Wilhelm Wundt and the Making of a Scientific Psychology

The creation of this book stems largely from the current centennial cele- bration of the founding in Leipzig of Wundt's psychological laboratory. Wundt is acknowledged by many as one of the principal founders of experimental psychology. His laboratory, his journal, and his students were all influential in the transmission of the new psychology from Germany to all parts of the world. Nevertheless, until recently, psychol- ogists and historians of science hardly recognized the scope and breadth of Wundt's influence, not to mention his contributions.! It was first through E. B. Titchener, and then through Titchener's student, E. G. Boring, that psychology got to know the somewhat biased and distorted picture of this great German psychologist. The picture painted by Titch- ener and Boring was unquestionably the way they saw him, and the way they wished to use him as a part of the scientific psychological Zeitgeist of their time.