A History of Modern Psychology

In his Handbook of Physiology, published in the 1830s, Johannes Müller covered various psychological problems. In the 1850s, several other research workers attempted to incorporate psychology into physiology as the study of consciousness. Therefore, when, in 1874, Wilhelm Wundt proposed that the study of the relationship between physiology and psychology should be established as a specific area of empirical science, the idea had already been maturing for a number of years. Wundt's proposal was presented in a book entitled Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (Principles of Physiological Psychology (1873–1874). Wundt could rest his proposal on extensive empirical material. The book attracted great attention, and five years later, in 1879, he established his laboratory for experimental psychology. Students flocked to it, not only from Germany and Europe, but also from the United States.

Psychological research and teaching in Germany took place almost exclusively at the universities and formed part of the study of philosophy. Thus, students who wanted to receive training in psychology had to combine this with studies of philosophy.

Central Figures in Early German Experimental Psychology

Wundt was the central figure in early experimental psychology, but a number of other researchers who regarded themselves as psychologists made significant contributions to the establishment of scientific, empirical psychology. About the time Wundt established his laboratory, Hermann Ebbinghaus had independently begun research in learning and memory, apparently inspired by Gustav Fechner. He published his investigations in a book in 1885, which was considered a milestone in the new empirical study of consciousness. In 1887, the professor of philosophy at Göttingen, Georg Elias Müller, started a laboratory of psychological research. Like Ebbinghaus, Georg Müller was inspired by Fechner, and when Ebbinghaus's book appeared, he enthusiastically began research along similar lines. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, his laboratory was just as active and important as the one in Leipzig.

The same year Wundt's Grundzüge appeared, 1874, another German, Franz Brentano, published a book in which he discussed how psychology could be made an empirical science. His ideas fused with the ideas underlying the phenomenological approach to the study of perception, which had developed from the time of Goethe. Inspired by Brentano, a broad philosophical and psychological movement based upon the idea of a phenomenological description of mental events spread over the German-speaking intellectual world. This movement I shall deal with in Chapter 5.