Wundt and His Program

1879 (Significance)

Wilhelm Wundt founded the first formal Experimental Psychology Laboratory at the University of Leipzig.

Wilhelm Wundt

The Father of Psychology; established the first lab and defined psychology as the study of conscious experience.

Experimental Introspection

Wundt's method of measuring immediate reactions to stimuli (like reaction time) to avoid bias (rejected philosophical reflection).

Ganzheit (Holism)

Wundt's view that the mind synthesizes elements into complex wholes, rejecting Atomism (breaking the mind into dead parts).

Apperception

The active mental process of focusing attention, understanding, and organizing simple sensations into meaningful wholes (Voluntarism).

Psychophysical Parallelism

Wundt's view that Mind and Body are separate but parallel aspects of the same reality; they do not cause each other.

Folk Psychology (Völkerpsychologie)

Wundt's branch of study for higher mental processes (language, culture, myths) which he believed were too complex for the lab.

The Würzburg School

A group of psychologists (led by Külpe) who rebelled against Wundt by proving thinking could be studied experimentally.

Oswald Külpe

Student of Wundt and founder of the Würzburg School; discovered imageless thought.

Imageless Thought

The Würzburg finding that people can solve problems (like judging weights) without having any sensory image in their mind.

Directed Thinking (Determining Tendencies)

The idea that thinking is guided by specific goals or tasks (Mental Sets) rather than just random associations.

Mental Set

An unconscious readiness or tendency to respond in a certain way, determined by the task instruction (e.g., Categorize 'Bird').

Crisis of Introspection

The realization that introspection was unreliable because different labs (Wundt vs. Würzburg) got contradictory results.

Result of Wundt vs. Würzburg Conflict

The failure of introspection as a method led directly to the rise of Behaviorism (which rejected studying consciousness entirely).

Wundt's Language Theory

The speaker transforms an 'Internal' whole thought into 'External' words; the listener reconstructs the Internal thought from the words.

Voluntarism

Another name for Wundt's psychology, emphasizing the role of 'Will' and active choice in mental processes.

Unconscious Processes (Würzburg)

The Würzburg discovery that the 'work' of thinking often happens unconsciously, with only the answer appearing in consciousness.

Wundt's View on Higher Mental Processes

He believed they (thinking, language, culture) were too complex and culturally dependent to be studied in a controlled lab.

Wundt's Critique of Würzburg

He argued you cannot solve a difficult problem and observe yourself doing it at the same time (interference).