Continuing Our Superordinate Theme:



The Mind, Body, and Soul Revisited In the 21st Century Hormones and mindbody dualism
Lecture Outline
Structuralism Edward Titchener/Hugo Munsterberg Psychophysics Fechner/Weber Memory Ebbinghaus The forgetting curve Early implications for learning Broadening the concept of mental acts Franz Brentano The rise and fall of German psychology

Established the first American experimental laboratory

Worked to separate experimental psychology from philosophy American Journal of Psychology (co-editor with G. Stanley Hall) Margaret Floy Washburn & Edwin Boring (historian of psychology – 1886-1968) 40 of 56 PhDs were women
Name two phenomenon in psychophysiology that Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) investigated. For each, describe an example of his method and what he found?
Titchener’s Viewpoint

DominantΒιβλιοθήκη Approach: STRUCTURALISM

conscious mental life can be broken down into fundamental elements, which then form more complex mental structures. In structuralism; therefore, psychologists look for the mental elements of which more complex experiences are composed. If the chemist made headway by deconstructing water into oxygen and hydrogen, perhaps the structuralist could make headway by considering a perception, e.g., the taste of lemonade, to be a "molecule" of conscious experience which can be decomposed into elements of conscious experience: e.g., sweet, sour, cold, warm, bitter, and whatever else could be identified by trained introspection.
E. B. Titchener (1867-1927)


Born: Jan 11, 1867 – Chichester England Studied classics and philosophy at Oxford Studied at Leipzig with Wundt Professor at Cornell from 1895-1927

Created first psychology journal


Trained students


Margaret Floy Washburn




First woman graduate student to earn a doctorate in psychology w/ Titchener Wrote The Animal Mind (1908) – very influential in comparative psychology First woman psychologist elected to the National Academy of Science President of the APA (1922)

Established one of the first experimental psychology programs and departments
Titchener’s Influence

Prolific writer

6 major works on Experimental Psychology
Intropsection: In Titchener’s own words:
Class Assignment: Pick you favorite FAILURE in psychology (10 min each)



Identify an idea from psychology Demonstrate/describe it What makes (or made) the idea intuitively appealing? Why was (is) it false? What benefit/harm resulted from it? Why is (or should it be) part of the history of psychology?