WHO IS THE FATHER OF PSYCHOLOGY?

Who comes to your mind when you hear this question? Is it Freud? Bandura? Fechner? or Wilhelm Wundt? if it’s the latter then you are right, the father of psychology is indeed Wilhelm Wundt, then does this mean that Wilhelm Wundt originated in psychology? Wundt did establish the first psychology laboratory, edited the first journal, and founded psychology as a formal discipline, but he didn’t originate it. Before psychology was regarded as a branch study of philosophy because it discussed the idea of human nature and the reasoning of their behavior, what Wundt did was he founded psychology as a new science by stating that the concept of mind and body had a scientific basis using a systematic experimental method and promote the idea that psychology is part of science, hence psychology is now regarded as independent science which we now call as modern psychology.

So, who is this man called Wilhelm Wundt? He was born on August 16, 1832, in Neckarau, in Baden, Germany. His father was Maximilian Wundt and his mother was Marie Frederike, he was the fourth child in the family. Wilhelm Wundt comes from a family of intellectuals. Wundt began his education at a Catholic Gymnasium at the age of thirteen. Then continuing his education at Tübingen, Heidelberg, and Berlin, he earned his medical degree in 1856 at the University of Heidelberg. Before joining the University of Heidelberg, he studied with Johannes Müller and there he became an assistant to the physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz. From 1856 to 1862 he wrote Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception and married Sophie Mau while he was at Heidelberg.

In 1874, Wundt published Principles of Physiological Psychology, which contributed to establishing the experimental procedure in psychological research while working at the University of Leipzig. In 1875, Wundt took up a position at the University of Leipzig, and in 1879, set up the first psychological laboratory in the world. Two years later, he founded Philosophische Studien (Philosophical Studies), a journal to report the experimental studies of his laboratory. Wundt wrote many books and articles, but the most important works are Outline of Psychology in 1896 and Ethnic Psychology from 1900 to 1920. In his life, Wundt taught many students including Hugo Munsterberg, Edward Titchener, James Mckeen, and Charles Judd who later had their conception of Psychology.

Reference:

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2021, August 27). Wilhelm Wundt. Encyclopedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Wundt

Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2011). A History of Modern Psychology (PSY 310 History and Systems of Psychology) (10th ed.) [E-book]. Cengage Learning.

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). (2016, September 10). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/

Wilhelm Wundt. (2021, February 25). New World Encyclopedia, Retrieved 09:55, April 17, 2022, from       https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Wilhelm_Wundt&oldid=1049772.