The Emergence and Development of Bekhterev's Psychoreflexology in Relation to Wundt's Experimental Psychology

After its foundation, the Laboratory for Experimental Psychology at Leipzig University became an international center for psychological research, attracting students from all over the world. The Russian physiologist and psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev (1857–1927) was one of Wilhelm Wundt's students in 1885, and after returning to Russia he continued enthusiastically his experimental research on mental phenomena. However, he gradually distanced himself from Wundt's psychological project and developed a new concept of psychology: the so‐called Objective Psychology or Psychoreflexology. The goal of this paper is to analyze Bekhterev's position in relation to Wundt's experimental psychology, by showing how the former came to reject the latter's conception of psychology. The results indicate that Bekhterev's development of a philosophical program, including his growing interest in establishing a new Weltanschauung is the main reason behind his divergence with Wundt, which is reflected in his conception of scientific psychology. Despite this, Wundt remained alive in Bekhterev's mind as an ideal counterpoint.     

The Wundt Myths

Three myths about Wundt have been perpetuated in English language accounts of his work. First, he is said to have founded a Psychologisches Institut (a formally recognized psychological research laboratory) in 1879. Second, he is said to be the first psychologist, as distinct from the first contributor to psychology. Third, he is said to have formulated an elementarist psychology of mental content or experience. The first and second are trivial myths which in isolation would be scarcely worth a comment. The third is a gross misrepresentation which ignores the purposivist-voluntarist underlay of his experimental cognitive psychology and the humanistic, cultural concern of his Völkerpsychofogie.     

Johns Hopkins's first professorship in philosophy: a critical pivot point in the history of American psychology

The first professorship in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University was contested in the early 1880s by two of the most prominent and influential scholars in America: Charles Sanders Peirce and George Sylvester Morris. A third figure also vied for the position, although he was much less well known at the time: Granville Stanley Hall. Through a series of unexpected circumstances, Hall ultimately won the professorship and then used it to leverage an extraordinary career that included his opening the first American research laboratory in psychology, establishing the American Journal of Psychology, becoming president of Clark University, founding the American Psychological Association, and profoundly affecting the character of developmental psychology in America.     

Leipzig and Louvain University in Belgium

Summary Experimental psychology was introduced at the University of Louvain in 1891 under the influence of Désiré J. Mercier, a philosopher, who wanted to bridge the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas with experimental psychology. As the head of the philosophy program at the Louvain University, Mercier sent Armand Thiéry, his collaborator, to Leipzig in order to acquaint him with Wundt's physiological psychology and laboratory. Upon his return from Germany Thiéry organized a psychological laboratory at the Louvain University and offered a course in psychophysiology. Thiéry headed the experimental program at Louvain for over ten years but he was more interested in philosophical and theoretical problems than in laboratory investigations. His successor, Albert Michotte, was wholeheartedly committed to laboratory experimentation and research. He also studied in Leipzig but was more influenced by Külpe than by Wundt. Under Michotte's leadership, which lasted over 50 years, Louvain laboratory became one of the most active and original research centers in Europe.     

Uncertain genesis. The academic institutionalization of American psychology in 1900

The new discipline of psychology had been established at a number of American colleges and universities by 1900, but it usually existed in a more rudimentary form, as compared with the familiar autonomous department of psychology found today. The current form took quite a number of years to evolve: A century ago, a survey of these schools would have shown psychology programs to have existed mostly at early stages of development. Many of the schools were still teaching some form of moral or mental philosophy or only one or two courses in psychology. A few of the schools had established psychology laboratories. Fewer still were offering the doctor of philosophy degree in psychology, while a mere handful had independent psychology departments.     

A Survey of Ethics Training in Undergraduate Psychology Programs at Jesuit Universities

Training in ethics is fundamental in higher education among both faith-based and secular colleges and universities, regardless of one’s academic major or field of study. Catholic colleges and universities have included moral philosophy, theology, and applied ethics in their undergraduate curricula for generations. The purpose of this investigation was to determine what, if anything, Jesuit college psychology departments are doing to educate psychology majors regarding ethical issues. A survey method was used to assess the psychology departments of all 28 Jesuits colleges and universities in the United States. A total of 21 of the 28 schools responded and completed the survey. Five schools (23%) reported that they offered a course specifically on ethics in psychology, and three (14%) additional schools offered related courses. Of the eight (38%) that offered ethics-related courses, only one required its majors to take it, and only if they were enrolled in the mental health or forensic psychology tracks. For two (10%) of the schools, the ethics in psychology course counted as a university core ethics requirement; for two others (10%), the class met an elective university ethics requirement for psychology majors.     

A note on a very early academic quality ranking by James McKeen Cattell

Academic quality rankings are efforts to rank order colleges and universities or their individual departments in order of their presumed quality, based upon one or more criteria. The earliest such ranking is generally believed to have been published by Raymond M. Hughes in 1925. In actuality, however, the eminent psychologist James McKeen Cattell published one as early as 1910. He did so because he wanted to show the institutions where leading American scientists currently worked and to demonstrate that his home institution, Columbia University, had recently declined in scientific strength.     

Shaping of scientific psychology in Japan

Japanese scientific psychology began with Y. Motora's lecture on pyschophysics at the University of Tokyo in 1888. He had just received his PhD under G.S. Hall at Johns Hopkins University, in the USA. He became the first professor of psychology in 1890 and founded the first psychological laboratory at the University of Tokyo in 1903. He studied many psychological problems, including attention, experimentally and theoretically. One of his first students, Matataro Matsumoto, founded the second psychological laboratory at Kyoto University and then succeeded to Motora's position in Tokyo. Matsumoto was interested in experimental studies of human performance and their applications. He trained many able psychologists and organized the Japanese Psychological Association in 1927. Some of his students founded more psychological laboratories in major universities of Japan. They introduced psychological tests, Gestalt psychology, and behaviourism in the 1920s and 1930s. Psychoanalysis was introduced through mainly nonacademic roots and became familiar to Japanese psychologists in the 1930s. After World War II, a strong influence of American psychology came to Japanese psychologists who had already trained in scientific methodology. The areas of research and applications have been greatly widened and the number of psychologists has increased rapidly up to the present day. Promotion of international interactions and indigenous traditions are both expected.     

The foundation of the institute for experimental psychology at Leipzig University

Summary During the 1979–80 academic year psychologists from all over the world will celebrate the centennial of the Institute for Experimental Psychology at Leipzig University, established by Wilhelm Wundt during the winter of 1879–80. First, this paper will present the historical context in which the laboratory method of research instruction developed in nineteenth-century Germany. Next, Wundt's extensive experience with laboratory research before coming to Leipzig will be described. Finally, the origin, development, and organization of Wundt's laboratory will be chronicled, beginning with his call to Leipzig. The implications of Wundt's achievement for modern psychology will be discussed. Emphasis is placed on the use of archival materials, documents, and eyewitness accounts.A slightly modified version of this paper was presented as an Invited Centennial Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association in New York on September 4, 1979The preparation of this article was supported by a research award from the Dr. W.W. Kaempfer, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama, USA     

Wundt,Völkerpsychologie,and experimental social psychology

Wilhelm Wundt distinguished between "experimental psychology" and Volkerpsychologie. It is often claimed that Wundt maintained that social psychological phenomena, the subject matter of V?lkerpsychologie, could not be investigated experimentally but must be explored via comparative-historical methods. In this article it is argued that it is doubtful if many of the passages usually cited as evidence that Wundt held such a view actually such such a view. It is also argued that if Wundt did hold such a view, it was inconsistent with his own general theoretical position and methodological practice. It is suggested that it is anachronistic to attribute such a view to Wundt, because he appears to have had little interest in the experimental analysis of the synchronic social dynamics of psychological processes. Most of Wundt's arguments about the inappropriateness of experimentation were directed against the introspective analysis of diachronic historical processes.     

History of experimental psychology from an Estonian perspective

A short review of the development of experimental psychology from an Estonian perspective is presented. The first rector after the reopening of the University of Dorpat (Tartu) in 1802, Georg Friedrich Parrot (1767–1852) was interested in optical phenomena which he attempted to explain by introducing the concept of unconscious inferences, anticipating a similar theory proposed by Herman von Helmholtz 20 years later. One of the next rectors, Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann (1800–1878) was regarded by Edwin Boring as one of the founding fathers of the experimental psychology. Georg Wilhelm Struve (1793–1864) played an essential part in solving the problem of personal equations. Arthur Joachim von Oettingen (1836–1920) developed a theory of music harmony, which stimulated his student Wilhelm Friedrich Ostwald (1853–1932) to study colour harmony. Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926), the founder of modern psychiatry, is by far the most important experimental psychologist who has worked in Estonia. His successor Wladimir von Tchisch (1855–1922), another student of Wilhelm Wundt, continued Kraepelin’s work in experimental psychology. The lives of Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967), who was born in Reval (Tallinn), and Oswald Külpe (1862–1915), who graduated from the University of Dorpat, extended the link between the history of experimental psychology and Estonia. Karl Gustav Girgensohn (1875–1925), the founder of the Dorpat School of the psychology of religion, stretched the use of experimental methods to the study of religious experience.     

John m. Neale (1943-2011)

Presents an obituary for John M. Neale. Neale died in Hilton Head, South Carolina, on November 19, 2011, after a long illness. He was born on August 31, 1943, in Toronto, Canada. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Toronto in 1965, where his interest in psychology had been sparked by an introductory course taught by George Mandler. After working at a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children, he decided to pursue graduate training in clinical psychology and enrolled at Vanderbilt University. Rue Cromwell served as John's mentor and stimulated his interest in the investigation of perception and cognition in schizophrenia. His doctorate was awarded in 1969, after completion of his internship at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco. John was hired in 1969 as an assistant professor in the new and exciting psychology department (founded in 1965) at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. That department remained his academic home for his entire career. Outside of his academic pursuits, John was an avid New York Giants fan, an extensive traveler, an excellent skier and tennis player, a music lover and jukebox collector, an outstanding cook, a terrific dancer, and a devoted dog owner. He continued to pursue these interests throughout his life, taking cooking classes, traveling to exotic locales with his wife Gail, and, when his health precluded more rigorous athletic pursuits, faithfully walking and playing with his dogs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Dr. Matataro Matsumoto: His career and achievements

Dr. M. Matsumoto (1865–1943) is the most eminent figure in the history of psychology in Japan. Before the close of the last century, he acquired the scientific methods and technics of experimental psychology in America and Germany and introduced all of them into Japanese universities. Establishing psychological laboratories in both Tokyo and Kyoto, he trained many famous psychologists. He advocated ‘Psychocynematics’ as early as 1910. Together with his followers he applied psychology to every aspect of our daily life. He organized the Japanese Psychological Association and several periodicals were started under his leadership. He also made some important artistic contributions to the fields of picture and caligraphy.     

Wundt's prominence and popularity in his later years

Summary Most of Wundt's students from America came along at the peak of his career when he was Rector at Leipzig and renowned as psychology's founder. For many of them Külpe was an intermediary. Acquaintance with Wundt's work in the United States is delimited by the positions, attitudes, and selective attention to the complex details of his system on the part of the disciple who was the source of the adaptation of his work. Wundt's production in the last decades of numerous editions of the Grundriss and the Völkerpsychologie, along with the Grundzüge, received less attention and emphasis. His work in its total systematic essence tended to get overlooked or misinterpreted, especially by some of the people who had been major spokesmen for Wundt in America.     

Jewish Identity, Hostility Toward Germany, and Knowledge About the Holocaust in the United States and Germany

This study examined the relationships among Jewish identity, hostility toward Germany, and knowledge of the Holocaust in American and German Jews. Questionnaires were distributed at synagogues in the United States, and packets were sent to heads of Jewish communities in Germany. Participants were 109 Americans and 31 Germans. Results suggested that hostility toward Germany and knowledge of the Holocaust are related to Jewish identity in American Jews, but that the variables are not related to Jewish identity for Jews in Germany. Additionally, Jews in Germany knew more about the Holocaust than did their American counterparts. Clinical psychology internship and post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California,it>Faculty position at Connecticut College in 1965 and served in its department of psychology for 33 years, until his retirement in 1998     

In Hall's shadow: Edmund Clark Sanford (1859-1924)

Edmund C. Sanford of Clark University had earned a reputation by the end of the nineteenth century as a leading American psychologist. He had written the first training manual for experimental psychology and created numerous pieces of laboratory apparatus. He was also editor of the American Journal of Psychology and a charter member of the American Psychological Association. Although his peers elected him to the presidency of the APA in 1902, his standing had already begun to decline. Sanford's impact on early American experimental psychology is documented and the reasons for his reduced status as American psychology grew in the early years of the new century are explored.     

Advocating Worker Justice

Catholic moral theology possesses a number of tools that can be employed to promote worker justice. Some of these tools, such as Catholic social teaching on solidarity and workers’ rights, have been used to this end before. However, advocates of workers’ rights have seldom utilized other concepts, such as cooperation in evil, scandal, and evangelization. This essay provides a theoretical introduction to several tools in the “toolkit” of Catholic ethicists, engaging contemporary scholarship on them. It then applies the concepts to two cases in order to demonstrate their usefulness in the struggle for worker justice. Both cases involve Catholic universities, which means the ethical concepts introduced from the Catholic moral tradition should have normative status for these institutions. The first case entails a divestment campaign at the University of Notre Dame. The second case confronts the unjust treatment of adjunct faculty members at Catholic colleges and universities.     

Jeri altneu sechzer (1926-2011)

Presents an obituary for Jeri Altneu Sechzer. Jeri studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where her mentor was the renowned physiological psychologist Elliot Stellar. She received her doctorate in 1962 with a specialty in physiological psychology. That same year she was elected to Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, and received the Creative Talent Award from the American Institute of Research for her doctoral dissertation. She completed a U.S. Public Health Service Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, after which she accepted a position at Baylor University College, followed by a position at the New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center. She completed her career as a visiting professor in the Psychology Department at Pace University. Jeri's husband of 56 years, Philip, died in 2004. As a result of her experience looking after him during the long illness that preceded his death, she became interested in the psychological impact of the stresses that caregivers face. She was planning to organize a conference on this subject when she suffered her final illness, leading to her death on October 29, 2011, just before her 85th birthday. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Morality: between Law and Real-life Needs

The investigation that culminated last July in a letter from the Vatican to Professor Curran, criticising the distinction made by him and many others between 'infallible' and 'non-infallible' Church teaching and initiating his removal from his post at the Catholic University of America, has been one of the most hotly discussed events to have happened in the modern American Catholic Church, has been written about throughout the Catholic world, and has troubled many theologians. We are publishing this translation of an article by Bernhard Häring, 'Moral zwischen gesetz und Lebensnot' (which appeared in the German Church magazine Christ in der Gegenwart¹ in August), because its author, who taught Curran in Rome and in March accompanied him to the Vatican for 'informal dialogue', has such a close knowledge of this theologian's thinking, which in some places has been misrepresented. The text has been updated where essential.