Editing Wilhelm Wundt (section)

== Reception of Wundt's work ==
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=== Reception by his contemporaries ===
The psychiatrist [[Emil Kraepelin]] described the pioneering spirit at the new Leipzig Institute in this fashion: "We felt that we were trailblazers entering virgin territory, like creators of a science with undreamt-of prospects. Wundt spent several afternoons every week in his adjacent modest Professorial office, came to see us, advised us and often got involved in the experiments; he was also available to us at any time."<ref>Emil Kraepelin: Nachruf Wilhelm Wundt. Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie 1920, Volume 61, 351–362.</ref>

The philosopher [[Rudolf Eisler]] considered Wundt's approach as follows: "A major advantage of Wundt's philosophy is that it neither consciously nor unconsciously takes metaphysics back to its beginnings, but strictly distinguishes between empirical-scientific and epistemological-metaphysical approaches, and considers each point-of-view in isolation in its relative legitimacy before finally producing a uniform world view. Wundt always differentiates between the physical-physiological and the purely psychological, and then again from the philosophical point-of-view. As a result, apparent 'contradictions' are created for those who do not observe more precisely and who constantly forget that the differences in results are only due to the approach and not the laws of reality ..."<ref>Rudolf Eisler: W. Wundts Philosophie und Psychologie, 1902, p. 13.</ref> Traugott Oesterreich (1923/1951) wrote an unusually detailed description of Wundt's work in his [[Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie]] (Foundations of the History of Philosophy). This knowledgeable representation examines Wundt's main topics, views and scientific activities and exceeds the generally much briefer Wundt reception within the field of psychology, in which many of the important prerequisites and references are ignored right from the start.

The internal consistency of Wundt's work from 1862 to 1920, between the main works and within the reworked editions, has repeatedly been discussed and been subject to differing assessments in parts.<ref>Araujo, 2016; Fahrenberg, 2011, 2015, 2016; Graumann, 1980; Jüttemann 2006.</ref>  One could not say that the scientific conception of psychology underwent a fundamental revision of principal ideas and central postulates, though there was gradual development and a change in emphasis. One could consider Wundt's gradual concurrence with Kant's position, that conscious processes are not measurable on the basis of self-observation and cannot be mathematically formulated, to be a major divergence. Wundt, however, never claimed that psychology could be advanced through experiment and measurement alone, but had already stressed in 1862 that the development history of the mind and comparative psychology should provide some assistance.<ref>Wundt: Beiträge, 1862, p. XIV.</ref>

Wundt attempted to redefine and restructure the fields of psychology and philosophy.
<ref>Fahrenberg: Wilhelm Wundt, 2011, S. 14–16.</ref><ref>Paul Ziche: Wissenschaftslandschaften um 1900: Philosophie, die Wissenschaften und der nichtreduktive Szientismus, 2008.</ref> "Experimental psychology in the narrower sense and child psychology form individual psychology, while cultural and animal psychology are both parts of a general and comparative psychology"<ref>Wundt 1902, p. 6.</ref>). None of his Leipzig assistants and hardly any textbook authors in the subsequent two generations have adopted Wundt's broad theoretical horizon, his demanding scientific theory or the multi-method approach. [[Oswald Külpe]] had already ruled cultural and animal psychology out.<ref>Külpe, 1893, p. 7ff.</ref>

While the ''Principles of physiological Psychology'' met with worldwide resonance, Wundt's cultural psychology (ethno-psychology) appeared to have had a less widespread impact. But there are indications that [[George Herbert Mead]] and [[Franz Boas]], among others, were influenced by it.<ref>Eckardt, 1997; Graumann, 2006.</ref> In his [[Totem and Taboo]], [[Sigmund Freud]] frequently quoted Wundt's cultural psychology. In its time, Wundt's Ethik received more reviews than almost any of his other main works. Most of the objections were ranged against his renouncing any ultimate transcendental ethical basis (God, the Absolute), as well as against his ideas regarding evolution, i.e. that ethical standards changed culturally in the course of human intellectual development. As Wundt did not describe any concrete ethical conflicts on the basis of examples and did not describe any social ethics in particular, his teachings with the general idea of humanism appear rather too abstract.

The ''XXII International Congress for Psychology in Leipzig in 1980'', i.e. on the hundredth jubilee of the initial founding of the institute in 1879, stimulated a number of publications about Wundt, also in the US<ref>Wolfgang G. Bringmann, Ryan D. Tweney (Eds.): Wundt studies, 1980; Wolfgang G. Bringmann, Eckart Scheerer (Eds.): Wundt centennial issue, 1980, Volume 42, pp. 1–189; Robert W. Rieber, David K. Robinson (Eds.): Wilhelm Wundt in history: The making of a scientific psychology, 2001.</ref> Very little productive research work has been carried out since then. While Wundt was occasionally mentioned in the centenary review of the founding of the ''German Society for Experimental Psychology'' 1904/2004, it was without the principal ideas of his psychology and philosophy of science.<ref>Thomas Rammsayer, Stefan Troche (Eds.): Reflexionen der Psychologie. 100 Jahre Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie. Bericht über den 44. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie in Göttingen 2004. Hogrefe: Göttingen 2005.</ref>

=== Research on reception of his work ===
Leipzig was a world-famous centre for the new psychology after 1874. There are various interpretations regarding why Wundt's influence after the turn of the century, i.e. during his lifetime, rapidly waned and from his position as founding father Wundt became almost an outsider. A survey was conducted on the basis of more than 200 contemporary and later sources: reviews and critiques of his publications (since 1858), references to Wundt's work in textbooks on psychology and the history of psychology (from 1883 to 2010), biographies, congress reports, praise on his decadal birthdays, obituaries and other texts. A range of scientific controversies were presented in detail.<ref name="Fahrenberg 2011"/> Reasons for the distancing of Wundt and why some of his concepts have fallen into oblivion can be seen in his scientific work, in his philosophical orientation, in his didactics or in the person of Wundt himself:

*Possibly the most important reason for Wundt's relatively low influence might lie in his highly ambitious epistemologically founded conception of psychology, in his theory of science and in the level of difficulty involved in his wide-ranging methodology.
* Most psychologies in the subsequent generation appear to have a considerably simpler, less demanding, philosophical point-of-view instead of coordinated causal and teleological considerations embedded in multiple reference systems that consequently also demanded a multi-method approach. Thus instead of perspectivism and a change in perspective an apparently straightforward approach is preferred, i.e. research oriented upon either the natural sciences or the humanities.
* Wundt's assistants and colleagues, many of whom were also personally close, did not take on the role of students and certainly not the role of interpreters. Oswald Külpe, Ernst Meumann, Hugo Münsterberg or Felix Krueger did not want to, or could not, adequately reference Wundt's comprehensive scientific conception of psychology in their books, for example they almost entirely ignored Wundt's categories and epistemological principles, his strategies in comparison and interpretation, the discussions regarding Kant's in-depth criticism of methodology, and Wundt's neuropsychology. Nobody in this circle developed a creative continuation of Wundt's concepts. Krueger's inner distance to a scientific concept and the entire work of his predecessor cannot be overlooked.<ref>Felix Krueger: Eröffnung des XIII. Kongresses. Die Lage der Seelenwissenschaft in der deutschen Gegenwart. In: Otto Klemm (Hrsg.): Bericht über den XIII. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie in Leipzig vom 16.–19. Oktober 1933. Fischer, Jena 1934, pp. 6–36.</ref>
* Through his definition of "soul" as an actual process, Wundt gave up the metaphysical idea of a "substantial carrier"; his psychology without a soul was heavily criticized by several contemporary and later psychologists and philosophers.
* Wundt exposed himself to criticism with his theoretical and experimental psychologically differentiated apperception psychology as opposed to elemental association psychology, and with his comprehensive research programme on a development theory of the human intellect, now seen as an interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinary project.

=== Misunderstandings of basic terms and principles ===
Wundt's terminology also created difficulties because he had – from today's point-of-view – given some of his most important ideas unfortunate names so that there were constant misunderstandings. Examples include:<br />
 
* ''physiological psychology'' – specifically not a scientific physiological psychology, because by writing the adjective with a small letter Wundt wanted to avoid this misunderstanding that still exists today; for him it was the use of physiological aids in experimental general psychology that mattered. 
* ''Self-observation'' – not naive introspection, but with training and experimental control of conditions.
* ''Experiment'' – this was meant with reference to Francis Bacon – general, i.e. far beyond the scientific rules of the empirical sciences, so not necessarily a statistically evaluated laboratory experiment.<ref>Wundt: Über Ausfrageexperimente, 1907, p.&nbsp;301ff</ref> For Wundt psychological experimentation primarily served as a check of trained self-observation. 
* ''Element'' – not in the sense of the smallest structure, but as a smallest unit of the intended level under consideration, so that, for example, even the central nervous system could be an "element". 
* ''Völkerpsychologie'' – cultural psychology – not ethnology.
* ''Apperception'' – not just an increase in attention, but a central and multimodal synthesis. 
* ''Voluntaristic tendency, voluntarism'' – not an absolute metaphysical postulate, but a primary empirically psychologically based accentuation of motivated action against the intellectualism and cognitivism of other psychologists.

A representation of Wundt's psychology as 'natural science', 'element psychology' or 'dualistic' conceptions is evidence of enduring misunderstandings. It is therefore necessary to remember Wundt's expressly stated desire for uniformity and lack of contradiction, for the mutual supplementation of psychological perspectives. Wundt's more demanding, sometimes more complicated and relativizing, then again very precise style can also be difficult – even for today's German readers; a high level of linguistic competence is required. There are only English translations for very few of Wundt's work. In particular, the ''Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie'' expanded into three volumes and the ten volumes of Völkerpsychologie, all the books on philosophy and important essays on the theory of science remain untranslated.

Such shortcomings may explain many of the fundamental deficits and lasting misunderstandings in the Anglo-American reception of Wundt's work. Massive misconceptions about Wundt's work have been demonstrated by William James, Granville Stanley Hall, Edward Boring and Edward Titchener as well as among many later authors. Titchener, a two-year resident of Wundt's lab and one of Wundt's most vocal advocates 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 (psychology)|structuralism]]" and claimed was wholly consistent with Wundt's position.<br />
As Wundt's three-volume Logik und Wissenschaftslehre, i.e. his theory of science, also remains untranslated the close interrelationships between Wundt's empirical psychology and his epistemology and methodology, philosophy and ethics are also regularly missing, even if later collections describe individual facets of them.<ref>Bringmann et al., 1980.</ref> Blumenthal's assessment<ref>Arthur L. Blumenthal: Wilhelm Wundt – Problems of interpretation. In: W.G. Bringmann, E.D. Tweney. (Eds.). Wundt Studies. A Centennial Collection. Hogrefe, Toronto 1980, pp.&nbsp;435–445.</ref> that "American textbook accounts of Wundt now present highly inaccurate and mythological caricatures of the man and his work" still appears to be true of most publications about Wundt.
A highly contradictory picture emerges from any systematic research on his reception. On the one hand, the pioneer of experimental psychology and founder of modern psychology as a discipline is praised, on the other hand, his work is insufficiently tapped and appears to have had little influence. Misunderstandings and stereotypical evaluations continue into the present, even in some representations of the history of psychology and in textbooks. Wundt's entire work is investigated in a more focused manner in more recent assessments regarding the reception of Wundt, and his theory of science and his philosophy is included (Araujo, 2016; Danziger, 1983, 1990, 2001; Fahrenberg, 2011, 2015, 2016; Jüttemann, 2006; Kim, 2016; van Rappard, 1980).

=== Scientific controversies and criticisms ===
Like other important psychologists and philosophers, Wundt was subject to ideological criticism, for example by authors of a more Christianity-based psychology, by authors with [[Materialism|materialistic]] and [[Positivism|positivistic]] scientific opinions, or from the point-of-view of [[Marxist-Leninist]] philosophy and social theory, as in Leipzig, [[German Democratic Republic]], up to 1990. 
Wundt was involved in a number of scientific controversies or was responsible for triggering them:
* the Wundt-Zeller controversy about the measurability of awareness processes,
* the Wundt-Meumann controversy about the necessary scope of the scientific principles of applied psychology,
* the Wundt-Bühler controversy about the methodology of the psychology of thought,
* the controversy about the psychology of elemental (passive-mechanic) association and integrative (self-active) apperception,
* the controversy about [[empirio-criticism]], [[positivism]] and critical realism, and 
* the controversy about [[psychologism]].

There are many forms of criticism of Wundt's psychology, of his apperception psychology, of his motivation theory, of his version of psychophysical parallelism with its concept of "mental causality", his refutation of psychoanalytic speculation about the unconscious, or of his critical realism. A recurring criticism is that Wundt largely ignored the areas of psychology that he found less interesting, such as differential psychology, child psychology and educational psychology. In his cultural psychology there is no empirical social psychology because there were still no methods for investigating it at the time. Among his postgraduate students, assistants and other colleagues, however, were several important pioneers: differential psychology, "mental measurement" and intelligence testing (James McKeen Cattell, Charles Spearman), social psychology of group pocesses and the psychology of work (Walther Moede), applied psychology (Ernst Meumann, Hugo Münsterberg), psychopathology, psychopharmacology and clinical diagnosis (Emil Kraepelin). Wundt further influenced many American psychologists to create psychology graduate programs.