After just three years at University, Wundt, at only 21 years old, published some of his work in medical journals. Wundt did not want to be a doctor, let alone the father of modern psychology, however, and began studying under Johannes Muller in physiology at Berlin. In Wundt received his doctorate from Heidelberg and worked in physiology as a dozen for two years.
Hermann von Helmholtz, master physicist, psychologist, and physiologist, invited Wundt to be his assistant. When Helmholtz moved to Berlin in , Wundt was not selected as his replacement and instead went to the University of Zurich to teach inductive philosophy. By he was the first-class chair of philosophy at Leipzig. The birth of experimental psychology began here. More than half of these students were focused on psychology.
The structuralism theory is that the conscious mind can be broken down into basic elements without damaging the whole mind. Wundt believed that introspection and reductionism could make it possible for the conscious mental state to be studied under scientific observation. Wundt taught introspection as an intense form of self-examination and trained his students to make biased observations based on personal interpretation.
Wundt then used this data to develop the conscious thought theory. This method was not used anymore after the early s. This method did prove to the scientific community, however, that experimental behavior can be objectively measured. His research laboratory was used to analyze consciousness by researching spiritual theories and examining abnormal behaviors in people.
He used this observation to identify individual mental disorders. Wundt identified two main fields of experimentation-Sensation, and perception and measuring reaction times using the subtractive procedure. Wundt was able to figure out that. Wundt is also considered to be the father of modern psychology when it comes to the field of cognitive psychology in particular.
Wilhelm Wundt studied three main areas of mental functioning-feelings, images, and thoughts. These three areas are still the basis of perceptual processes used in cognitive psychology today. Wilhelm Wundt also created the first psychological research-based journal in called Physiological Psychology. He also published many books and academic papers that are considered classics in the field of psychology today. Wilhelm Wundt was interested in more than cognitive psychology and physiology.
Wilhelm was also passionate about the natural history of man and the way the mind used language. There is ten volumes total published from This theory proposed that people experience feeling according to three parameters-pleasantness, strain, and excitement.
All three of those parameters had a spectrum from negative to positive association. This work was limited because it did not include the problem of free thought. He wanted to the mind into its constituent elements, thereby probing topics such as cognition, emotion, and volition.
Almost as if he seeking the origin and inception of a response to the environment in the mind. The very first appearance of a conscious awareness in response to a stimuli, and the specific thoughts and emotions that accompanied it. Though in the end, this was not entirely successful as individuals tended to have a wide array of responses to the same stimulus. The fact that stimuli resulted in a his trainees reporting feelings, images, and sensations that differed by so great a margin indicate that there was no coherent structure of consciousness that could be found in this manner.
If anything this proves how subjective perception is, without giving any specific data on consciousness itself. At his lab he also conducting experiments on reaction time. The subject being isolated in a room and receiving stimuli such as light, sound, or an image, and were instructed to push a button the moment they perceived and able to react to the stimuli.
The school of psychology founded by Wundt eventually became known as structuralism , and is the first ever school of psychology. This theory seems to identify consciousness or inner experience almost as some sort of machine with specific parts with different functions that should respond to to stimuli in specific, predetermined ways. And that once one aspect of the human mind was understood, its relationship to various other areas of the psyche could be determined also.
Then if the basic elements of mind were understood, along with the rules with how they interacted, then we could theoretically understand or deconstruct every thought, impulse, action or behavior than an individual could take by understanding the parts and their relationship to the whole. In that we can experience sensations, we can be presented with ideas or images within our minds, and we have feelings.
Though Structuralism was not concerned with the meaning of what we thought or felt, or the reasons why, but instead divorced itself almost entirely from such considerations.
Instead it choose to focus almost exclusively on the mechanism as I described above, understand the parts and relationship to the whole believing that a description of the inner experience was the only important quantity for understanding. Needless to say, there was considerable opposition to these ideas among other psychologists which propelled the discipline forward with a number of emergent counter theories and schools.
Structuralism had a small impact in the United States. Even still Wilhelm Wundt had a profound and recognized impact on the discipline of psychology. Later, he adapted and developed a process called introspection to infer more about the nature of the processes involved. Company Reg no: VAT reg no Main menu. Subjects Shop Courses Live Jobs board.
Skinner argue that introspection was not really scientific even if the methods used to introspect were. Skinner claims the results of introspection are subjective and cannot be verified because only observable behavior can be objectively measured. Wundt concentrated on three areas of mental functioning; thoughts, images and feelings. This means that the study of perceptual processes can be traced back to Wundt.
On the basis of his work, and the influence it had on psychologists who were to follow him, Wundt can be regarded as the founder of experimental psychology, so securing his place in the history of psychology. At the same time, Wundt himself believed that the experimental approach was limited in scope, and that other methods would be necessary if all aspects of human psychology were to be investigated.
McLeod, S. Wilhelm Wundt. Simply Psychology.
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