Wilhelm Wundt

Overview

Wilhelm Wundt trained in medicine and physiology before founding the Institute for Experimental Psychology at Leipzig in 1879, the event usually taken as the start of psychology as a separate discipline. His programme combined precise laboratory measurement of sensation, attention, and reaction time with trained introspection, in which observers reported the elementary content of an experience under controlled conditions. He is often reduced to structuralism, but that label belongs mostly to his student Edward Titchener, whose version was narrower than Wundt's own; Wundt held that higher processes such as language and custom could not be studied in a laboratory at all and needed a separate historical and cultural method, which occupied the last two decades of his career. His laboratory trained a generation of psychologists who then founded departments across Europe and the United States, which is the larger part of his influence. Start with Outlines of Psychology or An Introduction to Psychology rather than the Principles, which is long and technical.

Where to start reading

• Principles of Physiological Psychology 1874

  The book that argued psychology could be an experimental science modelled on physiology, and set out the apparatus and methods for doing it.

• Outlines of Psychology 1897

  Wundt's compact statement of his system, covering sensation, feeling, attention, and the composition of conscious experience.

• An Introduction to Psychology 1912

  A short lecture-based introduction, the most approachable entry point to his laboratory programme.

  Read it in the library

• Elements of Folk Psychology 1916

  The other half of his programme: language, myth, and custom studied historically, because he held they could not be brought into a laboratory.

  Read it in the library

Part of

• Structuralism

Sources

1. Wilhelm Wundt Wikipedia
2. Principles of Physiological Psychology Classics in the History of Psychology, York University
3. Brentano and Wundt: Empirical and Experimental Psychology Classics in the History of Psychology, York UniversityTitchener's own account of Wundt, useful for seeing where the student diverged from the teacher.