie (4ᵃ ed. in 2 vols., Leipzig 1919); Grundriss der Psychologie (15ᵃ ed., ibid. 1922); Einleitung in die Philosophie (9ᵃ ed., ibid. 1922); Völkerpsychologie (10 vols., ibid. 1900 ff.); Elemente der Völkerpsychologie (ibid. 1922; Italian tr. by E. Anchieri, Turin 1929); Kleine Schriften (3 vols., Leipzig 1910–12; Italian tr., Naples 1913). In addition to many minor essays, the 20 vols. of the Philos. Studien (Leipzig 1883–1902) and the 7 vols. of the Psychol. Studien (ibid. 1905–17), directed by him, should be recalled.
W.’s merit includes the introduction into psychology of the method of introspection (Selbstbeobachtung), which enjoyed undisputed favor until the attack launched by the so-called « objective psychology » and, in particular, by American beha-
viorism (1913). Consequently, W. was a determined advocate of the originality of psychic facts (psychische Kausalität) as the law governing the spontaneous development of the psyche, to which the other laws of psychic life must be related. Of these, the most celebrated is « creative synthesis » (schöpferische Synthese), which takes place in apperception: while association supplies the material, synthesis is provided by « feelings » (Gefähle) and « affects » (Affekte), according as they are brought to the surface from the depths of consciousness, where they lie as primordial energies of psychic activity (cf. Über die psychische Causalität u. das Prinzip des psychophysischen Paralleismus, in Kleine Schriften, II, Italian tr., p. 121). In philosophy, W., remaining firm in his dynamic conception of psychic life, denied, like Hume, the soul as substance and conceived cause as a rule of temporal succession in the Kantian sense. The fundamental phenomenon of psychic life is the impulse (Trieb), and the principal law is the « principle of assimilation », from which the various psychic manifestations proceed like branches from the trunk (Grundz. d. phys. Psych., cited ed., II, p. 64). W. denies philosophy any true autonomy of object and method and conceives it as the synthesis of the principal laws of scientific knowledge. For this reason his work was accused of « elementarism » by the proponents of Gestaltpsychologie (cf. K. Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology, London 1936, p. 103). Yet, apart from the theoretical uncertainty of his research, W.’s work marked a decisive stage in the scientific understanding of the processes of consciousness, freeing it from the equally arbitrary reductions of positivism and idealism.