Edward Bradford Titchener: 3. Psychology as Science: With Wundt at Leipzig

Abstract

Abstract Edward B. Titchener is known to have been a chief advocate of controlled laboratory experiments in psychology in the United States in the field's earliest days. His intensive education as an experimental psychologist took place over 2 years under Wilhelm Wundt's supervision in Leipzig. Wundt was the major figure in the “new psychology” of the time, which indeed emphasized controlled laboratory experiments. This article describes Titchener's transition from Oxford to Leipzig in 1890, the general characteristics of Wundt and his Institute for Experimental Psychology, and the specific experiences that shaped Titchener's approach to psychology. In Leipzig, Titchener learned experimental psychology from courses taught by Wundt, Oswald Külpe, and others, as well as by serving as an experimental subject for others and by conducting his own experiments. By the time Titchener received his doctoral degree and left Leipzig in the summer of 1892, he had begun to drift from Wundt's approaches to psychological experiment, but he was prepared to begin to direct and develop his psychology laboratory at Cornell University.