On 2012-06-17, at 1:43 AM, mjchael sylvester wrote: > Whereas Chris may be correct in pointing to Titchener as the quintessential > structuralist,most textbooks and the GRE during my college days list Wundt as > belonging to the structuralism paradigmfew.I think that Dave Myers list him > under structuralism,but do not quote me on this.
Yes, many, many sources get this wrong. And they get it wrong because they follow Boring. It is a classic example of textbooks writers copying each other rather than citing the relevant scholarly literature... even decades down the road. It is also why, when asked, I recommend that people use history of psychology textbooks written by historians of psychology (Benjamin, Fancher, Goodwin, Viney, etc.) rather than ones written by, uh, textbook writers. > Granting that Wundt did not buy the introspection method,the idea of digging > into the nature of mind and its impact on behavior has been a dominant theme > in the European schools of psychology.As a matter of fact schools of > psychology emanating from Europe > have been on a mind trip: structuralism,gestalt,psychoanalysis,exixtentialism, > phenomenology,traits (Eysenck,Cattell),intelligence testing > (Binet),Piagetism,logotherapy, Aldous Huxley-to mention > just a few. And not even psychophysics was an aberration from this mental > trend with conepts > like absolute threshold,relative threshold and Jnd with dependcy on > subjective verbal reports. The term "school" has fairly limited use. It worked okay for "structuralism" (Cornell) but even for functionalism it is troublesome (Chicago had one form; Columbia another [and Dewey moved from one literal school to the other]; but even Hall and Baldwin could be called functionalists [though neither they nor Dewey every applied the term to themselves]. Behaviorism almost immediately breaks up into five or more versions [Watson, Tolman, Hull, Skinner, Kantor, etc.]. Gestalt might have been a "school" in Germany, but splintered once in the US [after two of the founders died young]. And one might argue [as I did in my 2009 American Psychologist article] that for all of Watson's revolutionary talk, behaviorism was little more than an outgrowth of one strain of functionalism. For all the others you list, we just have a questionable application of the term "school" to nearly every idea that pops up. > > > Wundt had an interest in cross-cultural psychology.But I am unable to > elaborate > since I do not read German.Wundt might have been > the first cross-cultural dude. People have always been interested in other cultures, though not always in way of which we might approve. See, e.g., Kant's _Anthropology_. Regards, Chris --- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=18456 or send a blank email to leave-18456-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
