Contributions of Wundt and Titchener
Legacy and Aftermath of Structuralism
Wundt’s Lasting Contributions:
Wundt’s forte was not luminous ideas lighting upon the dark corners or giving us
a new dazzling perspective on the old picture. Rather, he worked over a
thousand details, cleaning here, repairing there; filling a crack here, so that
psychology leaving his hands was an improved, more coherent picture, but still a
familiar one.
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Contributions and influence as a teacher of subsequent psychological leaders
- many of whom became important contributors to the rapid growth of
psychology in America
Between 1883 & 1893 some 24 new psychological research labs sprang up in
US & Canada many started by Wundt’s students, or by his students’ students
Prolific writings were rediscovered in the 70’s in the fields of psycholinguistics,
cognitive psychology (produced 53,735 pages written in his lifetime)
Wundt’s Volkerpsychologie and Ganzheit psychology had many resemblances
to modern cognitive psychology
- topics studied in lab similar to the kinds of topics studied by
cognitive psychologists today: attention, time sense, color
perception, and afterimages.
Trained 186 graduate students (116 in psychology)
- Why is this important?
- Because it is how theories get spread in science
- European students
- Emil Kraepelin, Hugo Munsterberg, Alfred Lehmann, Car
Lange, Oswald Kulpe, and Felix Krueger
- American students
- G Stanley Hall, James McKeen Cattell, H. C. Warren, G. M.
Stratton, C. H. Judd
Wundt’s Influence in America
 Many pioneers in American psychology were trained in Wundt’s Laboratory
 1st formal psychology lab in US est. in 1883 at John Hopkins University by G.
Stanley Hall (student of Wundt)
 1st person to be called “professor of psychology” in US was J. McKeen Cattell
(Wundt student) U of P in 1888
 Wundt’s new science grew by leaps and bounds (experimental psychology)
- G. Stanley Hall (student of Wundt) important contributor to the rapid
growth of psychology in America
- Est 1st formal research lab in psychology at Johns Hopkins University
- Launched America’s 1st psychology journal
- Why Americans took to psychology so quickly / perhaps it was because
America’s relatively young universities were more open to new disciplines
than were the older more traditional bound universities elsewhere in the world
“”Psychology was born in Germany, it blossomed into adolescence
in America”
Criticism
- Introspective method proved unreliable
- His orientation kept psychology focused squarely on the mind
- There were areas of psychology where his treatment was either nonexistent
or at best, woefully inadequate.
- the problem areas of learning such as motivation, emotion, intelligence,
thought, and personality were to be systematically brought within
psychology by men who had other points of view
Titchener’s Lasting Contributions:
 Brought the experimental psychology of Wundt to the U.S. effecting the transition
from mental philosophy to psychology as it is currently practiced. Made
psychology legitimate in the U.S.
 Published A Manual of Laboratory Practice
- One of the most important books in the history of psychology
- Stimulated growth of laboratory work in psychology in the U.S.
 Like Wundt he Influenced a generation of experimental psychologists
 Published the Textbook of Psychology that gives that was one of the most
comprehensive accounts of psychology available.
Criticism of Titchener
 Stuck to his Wundtian guns
- remained the pure scientist
- interested solely in general laws and discovering new phenomena, while
his peer and colleagues were branching out into clinical and applied
psychology and resorting to originally banned methods
- Thus the advent of behaviorism, gestalt psychology, mental
measurement, and psychoanalysis left structuralism high and dry
 In Titchener’s hands, experimental psychology was aloof from mainstream
America.
 Titchener’s systematic exploration of the introspective and structuralist
position – eventually revealed its significant limitations, thus freeing the
development of psychology from structuralist boundaries
Evaluation of Structuralism
 Pushed psychology into being a science.
 Almost all the schools of psychology founded around that time were as a protest
against one or other characteristic of Structuralist psychology
 Set the stage for functionalism
- functions of the mind lead to behaviorism
 Titchener’s structuralism focused on what can be observed
- planted seeds for behaviorism
 A number of tendencies which broke from structuralism developed in opposition
to structuralism, carry forward certain aspects of the structuralist method, but are
not considered within the scope of the same concept. (example, the genetic
psychology of Vygotsky and Piaget, Chomsky’s linguistic analysis, and
Foucault’s post-structuralism)
 Gave an “opposing” school of thought for others to “go against”
 Behavior and personality were beyond the scope considered by structuralism
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In separating meaning from the facts of experience, and objectively evaluated
social conditions from subjective responses, structuralism opposed what was
central to the concerns of most other schools of psychology, including gestalt.
functionalism and behaviorism
Introspection was really retrospection and is entirely subjective, as well as an
unreliable method
After WWII sophisticated instruments and electronic equipment became
available, and wider range of problems could be examined. This expanded
program of research made it evident that earlier theoretical approaches were too
restrictive
Functionalism
 Functionalism emphasized applied activities such as mental tests and education,
and helped introduce the study of lower organisms into psychology
 Formation was opposition to the purely analytical character of structuralism
 With the emphasis on the functional role of consciousness came a recognition
that the introspective method of structuralism was too restrictive
 Served primarily as bridge to the dominant movement in the 20th century
 American psychology, behaviorism
Gestalt
 emergence in 1912 was in part a reaction against structuralism, an influential
school of thought in Germany at the time
 argued against the elementaristic position of structuralism and claimed that
perception of objects was of wholes, not complicated sums of parts
 At odds with introspective psychology, but maintained the value of an
unstructured form of introspection known as “phenomenology”
 Contributed to eventual emergence of two contemporary theoretical perspectives
in psychology: humanism and cognitive psychology
Behaviorism
 Like functionalism peculiarly American, but it predecessors were Europeans
rather than Americans
 In 1913 J. Watson announced psychology to be a failure because of its emphasis
on unseen cognitive processes. He advocated abandoning many of the topics
that had defined psychology up to that point in favor of those that could be
objectively studied.
 In U.S. behaviorism dominated until WWII
Table 1. The Schools of psychology and what they stood for:
School and
representative
adherents
Structuralism
(Titchener)
Unit of study
Mental elements
Subjective or
objective?
What should
psychology study?
Preferred method
Subjective
Subject matter
Structure of
consciousness
The content of
conscious
experience can be
analyzed into its
basic elements
Basic Premise
Content
Introspection
Functionalism
(Angell, Carr,
Thorndike,
Woodworth)
Mental elements
and adaptive
processes
Mostly subjective
Behaviorism
(Watson, Hunter,
Hull)
Gestalt Psychology
(Wertheimer,
Koffka, Kohler)
Psychoanalysis
(Freud, Jung, Adler)
S-R elements
Natural wholes or
Gestalten
Elements and
processes
Objective
Subjective
Mostly function, but
also content
Introspection; later,
behavior
observation
Functions of
consciousness
The adaptive
purposes of
conscious
experience are
more important than
its structure
Content and
function
Behavior
observation
Subjective and
objective
Content and
function
Phenomenology
and behavior
observation
Organization of
consciousness
Conscious
experiences and
perceptions are
more than the sum
of their parts
Directly observable
behaviors
The most important
behaviors were
learned so the
study of learning
became the central
focus of interest
Content and
function
Free association
and interpretation
No
Yes, loosely