Wundt, Wilhelm Max
(1832-1920) German physiologist, psychologist and philosopher, who after studying medicine at Heidelberg and Berlin and lecturing at Heidelberg, became Professor of Philosophy at Leipzig in 1875 where he founded the first psychological laboratory in 1879. Wundt’s psychological method, as exemplified in his Principles of Physiological Psychology, 1873-4, combines exact physical and philological measurement of stimulus and response along with an introspective analysis of the “internal experience” which supervenes between stimulus and response; he affirmed an exact parallelism or one-to-one correspondence between the physiological and the psychological series. Wundt’s psychology on its introspective side, classified sensations with respect to modality, intensity, duration, extension, etc.; and feelings as(a) pleasant or unpleisant, (b) tense or relaxed, (c) excited or depressed. He advanced but later abandoned on introspective grounds the feeling of innervation (discharge of nervous energy in initiating muscular movement). Among psychologists influenced by Wundt are Cattell, Stanley Hall and Titchener. –L.W.
Other worksLogik. 1880-3; Ethik, 1886; Vlkerpsychologie, 10 vol. (3d ed. 1910-20).