ABSTRACT
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920; Figure 6.1) was the pivotal fig-ure of the era in which experimental psychology emerged as a separate discipline on the intellectual scene. Reported to have been humorless, aggressive, and an untiring worker, Herr Professor Dr. Wundt in his experimental work personified the spirit of post-Fechnerian systematic German psychology. But Wundt was actually less interested in experimental psychology (which he considered basic) than in what is now called cognitive psychology, sociocultural psychology, and psycholinguistics, not to mention philosophy. Recent scholarship has established that the view of Wundt that has pervaded English-language history of psychology, as primarily a systematic experimental psychologist, is a distortion that perhaps was fostered by Wundt’s student Titchener, and Titchener’s student Boring, possibly as an inadvertent consequence of their effort to add legitimacy to Titchener’s structuralism. Be that as it may, Wundt remains a major figure in psychology’s history.
