Würzburg School. Thinking research in the Würzburg school

FORMATION OF WORLD SCHOOLS OF PSYCHOLOGY

One of them, a student of Wundt - Oswald Külpe (1862 - 1915), having moved to the city of Würzburg, he created his own, the so-called Würzburg school. Her program was a development of Wundt's.

O.Kulpe himself did not offer either a new program or a new theoretical concept. But he was a "generator of ideas", a participant in experiments and a test subject in them. Nevertheless, it was O. Kulpe who managed to consolidate a group of experimental psychologists.

Initially, the luggage of the experimental schemes of the laboratory was no different from the others: sensitivity thresholds were determined, the reaction time was measured, associative experiments were carried out. But some, at first glance, insignificant changes in the instructions to the subject determined a further turn in the method and, as a result, the innovative style of the school.

In the laboratory under the direction of Külpe, the higher mental processes were studied by the method of "experimental observation", in which the subject carefully observed the dynamics of the states experienced by him. The emphasis was shifted from observing the effects of the subject's behavior on the actions he performs, to the process itself that occurs in the mind when solving some experimental problem. The method made it possible to reveal the impossibility for the subjects to describe the emerging states in terms of sensory elements (images).

It was concluded that consciousness has not only sensory, but also non-sensory components. Moreover, the dependence of the process of solving the problem on the pre-arising state, called Külpe "setting consciousness".(Non-sensory elements M. Mayer, I. Ort, K. Marbe called "states of consciousness", N. Akh singled out a special group of experiences from them, which he called "awareness").

Thus, new variables were introduced into psychological thinking: set - a motivational variable that arises when accepting a task; task - the goal from which the determining tendencies come; process as a change of search operations, sometimes acquiring affective tension; non-sensory components in the composition of consciousness (mental, not sensory images).

This scheme opposed traditional models, according to which an external stimulus served as a determinant of a mental phenomenon, and the process itself was the "weaving" of associative networks, the knots of which were sensory images: primary - sensations, secondary - representations.

The novelty of the method and approach of the Würzburg school was to change the direction of the psychological vision of processes:


Shifting emphasis from the effects of the subject's inner world, presented
in the form of sensations, images, ideas, etc., on the actions it performs
- operations, exercises, acts;

Fixing not the result, but tracking the process, describing events,
occurring in the mind when solving some experimental problem;

A new variable was introduced into the experimental model - "the state in which
the subject is in front of the perception of the stimulus";

The appearance of the term "set of consciousness" (instead of Müller's "motor
settings") as a preset for a stimulus and for a certain type of reaction;

When solving a research problem, the subject had an act of judgment (the level of rationality), and not just a sense of identity or difference;

- "elementary psychophysical experience" was transferred to the category of methodological
means of studying higher mental processes;

The developed technique assumed both improvement and complication
the means used and the in-depth interpretation of the results.

The latter provision was reflected in the creation by the laboratory method of "systematic experimental introspection". The content of the method included the following requirements-algorithms: the progress of the task was divided into intervals (using a chronoscope); each of the "fractions" (the preparatory period, the perception of the stimulus, the search for an answer, the reaction) was carefully traced through "inner vision" in order to reveal its composition. The task became more complicated, acquiring a logical character, which led to extraordinary results: a) the opportunity to follow the path of one's thoughts when solving these problems; b) the emergence of the installation - focus on solving the problem; c) unconscious regulation by the installation of the process of solving the problem; d) the absence of significant significance of sensory images in this process or their ignoring in solving the problem.

The emergence of a new technique, unfortunately, did not escape the flaws inherent in the introspective approach, in which, when trying to reveal the dynamics of thinking, only its final result was revealed. Therefore, some of O. Külpe's colleagues resorted to another means - to reconstruction of the mental activity itself according to the retrospective report of the subjects. N.Akh conducted a special series of experiments with hypnotized subjects who, in accordance with the instructions, without remembering its content upon exiting the state of hypnosis, solved problems in accordance with it. Experiments revealed the unconscious direction and selectivity of the thought process. The facts obtained prompted the researcher to introduce into psychology the concept of "determining tendency", which indicates that, unlike association, the course of mental processes is directed by a task that gives it a purposeful character.

Significant place in school results occupies the concept of "ugly thinking", which was the subject of controversy among her contemporaries (about the priority of "discovery"). What was done extraordinary by the representatives of the Würzburg school in terms of this concept? The category of action is introduced as an act that has its own determination (motive and purpose), operational-affective dynamics and composition-structure; this category was introduced "from above" (from the highest forms of intellectual behavior).

As a result, the following should be attributed to the achievements of the Würzburg school: 1) the study of thinking began to acquire psychological contours: the presence of regularities and specific properties of thinking (and not just the laws of logic and rules of associations) became obvious; 2) a number of important problems have been posed concerning the qualitative, essential differences between thinking and other cognitive processes; 3) the limitations of the associative concept, its inability to explain the selectivity and direction of acts of consciousness, are revealed.

Among the unresolved problems and reasons for criticism of the Würzburg School, one should single out: the discrepancy between methodological guidelines and the objective meaning of open facts and dependencies. The status of the phenomena of consciousness in the structure of mental "determined" activity resembled supersensible ideas "purified" in antiquity by Plato.

So still subject of psychology at the Würzburg School remained the content of consciousness, and the method - introspection. The subjects were instructed to solve mental problems while observing what was happening in the mind. But the most sophisticated introspection could not find those sensory elements of which, according to Wundt's forecast, the "matter" of consciousness should consist. Wundt tried to save his program with an angry remark that mental actions are in principle not subject to experiment and therefore should be studied according to cultural monuments - language, myth, art, etc. This is how the version of "two psychologies" was born: experimental, related in its method to the natural sciences, and another psychology, which, instead of this method, interprets the manifestations of the human spirit.

This version received support from a supporter of another version of the "two psychologies" of the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey. He separated the study of the connections of mental phenomena with the bodily life of an organism from their connections with the history of cultural values. He called the first psychology explanatory, the second - understanding.

By the end of the 19th century, the enthusiasm that Wundt's program had once awakened had dried up. Her understanding of the subject of psychology, studied with the help of the subjective method using experiment, has forever lost credibility. Many of Wundt's students broke with him and took a different path. The work done by Wundt's school laid the foundations of experimental psychology. Scientific knowledge develops by not only confirming hypotheses and facts, but also by refuting them. Wundt's critics were able to acquire new knowledge by overcoming what he had acquired.

Simultaneously with Wundt, the philosopher Franz Brentano (1838-1917) proposed his program of new psychology. It was presented in his work "Psychology from an empirical point of view" (1874). A former Catholic priest, later a professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna (1873), he was also the author of the works "Studies in the Psychology of the Senses" (1907), "On the Classification of Psychic Phenomena" (1911).

He proposed his program for a new psychology. As a subject of psychology, he considered the activity of the human psyche, his mental acts, which are the basic units of the psyche. Those. not the actual image, the result, but a mental process, not the content of consciousness (as in Wundt), not its elements, but acts. Therefore, if Wundt can be called a structuralist, then Brentano is a functionalist.

The field of psychology, according to Brentano, is not in itself separate sensations or representations, but those acts, "actions" that the subject performs (acts of representation, judgment, emotional evaluation), when he turns something into an object of awareness.

Outside the act, the object does not exist. When it comes to phenomenal objects, they have existence only in mental acts. Real objects have only potential being. This led to the idea of ​​the subject as a system of acts, having a basis in itself and comprehended through self-observation. The act, in turn, necessarily presupposes a "direction towards" - the so-called "intention"."We can define psychic phenomena by saying that they are phenomena that intentionally contain an object." The main characteristic of mental acts is in their immanent objectivity, i.e. constant focus on the object. According to Brentano, psychology should study the inner experience of the subject in its real and natural composition, including the actions (acts) performed by him.

The mental process, according to Brentano, is characterized by the fact that its object always coexists in it. This coexistence is expressed in three types of acts: a) ideation- representation of an object in the form of an image ("emergence of an object as a pure act of perception"); b) a judgment about it as true or false; c) emotional evaluation of it as desirable or rejected.

Thus, the subject of psychology, like that of Wundt, was considered consciousness. However, its nature was thought to be different. According to Brentano, the field of psychology is not the content of consciousness (sensations, perceptions, thoughts, feelings), but its acts, mental actions, due to which these contents appear. One thing is the color or image of an object, the other is the act of seeing a color or judging about an object. The study of acts is a unique sphere, unknown to physiology. The specificity of the same act - in its intention, focus on any object.

Brentano's concept has become the source of several strands of Western psychology. It gave impetus to the development of the concept of mental function as a special activity of consciousness, which was not limited to either elements or processes, but was considered initially active and objective.

From the level of theoretical ideas about the subject of psychology, one should distinguish the level of specific empirical work, where an ever wider range of phenomena fell under the power of experiment. Long ago, since Plato's times, the "guest" of psychology was the idea of ​​association. It has received various interpretations. In some philosophical systems (Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Gartley), the association was considered as a connection and order of bodily impressions, the appearance of one of which, according to the law of nature, causes those adjacent to it. In other systems (Berkeley, Hume, Thomas Browne, James Mill, etc.), association meant a connection of sensations in the subject's internal experience, which had nothing to do with the organism or the order of external influences experienced by it. With the birth of experimental psychology, the study of associations becomes its favorite topic, which has been developed in several directions.

So, in an Austrian school, a student of Brentano A. Meinong (1853-1920) created the "theory of objects", which became the theoretical basis of the problem of integrity in the Graz school. Without dwelling on its analysis, it should be noted that this theory made up for the well-known one-sidedness of Brentano's psychology, from which the analysis of the content side of consciousness was excluded. Another Austrian psychologist X. Ehrenfels (1859-1932) experimentally established the fact of integral formations - gestalts, which are the product of the activity of consciousness, thus confirming Brentano's theoretical ideas about acts.

The real experimental development of Brentano's theory of the act received in the psychology of functions Karl Stumpf (1848-1936), a prominent German psychologist, founder of the psychological institute at the Munich (1889) and Berlin (1893) universities. pupils

K. Stumpf at different times were E. Husserl, as well as K. Koffka, W. Koehler, M. Wertheimer, K. Levin, later the founders of Gestalt psychology.

The central concept of Stumpf's psychology is the concept functions, which corresponds to the concept of the Brentano act. Stumpf distinguishes:

a) the phenomena of consciousness ("phenomena") are the primary given of our experience;
the sensory content of "my" consciousness; they are the subject
phenomenology, being neutral for both physiology and psychology;

b) mental functions - the main subject of psychology, which should
to study the relationship between mental functions and phenomena;

c) relations - in their pure form, the subject of study of logology;

d) eidos as immanent objects (phenomenal according to Brentano) - the subject of eidology. They have an independent existence as a certain stage of reality, arising due to the directed activity of the subject.

In this case, it is the functions that constitute the most essential thing in mental life and the task of research. Phenomena are only material for the work of the soul organism. It is depending on the function that we notice in the integral phenomenon of its part, for example, a certain tone in a chord. Stumpf makes a classification of functions. Their experimental study was carried out on the material of auditory perceptions, in particular music.

Würzburg School

At the beginning of the twentieth century, dozens of experimental psychology laboratories operated in various universities around the world. There were over forty in the United States alone. Their topics are different: the analysis of sensations, psychophysics, psychometry, associative experiment. The work was carried out with great zeal, but essentially new facts and ideas were not born.

James drew attention to the fact that the results of a huge number of experiments do not correspond to the efforts invested. But against this monotonous background, several publications in the journal "Archive of General Psychology" flashed, which, as it turned out later, influenced progress no less than the tomes of Wundt and Titchener. These publications came from a group of young experimenters who practiced with Professor Külpe in Würzburg (Bavaria). The professor was a gentle, benevolent, sociable person with broad humanitarian interests. After studying with Wundt, he became his assistant (privat docent) - the second assistant after Kettel, who was disillusioned with his patron. Külpe soon became known as the author of An Outline of Psychology (1893), which expounded ideas close to Wundt's. And judging by this book (his only book on psychology), he did not bring anything new to Würzburg, where he moved in 1894.

Why, then, did his laboratory soon stand out sharply among many others, and the experiments carried out in it by several young people turned out to be the most significant event in the experimental study of the human psyche for the first decade of our century? To answer this question, we must turn to the logic of the development of psychological knowledge and correlate with it what happened in the Würzburg laboratory.

At first, there seemed to be nothing remarkable in the set of experimental schemes of this laboratory. Sensitivity thresholds were determined, the reaction time was measured, and an associative experiment that became trivial after Galton and Ebbinghaus was carried out.

It all started with a small, at first glance, change in the instruction to the subject (the experimenters themselves usually acted alternately in his role). He was required not only, for example, to say which of the alternately weighed objects is heavier (in psychophysical experiments), or to respond to one word with another (in an associative experiment), but also to report exactly what processes were going on in his mind before he made a judgment about the weight of an object or before pronouncing the required word. Why has this type of problem not been posed before? Because the direction of the research search was different. In psychophysics, for example, it was required to define "a barely perceptible difference" between sensations. The subject's report was considered as information about the simplest element of consciousness. In the associative experiment, it was necessary to find out what image the word evokes or how many times the stimuli should be repeated in order to establish a connection between them, etc. In all cases, the experimenter was interested in only one thing - the effects of the actions of the subject, and not these actions themselves (mental acts) as such. The effects, in turn, were considered to reflect the structure of the intrapsychic sphere. It is not surprising that with such an orientation of research, the ideas of structuralism about the "atomistic" structure of consciousness seemed to have passed rigorous experimental verification.

The change in instructions that led to the innovative style of the Würzburg laboratory shifted the focus from the effects of the subject's behavior ( Represented in consciousness in the form of sensations, images, etc.) on the actions (operations, acts) performed by him. Recall that in the era of introspectionism, it was believed that information about these actions can be obtained only from the same source as information about their effects (structural components of consciousness), i.e., from the testimony of self-observation. The subjects were asked to fix not the result, but the process, to describe what events occur in their minds when solving some experimental problem.

We emphasize once again that these tasks were originally the most common, repeated thousands of times. But they managed to look at the ordinary from an unusual side, saw in it an act of judgment, and not just a sense of identity or difference. Thus, the seemingly elementary psychophysical experience was immediately transferred (as an act of judgment) to the same category as the so-called higher mental processes. It was precisely in the change in the direction of psychological vision that the novelty of the approach lay.

Everything that followed, connected with the complication of experimental tasks, was predetermined at this turning point. The first experiments carried out according to the modified instructions turned out to be disappointing. The subjects, with the most careful observation of themselves, could fix only some vague, indefinite states. These states did not in any way resemble the sensual elements (images) from which consciousness was considered to be built, and the process taking place in consciousness did not in any way resemble a comparison, comparison of images ( According to traditional ideas, in psychophysical experiments (for example, when judging which of the alternately weighed objects is heavier), the subject first has an image of one stimulus, and then another. Samples are compared and judgment is made). The conclusion arose that in the mind there are not only sensory, but also non-sensory components, while the decisions made (the act of judgment) are a special process that has a determination unknown to psychologists. In search of new determinants, the Würzburgers went beyond the then accepted experimental model (which guided work in psychophysics, psychometry, and associative experiments). This model limited the experience to two variables: the stimulus acting on the subject and his response. Now another special variable has been introduced: the state in which the subject is before the perception of the stimulus.

Experimental psychologists have come across the dependence of the reaction on this factor before. So, Ludwig Lange discovered that the reaction time depends on the focus of the subject either on the perception of the stimulus, or on the upcoming movement (in the second case, the reaction time is shorter). Data on the influence of readiness for a reaction on the result of psychophysical experiments were obtained by G. E. Müller and Schumann. When repeatedly comparing two objects of unequal weight, the subjects have an illusion: bodies of the same weight begin to be perceived as unequal. Müller described this phenomenon as a "motor set" effect. Külpe, who at one time worked in Muller's laboratory, also became interested in the problem of readiness. He probably drew the attention of his young trainees to this problem. In any case, in one of the first publications of the laboratory, the term "attitude of consciousness" appears. This was already something new in comparison with Müller's "motor installation", since now it was not about the state of the muscular system, but about the fact that consciousness as such is inherent in pre-tuning to a stimulus and to a certain type of reaction.

As a phenomenon of consciousness, the set had to be traced introspectively. After all, there are no states of consciousness of which the individual could not give himself an account. But the effect of the setup was revealed only retrospectively, that is, after the experimental task had been completed. Therefore, in the Würzburg laboratory, the then generally accepted introspective method was transformed into "systematic experimental introspection." Such a method was called systematic because the progress of the task was divided into intervals (again, a chronoscope was used) and each of the “fractions” (preparatory period, perception of the stimulus, search for an answer, reaction) was carefully traced through “inner vision”, so to find out its composition.

The tasks became more complicated and acquired a logical character. In an associative experiment, it was required, for example, in response to a word denoting a part of an object, to pronounce a word denoting the object as a whole, i.e., to establish a logical connection between concepts. Subsequently, the subjects had to follow the path of their thoughts while solving even more complex logical problems (the chronoscope was not used in these cases).

Various versions of the experiments showed that during the preparatory period, when the subject receives instructions, he develops a set - a focus on solving the problem. In the interval between the perception of a stimulus (for example, words that need to be answered by others), this setting regulates the course of the process, but is not realized. As for the function of sensory images in this process, they are either not noticed by the subjects at all, or if they arise, they are of no significant importance for solving the problem,

One of the important achievements of the Würzburg school is that the study of thinking began to take on psychological contours. Previously, it was believed that the laws of thought are the laws of logic that are carried out in the individual consciousness according to the rules for the formation of associations. Since the associative principle is universal, the specifically psychological side of thinking did not differ at all. Now it became obvious that this side has its own properties and patterns, different from both logical and associative ones.

The special structure of the thinking process was due to the fact that associations in this case are subject to determining tendencies, the source of which is the task accepted by the subject ( Or the purpose of the action in the case of an act of will. It was assumed that mental and volitional acts are built according to a general principle: responding to a stimulus by pressing a key (volitional act) does not differ from responding with a word (thinking act)).

The Würzburg school introduced new variables into psychological thinking:

The attitude (motivational variable) that arises when accepting a task;

The task (goal) from which the determining tendencies come;

The process as a succession of search operations, sometimes acquiring affective intensity;

Non-sensory components in the composition of consciousness (mental, not sensory images).

This scheme opposed the traditional one, according to which the external stimulus serves as the determinant of the process, and the process itself is the "weaving" of associative networks, the knots of which are sensory images (primary - sensations, secondary - representations).

Sometimes the most important achievement of the Würzburgers is considered the discovery of thinking without images, "pure" thinking. The literature even contains the term "Würzburg school of ugly thinking" ( This term was used earlier by the author himself.). Such an opinion was formed under the influence of the discussions that broke out around the question of whether there is a thought free from images. Disputes arose over which of the psychologists was the first to discover the non-sensory composition of consciousness - the Würzburgers or Binet and Woodworth, who came to similar conclusions in their experiments independently of each other.

The critics of Külpe's disciples laid the main emphasis on this point. But, what is the main thing in the minds of any generation of researchers does not appear to be such in the historical perspective.

The most significant among the Wurzburgers, we believe, was the introduction of the category of action as an act that has its own determination (motive and purpose), operational-affective dynamics and composition. They introduced this category "from above", starting from the highest forms of intellectual behavior. But in parallel (and perhaps also influencing the work of the Wurzburgers) there was a process of introducing this category "from below", at the level of studying the elementary adaptive behavior of living beings. And here the Darwinian revolution led to a new interpretation of the intellect, for which the determinant is the problem, and not the stimulus itself (cf. the concept of the task (goal) and the determining tendencies created by the goal among the Würzburgers). This problem arises only when the organism has a need (cf. the Würzburgers' concept of a set). As for the question of whether thinking is possible without images, it was important not so much in a positive way (as follows from the idea that the merit of Külpe's students lies in the discovery of thought that is not associated with sensual images), but in terms of the destruction of that picture of consciousness offered by structuralism.

With the development of the category of action, an important shift was outlined in the general structure of psychological knowledge. This was a categorical shift, by virtue of which the activities of the "small group", which was the Würzburg school, turned out to be more effective in the development of experimental human psychology than many other laboratories (in the historical period under consideration). Can the Würzburg school be called the Külpe school, if American structural psychology is usually called the Titchener school? This is not an idle question. It is associated with the assessment of the role of the leader of the research team. We deliberately, speaking of the Wurzburgers, did not mention them by name, as we tried to describe the school as a whole. Now it is time to give their names: after all, each had its own stroke in the overall scheme.

K. Marbe (1869-1953), I. Orth, A. Mayer, G. Watt (1879-1925), A. Messer (1867-1937), N. Ah (1871-1946), K. Buhler (1879-1963). What function did Külpe himself perform in this team? Did he (like, say, Titchener) have his own research program, with which he began work in Würzburg, and which resulted in the achievements already considered?

He began a professorship in Würzburg as a researcher of "structural" orientation. But he cheated on her. All three luminaries of the then experimental psychology opposed the Würzburgers - Wundt, G. E. Miller, Titchiner ( Wundt criticized the Wurzburgers for grossly departing from the generally accepted standards of scientific experiment. He called their experiments a parody of the experiment. Titchener, as noted, defended the doctrine of the sensory "texture" of consciousness. Müller rejected the notion of "determining tendencies", believing that the phenomenon designated by this term is nothing more than "perseveration" known to psychologists, that is, the annoying repetition of the same images.). They opposed Külpe's pets, but not against himself. After all, he himself did not propose either a new program or a theory that would generalize the explosive facts for the structuralists. He was, as they say now, a "generator of ideas", a participant in experiments and a test subject in these experiments, but he could not make ends meet, develop a concept that would adequately comprehend the new aspects of psychic reality.

Therefore, what is now called the concept of this school is the fruit of a reconstruction carried out by historians, and not a presentation of the views of the leader. Nevertheless, it was Külpe that became the center of consolidation of a group of experimental psychologists. It broke up after Külpe moved from Würzburg, first to Bonn and then to Munich in 1909. Each of the Würzburgers went their own way in the future.

Külpe no longer touched upon the prospect of an experimental analysis of thinking. In Wurzburg, he broke the "taboo" of the Wundtian school by embarking on a laboratory study of the higher mental functions of man. But, as Boring noted, "he did not have time to convincingly show the world whether Wundt was wrong or right when he said that it was impossible to experiment on thought" (7, 360).

It can be assumed that the reason (or at least one of the essential reasons) for the incompleteness of Külpe's searches was the discrepancy between his methodological guidelines and the objective (categorical) meaning of the facts and dependencies discovered in Würzburg.

Determining tendencies, which became one of the main concepts of the school, belonged to determinism only in name, because these tendencies meant the influence of the task (goal), which itself needed a deterministic explanation. Neither the origin of thoughts "purified" from sensuality, nor their status in the structure of mental activity were clear. They resembled Plato's supersensible ideas.

The subjective-idealistic interpretation of consciousness inherent in structuralism was replaced by an objective-idealistic one. This prevented further positive development of the problem of determining the mental activity of a person.

Oswald Külpe (1862–1915) and the Würzburg school of psychology

At first, Oswald Külpe was a follower of Wundt. But later he took the lead of a group of students who opposed the restrictions put forward by Volume 1. Although this protest movement was not revolutionary, it can be called a declaration of freedom. Külpe's entire scientific activity was devoted to the study of those questions that Wundt's psychology rejected.

At 19, Külpe entered the University of Leipzig. He was going to study history, but under the influence of Wundt's ideas he turned to philosophy and experimental psychology, which in 1881 was just getting on its feet. However, Külpe did not lose his interest in history and, after studying for two semesters with Wundt, he decided to go to Berlin. A few more years of tossing between psychology and history passed before Külpe returned to Wundt in 1886. He remained in Leipzig for another eight years.

After receiving a scientific degree, Külpe began work at the university as an assistant professor and assistant to Wundt and continued research in the laboratory. He dedicated his first book, Essays in Psychology, published in 1893, to Wundt. Here Külpe defines psychology as the science that studies the data of experience that depend on the experience of the individual.

In 1894, Külpe became a professor at the University of Würzburg, and two years later he created a laboratory that was soon able to compete with Wundt's laboratory. There were also Americans among the students at the University of Würzburg; one of them, James Rowland Angell, later became a key figure in the development of the trend called functionalism.

Differences in the views of Külpe and Wundt

In Essays in Psychology, Külpe did not consider complex mental functions; at that time he shared the views of Wundt. But after a few years, he established himself in the idea that thought processes can be explored with the help of an experiment. Ebbinghaus uses the experimental method to study one of the higher mental processes, memory. If memory can be studied in the laboratory, then why not experiments with thinking? Having asked these questions, Külpe took a position directly opposite to the point of view of his former mentor - since Wundt argued that the experimental method is not applicable to complex mental processes.

Another difference between Wurzburg psychology and the research carried out in Wundt's laboratory concerned the phenomenon of introspection. Külpe proposed a method which he called systematic experimental introspection. It consisted in the fact that the subject was given some difficult task (for example, to establish logical connections between concepts), after which he was required to provide a retrospective description of what he experienced (done). In other words, the subjects had to talk about how they went through the process - for example, the formation of a judgment. In Wundt's laboratory, such retrospective or post factum observation was not practiced. Wundt believed in learning from conscious experience in sync with it, rather than from memory of it once the experience had already been experienced. Külpe Wundt called introspection<имитацией интроспекции>.

Külpe's introspective method was systematic because the description of all lived experience was divided into certain intervals of time. Similar tasks were performed many times so that the observations could be corrected, verified and validated. During the observations, the subjects were asked additional questions, which made it possible to direct their attention to the aspects of the thinking process that were of interest to the observer.

There were other differences between Külpe's and Wundt's introspective methods. Wundt was not in favor of subjects describing their experiences in detail. Most of his research was based on objective, quantitative criteria - such as the time moments of the appearance of a reaction or judgments about the weight of loads in psychophysical experiments.

In Külpe's systematic experimental introspection, in contrast, the emphasis was on subjects' subjective, qualitative, and detailed descriptions of the nature of their thought processes. In his lab, subjects were required to do more than just make a simple judgment about the strength of a stimulus. They were asked to describe the complex mental processes that occurred during the performance of their assigned tasks. Külpe's goal was to study what goes on in the subject's head during a particular experience. Külpe wanted to expand Wundt's concept of the subject of psychology to include complex mental functions and improve the methodology of introspection.

What were the results of Külpe's activities in expanding and improving the subject and method of psychology? Wundt's system emphasized that conscious experience can be decomposed into its component parts, sensations and images. The results of the introspection of mental processes, obtained by psychologists of the Würzburg school of Külpe, confirmed a different point of view, that thought is possible without any sensory or figurative content. Based on these findings, there was ugly theory, or indistinct, thoughts: sensations and images play only an auxiliary, side role in thinking. Thus, Külpe's research established the presence of a non-sensory form of consciousness.

Scientific research in the Würzburg laboratory

Scientific research in the Würzburg laboratory developed. An important contribution to the study of comparative weight measurements was made by Karl Marbe. Marbe found that although sensations and representations are present during the execution of an experimental task, they do not appear to influence the decision-making process in any way. The subjects were not able to note how they have an idea in their head about which weight is lighter and which is heavier. This contradicted the well-established point of view that a judgment is made when the subjects, keeping in mind the mental image of the first weight, compared it with the sensory impression from the second.

Research by Henry Watt showed that when conducting verbal-associative experiments (checking the subject's reaction to the word - stimulus), it is almost impossible to obtain factual data on how ideas are formed in the minds of the subjects. This only confirmed Külpe's hypothesis that conscious experience is not limited to sensations and images. Subjects in Watt's experiments were able to answer correctly without having to construct a logical structure for the answer in their minds. Watt came to the conclusion that the work of consciousness was performed even before the end of the experiment, namely at the moment when the rules for its implementation were mastered.

The subjects, obviously, gave the subconscious certain instructions or, in other words, directed it in order to give the most acceptable, in their opinion, answer. As soon as the rules for performing the task were learned and the main direction determined, the actual task began to be performed without any effort on the part of consciousness. These studies have confirmed that the hidden side of consciousness is able to somehow control its activity. The fact that experience depends not only on the elements of consciousness, but also on the determining tendencies in the work of the subconscious, proved that the subconscious has a significant influence on human behavior. This idea became fundamental in the theory of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud.

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So, we can conclude that psychology has been internally contradictory since its inception. But, despite all the differences in their approaches, the pioneering psychologists were united in their goal, namely: to make psychology an independent science.

Thanks to the efforts of Wundt, Ebbinghaus, Brentano, Stumpf and some other scientists - researchers, psychology was more<не изучением души… [а] исследованием - посредством наблюдений и экспериментов - определенных реакций человеческого организма, которые не являются предметом изучения никаких других наук. Немецкие психологи, несмотря на различия во взглядах, делали общее дело: их талант, трудолюбие и единая направленность научной работы - все это сделало университеты Германии центром развития новой психологии>(Heidbreder, 1935, p. 105).

Germany, however, did not manage to hold the conquered positions for a long time. Not so much time passed before Wundt's psychology appeared and began to develop in the United States, as interpreted by his student E. B. Titchener.

Issues for discussion

1. Describe how the Wundt system, as interpreted by Titchener, became an example of historical distortion. What is the cultural-historical psychology of Wundt? Why did it cause division within the new psychology?

2. What influence did the work of German physiologists and English empiricists have on Wundt's psychology? Expand Wundt's concept of voluntarism. What role did the elements of consciousness play?

3. What are the differences between mediated and direct experiences? Take aback how Wundt used the method of introspection. What is the role of apperception in a scientific system?

4. What topics did Wundt and his students develop in the Leipzig Laboratory? Follow the development of Wundt's psychology in Germany. Why was Wundt's system criticized?

5. Hurry up Ebbinghaus's research on learning and memory. How did Fechner's research influence Ebbinghaus's views? What influence did Ebbingaz have on Muller's research?

6. How is the psychology of Brentano's act different from that of Wundt? How do Stumpf's views on mental elements and the use of introspection differ from those of Wundt?

7. What did Külpe mean by systematic experimental introspection? How does Külpe's approach differ from Wundt's? How does the idea of ​​ugly thought relate to Wundt's concept of conscious experience?

Baldwin, B.T. (1921) In memory of Wilhelm Wundt by his American students. psychological review, 28, 153-158. memoirs of Wilhelm Wundt by his American students.

Langfeld, H.S. (1937) Stumpf's "Introduction to Psychology". American Journal of Psychology, 50, 33–56. Started a psychology course given by Stumpf at the University of Berlin in 1906-1907.

Lindenfeld, D. (1978) Oswald Kulpe and the Wurzburg School. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 14, 132-141. Comparison of philosophical and psychological concepts of Külpe; evaluation of their significance.

Postman, L. (1968) Herman Ebbinghaus. American Psychologist, 23? 149–157. Evaluation of Ebbinghaus' contribution to the experimental study of memory.

From the book Business Psychology author Morozov Alexander Vladimirovich

Lecture 1. Psychology as a science. The subject and tasks of psychology. Branches of psychology Psychology is both a very old and very young science. Having a thousand-year past, it is nevertheless all still in the future. Its existence as an independent scientific discipline barely counts

From the book Psychology: Lecture Notes author Bogachkina Natalia Alexandrovna

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From the book Labor Psychology the author Prusova N V

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From the book Introduction to Psychoanalysis author Freud Sigmund

PART ONE ERRORED ACTIONS (1916-) PREFACE The introduction to psychoanalysis offered to the reader's attention in no way claims to compete with existing works in this field of science (Hitschmann. Freuds Neurosenlehre. 2 Aufl., 1913; Pfister. Die psychoanalytische Methode , 1913; Leo Kaplan. Grundzüge

From the book Transpersonal Project: Psychology, Anthropology, Spiritual Traditions Volume I. World Transpersonal Project author Kozlov Vladimir Vasilievich

PART TWO DREAMS (1916)

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Chapter 6. Freud. Wartime Neuroses (1915-1921) In two works written in 1915 (Timely Thoughts on War and Death) and 1919 (Preface to the collection Psychoanalysis and War Neuroses), Freud again returns to psychic trauma. But here he is performing

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Part I History and subject of social psychology Formation of social psychology Directions of foreign social

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13. OBSERVATION AND SELF-OBSERVATION METHOD IN PSYCHOLOGY. EXPERIMENT IN PSYCHOLOGY Observation is a systematic and purposeful recording of psychological facts in the natural conditions of everyday life. There are certain requirements for organizing and conducting

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A woman who thought she was being persecuted (1915) Several years ago, a lawyer consulted me about a case that caused him some doubts. A young woman turned to him with a request to protect him from persecution of a man who dragged her into

From the author's book

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Würzburg School

A group of researchers led by the German psychologist O. Kulpe, who studied at the beginning of the twentieth century. at the University of Würzburg (Bavaria) higher mental processes (thinking, will) through a laboratory experiment in combination with a modified method of introspection. V. sh. introduced into experimental psychology as a new object of analysis the performance of tasks of an intellectual nature. It was revealed that thinking is a mental process, the laws of which are not reducible either to the laws of logic or to the laws of the formation of associations. In contrast to the views generally accepted at that time, V. sh. came to the conclusion that consciousness contains non-sensory components (mental actions and meanings independent of sensory images). Works of psychologists V. sh. raised a number of important problems concerning the qualitative differences between thinking and other cognitive processes, revealed the limitations of the associative concept, its inability to explain the selectivity and direction of acts of consciousness. The data obtained by V. sh. caused criticism from representatives of other schools of experimental psychology, who also used the method of introspection (W. Wundt, E. B. Titchener, G. E. Muller), which led to a crisis in the introspective direction as a whole.

KULPE Oswald (1862 SSR - 1915, Munich), German psychologist and idealist philosopher. In philosophy - a representative of critical realism. Main the theme of K.'s work is the psychological foundations of the theory of knowledge. According to K., the act of consciousness contributes to the "realization" of the object, i.e. revealing it in the experience of the subject; this act can be observed only after its completion, i.e. through retrospective reflection. For the first time in psychology, K. turned to the experimental study of higher mental. processes - thinking and will. To identify specific contents of thought were directed main the efforts of the Würzburg school, created by K.

Karl Marbe (1869-1953) - an outstanding German psychologist, one of the founders of the Würzburg School of Psychology. The main attention, in his opinion, should have been given to the development of criminal psychology, research in the field of testimonies, and interrogation. In his works, he paid much attention to taking into account the individual characteristics of the personality of witnesses, the accused, the influence of the psychological attitudes of the individual on their behavior, the development of diagnostic criteria for assessing the behavior of participants in criminal and civil proceedings instead of using group statistical estimates that were common at that time. Since that time, he has conducted a large number of psychological examinations in various criminal and civil cases. This activity of Marbe had a decisive influence on the vision of the role of an expert psychologist in criminal and civil proceedings.

Ah Narcissus (1871 - 1946) - German psychologist, representative of the Würzburg School. Known for his experiments using the method of systematic introspection, in which he showed that the emergence of certain associations is controlled by the so-called determining tendency and the thinking process is built for a specific task. He also created a methodology for the formation of artificial concepts, which was then modified by L.S. Vygotsky and L.S. Sakharov under the name of the "double stimulation" technique.

Behaviorism. J. Watson

(1878 - 1958) - American psychologist, founder of behaviorism (from the English. behavior- behavior) - one of the most common theories in Western psychology of the 20th century.

The mother was very religious, so the boy's life was full of restrictions and prohibitions. The father led a wild life and left the family when the boy was 13 years old. The son was attached to him and until the end of his life he could not forgive. John Watson grew up in South Carolina and received his master's degree from Furman University, located there. On the advice of one of his teachers, he then entered the University of Chicago. He was going to work with Jacques Loeb on the study of the brain of dogs. His doctoral dissertation from the University of Chicago in 1903 ("Animal Education: An Experimental Study of the Physical Development of the White Rat, Associated with Growth of the Nervous System") was the first modern book on rat behavior. On February 24, 1913, John Watson gave a famous lecture (manifesto) in New York - "Psychology from the point of view of a behaviorist." Watson distinguishes 4 large classes of reactions: 1) visible (express) - unlocking the door, playing the violin. 2) hidden (habitual reactions (implicit)) - thinking, which we consider an internal conversation. 3) visible hereditary reactions - instinctive and emotional reactions (sneezing, etc.) 4) hidden hereditary reactions - the system of internal secretion (physiology). From the point of view of behaviorism, psychology is a purely objective branch of natural science. Its purpose is to predict behavior and control it.

Behaviorism is a direction in the psychology of humans and animals, literally - the science of behavior. This is a direction in psychology that determined the shape of American psychology at the beginning of the 20th century. His credo was expressed by the formula according to which the subject of psychology is behavior, not consciousness. The most important categories of behaviorism are stimulus, which is understood as any impact on the body from the environment, including this, the current situation, reaction and reinforcement. However, many ideas of behaviorism are still used in certain areas of psychology and psychotherapy.

22. NEOBEHAVIORISM: E. TOLMAN, K. HULL, B. SKINNER

Separate principles of behaviorism were revised in the 1930-1940s, at the time of the birth of a new direction in modern psychology - neo-behaviorism, the most famous representatives of which were C. L. Hull (1884-1952), B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) and E. C. Tolman (1886–1959). The new current has focused its attention on the study of behavior, taking into account the cognitive and motivational processes that mediate the relationship between response and stimulus.

Tolman Edward Chase (1886-1959) - American psychologist, creator of "cognitive" (or "molar") neobehaviorism. In his experimental studies, Tolman introduces the concept of "intermediate variables" (goal, hypothesis, "cognitive map", etc.) to explain the behavior of animals and humans. "Target Behavior in Animals and Man" (1932). A unit of behavior was a holistic act unfolding on the basis of a motive, aimed at a specific goal and mediated by cognitive maps, which represent knowledge and expectations that are formed in experience. In his experiments, special labyrinths were used.

Hull Clark Leonard (1884-1952), American psychologist, representative of neobehaviorism. Following Tolman, he introduced "intermediate variables" into the basic scheme of "stimulus-response" behaviorism, interpreting them as factors actually inherent in the body and considering the need as the main one.

Burres Frederick Skinner (1904 - 1990)- American psychologist, inventor and writer. He promoted the ideas of the widespread use of behavior modification techniques developed in behaviorism (for example, programmed learning) to improve society and make people happy, as a form of social engineering.

23. Sigmund Freud: life and doctrine of the unconscious.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian psychiatrist and psychologist, founder of psychoanalysis. Since 1938 in the UK. Freud's father Jacob was a poor wool merchant. Recently, he married for the third time - to a girl fit for his daughter, who year after year bore him children. The firstborn was Sigmund. In October 1859, the completely impoverished Freuds set off in search of happiness in other cities. They settled first in Leipzig, then in Vienna. "Poverty and poverty, poverty and extreme squalor," Freud recalled his childhood. Subsequently, as befits a poor Jewish youth, he became interested in politics and Marxism. As a result, grimacing with disgust, he went to the medical - a typical field for a young man of his nationality at that time. After graduating from the medical faculty, Freud rushed to the Institute of Physiology, where he worked from 1876 to 1882. He received various scholarships and enthusiastically studied the genitals of eels and other similar creatures. In 1884, Freud was fed up with eels, fish, and crustaceans, and went to the laboratory of clinical psychiatry professor Meinert to study the brains of human fetuses, children, kittens, and puppies. Once, on vacation, he saw a 21-year-old, fragile, pale, short girl of very refined manners - Martha Verneuil. Freud's courtship was peculiar. In 1882, Freud entered the main hospital of Vienna as a student and received an assistant post there a year later. Freud brought to Vienna from Merck a then little-known alkaloid - cocaine - and hoped to be the first to discover its properties. However, the discovery is made by his friends Koenigsten and Koller: Freud went to rest with his fiancee, entrusting them with starting the research, and by his arrival they manage not only to start, but also to finish it. "I'm not mad at my fiancee for missing out on a happy opportunity." However, in his autobiography much later he writes: "Because of my engagement, I did not become famous in those young years." The next time Freud missed his chance in Paris was when he went to study with Dr. Charcot, the same one who invented the contrast shower. In Paris, Freud sniffed cocaine, roamed the streets, drank absinthe, resented the appearance of Parisians (ugly, bow-legged, long-nosed), writing a global work at night. The only thing Freud managed to get from Charcot was his works for translation into German. He translated several thick books on hypnosis, which he never managed to master. And Freud wanted money. The only way out is private practice. He works hard, writes books and articles, avoids idleness, smokes 20 cigars a day (this helps him concentrate). The turn to real fame and big money took place on March 5, 1902, when Emperor François-Joseph I signed an official decree conferring the title of assistant professor to Sigmund Freud. However, the money and fame received at such a price is overshadowed by a serious illness: in April 1923, he was operated on for oral cancer. He has difficulty eating and speaking. The advent of fascism darkens his life even more. In Berlin, his books are publicly burned, his beloved daughter Anna, who followed in his footsteps and headed the World Psychoanalytic Society, was captured by the Gestapo. Freud's family flees to London. By then, Freud's health had become hopeless. And he determined his end himself: on September 23, 1939, Freud's attending physician, at his request, injected him with a lethal dose of morphine.

The Unconscious in Freud's Works

The experimental development of the concept of the unconscious was first carried out by Sigmund Freud, who showed that many actions in the implementation of which a person is not aware of are meaningless in nature and cannot be explained through the action of drives. He considered how this or that motivation manifests itself in dreams, neurotic symptoms and creativity. It is known that the main regulator of human behavior is the subject's drives and desires. As an attending physician, he was faced with the fact that these unconscious experiences and motives can seriously burden life and even become the cause of neuropsychiatric diseases. This led him to seek means to rid his analysands of conflicts between what their consciousness says and hidden, blind, unconscious urges. Thus was born the Freudian method of healing the soul, called psychoanalysis.


Similar information.


Würzburg School

At the beginning of the 20th century, dozens of experimental psychology laboratories operated at various universities around the world. There were over forty in the United States alone. Their topics were different: the analysis of sensations, psychophysics, psychometry, associative experiment. The work was carried out with great zeal, but essentially new facts and ideas were not born.

W. James drew attention to the fact that the results of a huge number of experiments do not correspond to the efforts invested. But against this monotonous background, several publications in the journal "Archive of General Psychology" flashed, which, as it turned out later, influenced the progress of science to no less extent than the tomes of Wundt and Titchener. These publications came from a group of young experimenters who were trained by Professor Oswald Külpe (1862-1915) in Würzburg (Bavaria). The professor, a native of Latvia (which was part of Russia), was a gentle, kindly, sociable person with broad humanitarian interests. After studying with Wundt, he became his assistant.

Külpe's fame was brought by the Outline of Psychology (1883), which expounded ideas close to Wundt's. But soon he, heading the laboratory in Würzburg, spoke out against his teacher. The experiments carried out in this laboratory by several young people turned out to be the most significant event in the experimental study of the human psyche for the first decade of the 20th century.

At first, there seemed to be nothing remarkable in the set of experimental schemes of the Würzburg laboratory. Sensitivity thresholds were determined, the reaction time was measured, and the associative experiment, which became widespread after Galton and Ebbinghaus, was carried out.

It all started with a small, at first glance, change in the instruction to the subject (the experimenters themselves usually acted as subjects alternately). He was required not only, for example, to say which of the alternately weighed objects is heavier (in psychophysiological experiments), or to respond to one word with another (in an associative experiment), but also to report exactly what processes were going on in his mind before he passed judgment on the weight of an object, or before he spoke the required word. Why has this type of problem not been posed before? Because the direction of the research search was different. In psychophysics, for example, it was required to define "a barely perceptible difference" between sensations. The subject's report was considered as information about the simplest element of consciousness. In the associative experiment, it was necessary to find out what image the word evokes or how many times the stimuli should be repeated in order to consolidate the connection between them, etc. In all cases, the experimenter was interested in only one thing - mental images (at least in the form of the most elementary qualities of sensations), i.e. the effects of the actions of the subject, and not these actions themselves (mental acts). The effects, in turn, were considered to reflect the structure of the intrapsychic sphere. It is not surprising that with such an orientation of research, the ideas of structuralism about the "atomistic" structure of consciousness seemed to have passed rigorous experimental verification.

In search of new determinants, the Würzburgers went beyond the then accepted experimental model (which guided work in psychophysics, psychometry, and associative experiments). This model limited the experience to two variables: the stimulus acting on the subject and his response. Now another special variable has been introduced: the state in which the subject is before the perception of the stimulus.

Various variants of the experiments showed that during the preparatory period, when the subject receives instructions, he has a set - a focus on solving the problem. Before the perception of a stimulus (for example, a word that needs to be answered by others), this setting regulates the course of the process, but is not realized. As for the function of sensory images in this process, if they arise, they do not have any significant significance for solving the problem.

One of the important achievements of the Würzburg school is that the study of thinking began to take on psychological contours. Previously, it was believed that the laws of thought are the laws of logic that are carried out in the individual consciousness according to the rules for the formation of associations. Since the associative principle is universal, the specifically psychological side of thinking did not differ at all. Now it became obvious that this side has its own properties and patterns, different from both logical and associative ones.

The special structure of the thinking process was explained by the fact that associations in this case obeyed determinative tendencies, the source of which was the task accepted by the subjects.

The Würzburg school introduced new variables into psychological thinking: the attitude (motivational variable) that arises when accepting a task; the task (goal) from which the determining tendencies proceed; the process as a succession of search operations, sometimes acquiring affective intensity; non-sensory components in the composition of consciousness (mental, not sensory images).

This scheme opposed the traditional one, according to which the external stimulus serves as the determinant of the process, and the process itself is the "weaving" of associative networks, the knots of which are sensory images (primary - sensations, secondary - representations).

The most significant point among the Wurzburgers, we believe, was the development of the category of mental action as an act that has its own determination (motive and goal), operational-affective dynamics and composition. They introduced this category "from above", starting from the highest forms of intellectual behavior. But in parallel, there was a process of introducing this category "from below", at the level of studying the elementary adaptive behavior of living beings. And here the Darwinian revolution led to a new interpretation of the intellect, for which the determinant is the problem, and not the irritant itself (cf. the concept put forward by the Würzburgers about the task - the goal - and the determining tendencies created by the goal). This problem arises only when the organism has a need (cf. the Würzburgers' concept of a set). As for the question of whether thinking is possible without images, it was important not so much in a positive way, but in terms of destroying the picture of consciousness that structuralism offered.

We deliberately, speaking of the Wurzburgers, did not mention them by name, as we tried to describe the school as a whole. Now it is time to give their names - after all, each belonged to a certain stroke in the overall scheme.

Narcissus Ach (1871-1946) implemented in the experiment Külpe's assumption that the subject is "pre-arranged" to perform the task. Such "presetting" he designated by the term "determining tendency", or "setting of consciousness". The last term sounded paradoxical, since it followed from the experiments that this tendency (or attitude) was not recognized. Ah soon introduced another term into the school's lexicon - "consciousness" (BewoBtsein) to designate a special (non-sensory) content of consciousness. The main work of Ach in the Würzburg period "On volitional activity and thinking" (1905).

Karl Buhler (1879-1963) worked in Würzburg 1907-1909. He introduced a new orientation into the experimental practice of the school, which gave rise to the sharpest criticism from Wundt. The technique consisted in the fact that the subject was given a complex problem and he had, without using a chronoscope, to describe as carefully as possible what was happening in his mind in the process of solving. It has been argued in the historical literature that "Buhler, more than anyone else, has made it clear that there are data in experience that are not sensory."

Already after the departure of Külpe from Würzburg (first to Bonn, and then to Munich), the process of thinking was studied by Otto Selz (1881-1944?). He is credited with the experimental analysis of the dependence of this process on the structure of the problem being solved. Seltz introduced the notion of an "anticipatory scheme" which enriched previous data on the role of set and task. The main works of Zelts are "On the Law of the Orderly Movement of Thought" (1913), "On the Psychology of Productive Thinking and Error" (1922), and "The Law of Productive and Reproductive Spiritual Activity" (1924). Selz died in a Nazi concentration camp.

The traditions of the experimental study of thinking, created by the Würzburg school, were developed by other researchers who did not belong to it.