History of Psychology

While the physiologists were progressing in the study of sensa tion a new attempt was made to adjust the old traditions to fresh circumstances. This was undertaken by Rudolph Hermann Lotze, a man peculiarly fitted for the task because he combined with his knowledge of the philosophical doctrines a grasp of the develop ments in general ,science and especially in physiology. Lotze's Medicinische Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele (1852) de serves to be remembered as a powerful influence in directing the thoughts of its readers toward a new valuation of the psychological problems. Lotze's study of medicine convinced him that the ap proach to psychology must be through the study of the organism and that all psychic functions were dependent on neural processes. The significant feature of Lotze's psychology is its concreteness. The reader feels that even the more speculative parts are written in a spirit of critical caution and that the independent status of the soul is not asserted as an abstract dogma but as a necessity due to the fact that physiological explanations are so often inade quate. Before 1852 Lotze had written a work on general pathology (1842) and on physiology (1851). He moved gradually from the study of the body to the study of mind. Among the many sug gestive ideas which Lotze expresses in his work the theory of local signs is best remembered. The problem of space-perception is peculiarly difficult because it involves relating the actual extension of the outer world to an inner consciousness which has no such extension. In other words the quantity of space must be stated in terms of a qualitative order. To do this Lotze assumed that the sensations reaching the mind from different parts of the body had different values and were in this way capable of suggesting to the mind their relations to each other in space. The term "local sign" was the name given to this quality of the bodily states by which we get not only the sensation itself but also a recognition of its position. The theory has many difficulties and is by no means generally accepted, but it remains as a possible solution of the problem.

Wundt.

In the work of Fechner and Lotze it is easy to see the process by which modern psychology was created. The metaphysical tendencies gradually died away and attention was concentrated on the facts which lay nearest to the border-line of the natural sciences. The whole period from Miller and Lotze to the close of the century was covered by the life and work of Wilhelm Wundt. Born in 1832, Wundt was trained in the medical sciences and became assistant in physiology to Helmholtz (1857). Between the years 1852 and 1862 he composed his first work, Beitrdge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehrnungen. Living in the atmosphere of German philosophy, Wundt was faced with the question of the soul, which became for a time the storm centre of German thought. Wundt decided that the soul was to be defined not as a separate agent but as a particular class of actions. Hence forth he was free to work on the nature and classification of these actions. The merits of Wundt's achievement depend very largely on the attitude which he adopted toward the problems of method. He conceived scientific method as a universal term which became specialized by the nature of the field in which it was employed. He accepted the idea of experience as a distinct object of study and proposed to apply to experience all the methods which would help to explain it. With his own training in physiology and his knowledge of the work done in psychophysics, he attacked the field of experience along both lines. His monumental work, Grundziige der Physiologischen Psychologie (1872), shows in its title the emphasis which is thrown on the relation between anat omy, neurology and psychology. The facts which were to be

studied were not taken as abstract movements of the mind but as functions of the organism to be explained in terms of physiological processes correlated with psychological events. The distinction between mind and body was thus subordinated to the view of ex perience as the actual events which could be analyzed partly in terms of the neural action and partly by a purely psychological analysis. The Grundriss der Psychologie (1897) presented the main outline of the system in a form useful as a text-book; which has been widely used and has influenced the teaching of psy chology in every country.

To Wundt must be given the credit of two great achievements. He created the modern type of experimental psychology and he devised a method of analysis. Previously the idea of experimental psychology had been confused with the indefinite kind of appeal to experience which was occasionally opposed to the more exag gerated types of metaphysics. Experiment in Wundt's sense means the isolation of a particular problem and the employment of methods for exact observation under conditions which were properly controlled. Work of this kind demanded all the facilities of a well-equipped laboratory and Wundt was a pioneer in this direction. His laboratory was opened in 1879 and was the first of its kind. The method of analysis, which determined the greater part of the work done in the laboratory, was based on the view that psychical states as experienced are compounded out of simple elements. The mind can be analysed into three main classes of activities, ideas, feelings and volitions. The ideas are the ways in which we become aware of objects : they are presentations which are immediately known. But the earlier psychologists had considered chiefly the relation between the awareness and its object : they had in fact considered the logical significance of the idea rather than its psychological structure. Wundt turned his attention to the processes which constitute the act itself and dis tinguished the elements which enter into the complex experience. These elements are the sensations, which are themselves complex in so far as they have both quantity and quality. Though these are inseparable they can be varied under experimental conditions and the quantity or intensity can be measured. A great part of the work done by Wundt, and the numerous workers who gathered around him or copied his methods, was in this field of exact measurement of sensations. It is obvious that the programme could be most easily carried out in the field of sensations and some time elapsed before any similar attack was made on the higher functions. As sensation corresponds to the action of afferent nerves, so volition or willing corresponds to efferent neural cur rents. Here the simplest pattern is that of the reflex arc. The re ception of sensation is followed by the reflex muscular action and in this way a system of responses is established. These responses from the first have a purposive character, and it is theref ore possible to explain the whole range of voluntary action as the complex or developed form of elementary reflex acts. It is not possible here to enter into the details of Wundt's experiments. The point which is to be emphasized is the general plan of analysis by which all complex states or activities are broken up into their constituent parts. The psychology which results is de scribed as structural because it works with factors which in them selves are abstract and proceeds by ideas of fusion and compli cation to build up the total mental states.