"a certain sort of American..."

[Christopher D. Green]

Dear TIPSters, I have been reading Mitchell Ash's excellent 1995 history of Gestalt psychology and came across a funny line that I thought I'd share. In 1894, Carl Stumpf, the Berlin philosopher-psychologist who served as doctoral supervisor to almost all of the major Gestaltists, once complained to Friedrich Althoff, the Prussian official then in charge of universities, that his course had been misnamed in the calendar "Seminar for Experimental Psychology" rather than simply "Psychological Seminar." He preferred the latter name, he said, "to avoid giving the impression that only experimental work is planned, when I am also planning to link such work to theoretical exercises in philosophy." Her feared that the narrower name would deter taleneted students and "instead attract a certain sort of American, whose whole aim is to become Dr. phil. in the shortest possible time with the most mechanical work possible." The allusion, of course, is to Wundt's American students, who now populate the historical pantheon of the history of American psychology: Hall, J.M. Cattell, Titchener, Scripture, F. Angell, Wolfe, Witmer, etc. -- [Pre-emptive disclaimers: (1) Wertheimer's doctoral supervisor was Kuelpe at Wuerzberg, though he was strongly influenced by Stumpf and spent much time in Berlin. (2) Hall allready had a PhD under William James before he travelled to study with Wundt. (3) This message is not intended as a slight against Americans, only as an amusement. I was myself born and raised in the U.S.] Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax: 416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ============================ . --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]