Wilhelm Wundt and Early American Psychology

Abstract

Long after the prominence of Wilhelm Wundt as a psychological theorist had faded from the collective consciousness (or collective verbal behavior) of American psychologists, the most successful historian of psychology at mid-20th century, E. G. Boring (1929, 1942, 1950), summarized Wundt’s work with the following dozen or so points: that Wundt’s psychology began as physiological psychology (1950, p. 317); that Wundt claimed psychology as one of the natural sciences (p. 319); that to Wundt scientific meant “experimental” (p. 321); that Wundt made introspection the primary method of his laboratory (p. 328); that Wundt borrowed British associationism and was an elementalist (in the sense of mental chemistry) (p. 329); that Wundt was a mind-body dualist (p. 333); that Wundt opposed the implication of an active agent (p. 339); that Wundt’s psychology was exceptional for its narrowness (p. 343); and that Wundt’s life was withdrawn from the world of the affairs of common men (p. 344).