The Spread of the New Definition of Psychology
Russo Krauss retraces the reception of Richard Avenarius’ ideas about the philosophical foundation of experimental-physiological psychology among former Wundt’s pupils and other leading psychologists of the late nineteenth century, such as Oswald Külpe, H
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The Spread of the New Definition of Psychology
4.1 The Repudiation of Wundt: Oswald Külpe’s Grundriss According to the previous chapters, the main features of Avenarius’ conception are: (1) the criticism of a specific domain for psychology (the inner-being) as a vestige of introjection; (2) the definition of psychology by point of view of the dependency upon the individual, and the brain in particular; (3) the assumption that all psychical contents do not depend on each other, but on the brain activity; and (4) the consequent necessity of a physiological approach to explain psychical life. Now we can analyze how other authors, such as Külpe, embraced these ideas. Oswald Külpe (1862–1915) arrived at Leipzig in 1886. Before, he had trained as psychophysiologist in Göttingen under Georg Elias Müller. Thanks to this expertise, he soon became Wundt’s assistant, and privatdozent (lecturer). From this position, he could ease Wundt’s burden by teaching in psychology classes, so that the master could focus on those about philosophy. Precisely the lack of a proper textbook about experimental psychology for the course, prompted Külpe, encouraged by Wundt, to write the Grundriss der Psychologie (Outlines of Psychology 1893).1 Even though Wundt—to whom the work was ded icated—expected the book to be a compendium of his own ideas, Külpe 1 On the publication of the Grundriss, see Wozniak (1999). For a biography of Külpe, see Ogden (1951).
© The Author(s) 2019 C. Russo Krauss, Wundt, Avenarius, and Scientific Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12637-7_4
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presented a conception of psychology that differed fundamentally from the Wundtian one. Right from the Introduction, he declares that, in the classification of the sciences, when it comes to psychology: […] the only principle of delimitation which cannot possibly be employed is that of the subject treated. The reason is that there is no single fact of experience which cannot be made the subject of psychological investigation. […] it is clear that we must look for the distinctive character of psychological subject-matter not in the peculiar nature of a definite class of experiential facts, but rather in some property which attaches to all alike. This property is the dependency of facts of experience upon experiencing individuals. (Külpe 1893, 2, trans. 1895, 2)
In so doing, Külpe distances himself from Wundt, who considers psychology as the science of inner experience (therefore, in Külpe’s words, of “a definite class of experiential facts”). At the same time, Külpe supports the typical positivist criticism towards equivocal, metaphysical terms: We often express this by saying that psychology is a science of psychical facts, facts of consciousness, or that the facts of psychology are subjective. Such phrases are one and all misleading. […] [T]he word “psychical” may be taken, in the light of certain well-known metaphysical doctrines, to denote a reality, entirely separable as such from the ‘physical’ processes. And the term “consciousness” i
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