Structuralism
School · 1870s-1910s, Leipzig and Cornell · Psychology, stage 2: Map the schools
Structuralism was the first attempt to make psychology an experimental science, and its programme was to break conscious experience into its elementary components the way chemistry breaks compounds into elements. Its method was trained introspection: observers were taught to report the raw sensory content of an experience, its quality, intensity, and duration, without naming the object that caused it. Wilhelm Wundt founded the laboratory at Leipzig in 1879 that made this possible, though the label structuralism belongs mainly to his student Edward Titchener, who carried a narrower version of the programme to Cornell; Wundt's own work was broader and he did not accept the description. The school did not survive its founders, because trained introspectors in different laboratories produced incompatible reports of the same stimulus and nothing in the method could settle which was correct.
What it claims
- Psychology should study conscious experience, and it should do so in a laboratory.
- Experience can be analysed into elementary sensations, images, and feelings.
- Trained introspection, reported under controlled conditions, is the way to observe those elements.
Key ideas
People
Sources
- Structuralism (psychology) Wikipedia
- Outlines of Psychology Classics in the History of Psychology, York UniversityWundt's own textbook, which shows the programme in its author's words rather than Titchener's.
- History of psychology Wikipedia
