Experimental vs. Educational psychology: Wilhelm Wundt's letters to Ernst Meumann

Abstract

Wilhelm Wundt founded his own journal, Philosophische Studien, only two years after the establishment of his famous Institute for Experimental Psychology at Leipzig University in 1879. During the following two decades the journal played a significant role in the development of experimental psychology as an autonomous science. The Archiv fur die gesamte Psychologie, which was founded in 1903 by a group of Wundt's former students under the leadership of Ernst Meumann, was to serve a similar function in the institutionalization of educational psychology in Germany. The present study makes extensive use of previously unpublished letters, which Wundt wrote to Meumann between 1902 and 1905, in the description and analysis of the origin, objectives, and editorial practices of the Archive. Wundt's eventual dissociation from this journal and the foundation of the rival Psychologische Studien in 1905 will be discussed. Finally, theoretical disagreements between Wundt and Meumann about the nature and importance of educational and other fields of applied psychology will be presented.