Psychology and William Wundt

William Wundt conceived psychology as a science that could be experimented. His work majored on the concept of voluntarism as a way of coming into terms with psychological problems. Wundt’s ideas of understanding psychological problems explored mental disorders and abnormal behavior, religious beliefs, and pronouncement of the damaged parts of the brain. Through his experiments, he was able to distinguish psychology as a distinct science from other topics. He believed that analyzing consciousness as an individual’s subjective experience of the mind and the world, should inform scientific psychology (Rieber, 2001).

Titchener, who was a one student of Wundt, on the other hand, described his system as structuralism, which involves the analysis of the structure of the mind. Tichener broke down consciousness into elemental feelings and sensations. Wundt held the belief that consciousness was vital in scientific psychology, thus dependent on structuralism. He used introspection to study the functions of the mind occurring in active experience. It is however, imperative to note that Wundt’s introspection could not be used to establish higher functions of the mind. He divided the active experiences as feelings and sensations (Titchener, 1915).

The sensations according to Wundt resulted from stimulation of a sense organ. He construed that the sensations go hand in hand with the feelings. The feelings could take the form of excitement-calm, pleasantness-unpleasantness, and straining-relaxation. The feelings and sensations according to Wundt were informed by experiences and the anatomical makeup of an individual. He called the voluntary concentration to elements as apperception, and free will modification of the elements as creative synthesi...

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...eas defined the course of future adopted stands as his psychoanalytic theory improved the modern life and increased and understanding of the human psychology.

Works Cited

Descartes, R. & Donald A. C. (1993). Discourse On Method; And, Meditations On First Philosophy / René Descartes; Translated By Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co.

Porfeli, E. J. (2009). Hugo Munsterberg and the ORIGINS OF vocational Guidance. Concrete Mixers, Cengage Learning.

Rabstejnek, C. V. (2011). History and Evolution of the Unconscious before and after Sigmund Freud. Psychology, 22 (4), 524-543.

Rieber, R. W. (2001). Wilhelm Wundt in history: the making of a scientific psychology. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.

Sternberg, R. J. (1994). Encyclopedia of human intelligence. New York: Macmillan

Titchener, E. B. (1915). A beginner's psychology. New York: The Macmillan company.