Editing Wilhelm Wundt (section)

=== 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.