Why did Wundt believe that experimentation in Psychology was of limited uselessness?
Wundt believed that “experimentation could be used to study the basic processes of the mind, but
could not be used to study the higher mental events” (pp. 252). Wundt believed that experimentation
used for psychology had to be immediate experience, and not mediate experience. Immediate
experience was the data that would provide the characteristics of mental processes. It was impossible to
use experimentation on mediate experiences because it cannot provide underlying characteristics, but
only information about something. For Wundt, it was useless to use experimentation of mediate
experiences. He sought to find the elements of thought and understood that experimental introspection
would be the method to use.
For Titchener, what were the goals of psychology? How were they similar to or different than those of
Wundt?
Titchener and Wundt both believed that psychology should study immediate experiences. Titchener saw
the mind as holding a lifetime’s experiences and the consciousness as “the sum total of mental
experiences at any given time” (pp. 260). Titchener’s goals of psychology were to find the what, how,
and why of the determination of mental life. Titchener wanted to describe mental experience, unlike
Wundt who wanted to explain it. Titchener’s focus on observable conscious events of the mental
experience meant he was more concerned with the structure of the adult, and normal functions of the
human mind. His version of psychology, became known as structuralism. He wanted to formulate a table
of elements, like chemistry, but for mental elements. Titchener’s ultimate goal for structuralism was to
find and describe the is of mental like, and left the is for others to ponder (pp. 261).
Discuss the significance of Eddinghaus’s work to the history of psychology.
Ebbinghaus studied the process of learning and memory from his home in Berlin in 1878. It was the first
time that learning and memory had been studied and was a turning point for psychology. Ebbinghaus
studied learning and memory as it occurred, rather than after it occurred. Much of his work is still cited
in modern psychology textbooks. Ebbinghaus’ Principles of Psychology (1897) was widely used as an
an example that every mental act has content, outside itself.