Wilhelm Wundt

Wilhelm Max Wundt (August 16, 1832–August 31, 1920) was a German physiologist and psychologist. He is generally acknowledged as the founder of experimental psychology and cognitive psychology.

Wundt's Impact

Several of Wundt's students became eminent psychologists in their own right.

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• James McKeen Cattell, the first professor of psychology in the United States
• Edward Bradford Titchener
• Charles Spearman, the English psychologist who developed the two-factor theory of intelligence.
• Oswald Külpe at the University of Würzburg
• Hugo Munsterberg at Harvard (industrial psychology)
• G. Stanley Hall (?father of child study movement" and adolescent developmental theorist)
• Lightner Witmer (founder of the first U.S. psychological clinic)
• Charles Hubbard Judd (Director of the School of Education at the University of Chicago)

Wundt's laboratory students called their approach Ganzheit Psychology ("holistic psychology") after Wundt's death.

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Much of Wundt's work was derided mid-century in America because of a lack of adequate translations, misrepresentations by certain students, and behaviorism's bias against the structuralist program. Titchener, a two-year resident of Wundt's lab and one of Wundt's most vocal "proponents" in the United States, is responsible for several English translations and mistranslations of Wundt's works that supported his own views and approach, which he termed structuralism and claimed was wholly consistent with Wundt's position.

Related Topics:
Titchener - Structuralism

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Titchener's focus on internal structures of mind was rejected by Skinnerian behaviorists, who dominated psychological studies in the mid century. Part of this rejection included Wundt, whose work fell into eclipse during this period. It is only in the late twentieth century that his true positions and techniques have seen reconsideration and reassessment by major American psychologists.

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