ABSTRACT
The year 1901 launched a new and “Progressive” era in American thought. In the academic world, William James moved to broader philosophical and social concerns. In 1905, he began working with the ministers of Boston’s Emmanuel Church, Elwood Worcester and Samuel McComb, to create the first American school of “psychotherapy,” the Emmanuel Movement. The idea of psychotherapy received a second boost when Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung lectured on their new “psychoanalysis” in the US. Psychotherapy was only one form of applied psychology that found fertile ground in this age, however. Lightner Witmer opened a “psychological clinic” at the University of Pennsylvania, where he assessed and treated school children who were struggling with the standardized curriculum. G. Stanley Hall produced probably his greatest work with a study of a developmental stage that had received little attention before: adolescence. This era also saw some of the first psychological studies of women, often in direct response to assertions of women’s mental inferiority. Hugo Münsterberg reversed his early skeptical stance to become one of applied psychology’s most vocal advocates. Finally, William James produced his final books and articles, in which he questioned the reality of consciousness in favor of a more encompassing concept of “experience.” As the first generation of American psychologists began to pass from the scene, a new generation started rising to the forefront of the discipline.
