On Richard Thurnwald’s Ethno-Psychology

Abstract

While the work of Rivers with the Cambridge expedition to Torres Straits is well known, few psychologists in Anglophone countries or even Germany have heard of Richard Thurnwald (1860–1954). He was an anthropologist keenly interested in psychology, which he regarded as an important tool. In 1906 he went on an expedition to what was then a German colony in present-day Papua New Guinea. Although his primary task was anthropological, he carried out some psychological studies. Unlike Rivers, who had confined himself to sensory functions, Thurnwald also wanted to study higher mental processes. He conducted experiments that included colour vision and colour naming, attention and memory, association, elementary arithmetic, and several aspects of drawing, a topic popular at the time. Particularly noteworthy are his experiments on what he called ‘transmission of reports’, which anticipated Bartlett’s method of ‘serial reproduction’. Thurnwald was not as skilled an experimenter as Rivers, and he himself modestly described his efforts as mere pilot studies. However, he did have innovative ideas and, like Bartlett after him, related his work to the problems of culture change. Later in life he frequently wrote about what used to be known as ‘primitive thought’, but that was based on his field observations and he no longer did any experimental work.