British Journal of Social Psychology (1983), 22,289-301 Printed in Great Britain 289

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and the origins of psychology as an experimental

and social science
Robert M. Farr

Some of the inadequacies and inaccuracies in the historical accounts of Wundts life and work
which are currently available in English are identified and discussed. The reasons which led Wundt
to separate his social from his experimental psychology are examined in some detail and the nature
and significance of his Volkerpsychologie (1900-1920) is briefly reviewed. Attention is drawn to
Wundts influence on the development of social sciences other than psychology with special
reference being made to his influence on Durkheim and to the nature of the relationship between
his Viilkerpsychologie and the social psychology of G. H. Mead.

As Jaspers (this issue) points out, it is neither possible nor desirable to isolate the history
of social psychology from the history of psychology in general or from that of other social
sciences. Wundt is an interesting test case of the truth of this assertion. It is not possible,
for example, to appreciate the significance of his social psychology without, at the same
time, understanding something of the nature of its relation to the experimental science
which he had earlier helped to inaugurate at Leipzig in 1879. Equally, a knowledge of his
social psychology, in its turn, sheds valuable new light on the nature of his laboratory
science. I set out, below, some of the reasons which led Wundt to separate his social,
from his experimental, psychology. Nor is it possible even to begin to appreciate Wundts
influence on the development of social sciences other than psychology without, at least, a
rudimentary knowledge of his Viilkerpsychologie (VPs for short) which he published
between 1900 and 1920. Yet this work of Wundts has been peculiarly neglected. Few
historians of psychology and, for that matter, even fewer social psychologists, now refer
to it. The reasons for this neglect are probably complex. The article in this issue by
Danziger on the rise and fall of interest in VPs helps to set this important work in its
proper historical and cultural context. Markovas article on German Expressivism also
provides useful, though more general, information concerning the cultural context in
which Wundt developed his ideas. Especially relevant to an understanding of Wundts
VPs is Markovas treatment of language as an inherently social phenomenon and her
exposition, both here and elsewhere (Markova, 1982), of the implications for social
psychology of the philosophy of Hegel. In what follows I wish to trace the influence of
Wundt on the development of social sciences other than psychology. This influence is
largely hidden from the view of those who rather narrowly confine their attention, as
Boring (1929A950, 1963) did, to the history of psychology considered as a purely
experimental science. But, first, I must turn to a brief consideration of his laboratory
science and of its relation to his social psychology.

Wundt and the origins of experimental psychology

The received tradition
Historians of psychology as a purely experimental science readily acknowledge Wundt as
the founding father of their discipline (Boring, 192911950). Wundt held a chair of
philosophy, as the German psychologists did, and wrote voluminously on philosophy; but
in his eyes as in the eyes of the world he was, first and foremost, a psychologist. When we
call him the founder of experimental psychology, we mean both that he promoted the
0144-6665/83/040289-12 $02.00/0 Q 1983 The British Psychological Society
290 Robert M. F o r
idea of psychology as an independent science and that he is the senior among
psychologists (Boring, 1950, p. 316). The frontispiece to both the first and second
editions of Borings classic A History of Experimental Psychoiogy is a reproduction of a
bronze plaque of Wundt which Dr Pfeifer made in 1905 to mark the golden jubilee of
Wundts doctorate.
The year 1879 is the date most frequently cited to mark the beginnings of psychology as
an experimental science. This was the year in which Wundt founded his Psychologische
Institut at Leipzig. The new science was a hybrid discipline . . . as a methodical
observational study (psychology) began with the application of methods, mainly
experimental, derived largely from physiology to problems derived largely from
philosophy (ONeil, 1982, p. 2). Miller, in an account which must now be suspect for
reasons shortly to be identified, saw, in the origins of psychology, a coming together of
German sensory physiology and British mental philosophy. The Germans knew how the
receptors worked; the British knew why they were important. Given the positivistic spirit
of the times it was inevitable that the two lines of thought should converge. When this
happened, psychology became an experimental science (Miller, 1966, p. 29). Here, then
was the clean break between psychologys long past as a specialism within philosophy and
the new beginnings of its short history as an experimental science. The applications of the
experimental method to the problem of mind is the great outstanding event in the history
of the study of the mind, an event to which no other is comparable (Boring).
In 1873-74 Wundt published his Grundziige der physioiogischen Psychologie. This was
rapidly adopted as the textbook of the new psychology which was to develop in
Germany under Wundts influence. It was translated into English and underwent
successive revisions in the course of Wundts life with the sixth edition appearing in three
volumes between 1908 and 1911. In the preface he wrote: The work which I here present
to the public is an attempt to mark out a new domain of science. In the opinion of
G. A. Miller: It firmly established psychology as a laboratory science with its own
problems and its own experimental methods. This scientific version became known as the
new psychology in order to distinguish it from the old psychology that has been
produced in the philosophers armchair (Miller, 1966, p. 33).
With the founding of the Psychoiogische Institut in 1879 and the publication, in 1881,
of the Phiiosophische Studien the newly established science was off to a good start. The
Philosophische Studien was the official organ of the Leipzig laboratory and of the new
experimental psychology. It ceased publication in 1903. Whilst the British journal Mind,
which had been founded by Bain in 1876, carried many important articles of a
psychological nature it was never exclusively devoted, as Phiiosophische Studien was, to
the publication of experimental and theoretical studies in psychology.
The prospect of helping to establish, in their own country, a scientific psychology
attracted many students from abroad to the Leipzig laboratory. It was quite common
practice, in the latter half of the 19th century, for American scholars to spend a period of
study abroad in Europe before settling down to a career in teaching and research at one
of the many new universities which were then being established in America. This flow of
scholars from America to Europe was aided by the virtual absence, at that time, of
programmes of graduate studies at American universities. It was the research oriented
tradition of study (Wissenschaft), particularly in the Philosophical Faculties of German
universities, which acted as a magnet. This was the tradition which Humboldt (see the
article by Markova, in this issue) established when he founded the University of Berlin in
1809. In the humanities this was a broadly conceived programme of studies which was
rooted in the study of language and culture. This tradition of research in the humanities
made the appearance of new disciplines, such as the emergence of experimental
 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and the origins of psychology 291
psychology as a specialism within philosophy, much more likely than in university systems
lacking such a research tradition.
Boring published a list of those pioneers of experimental psychology in America who
went to Leipzig and derived their inspiration from Wundt: America was close behind
Germany in adopting the new psychology, and it also took its cue from Wundt. Stanley
Hall visited Leipzig in the first year of Wundts new laboratory and founded in America
(six years after Wundt began the Philosophische Studien) the American Journal of
Psychology, thus the second journal of experimental psychology in history. The proportion
of Wundts students from America was very large. Cattell was his first assistant. The
following list, arranged chronologically is, I think, complete for Wundts American
students before 1900: G. S. Hall (Clark), J. McK. Cattell (Columbia), H. K. Wolfe
(Nebraska), E. A. Pace (Catholic University), E. W. Scripture (Yale), F. Angel1 (Stanford),
E. B. Titchener (Cornell), L. Witmer (Pennsylvania), H. C. Warren (Princeton), H. Gale
(Minnesota), G. T. N. Patrick (Iowa), G. M. Stratton (California), C. H. Judd (Chicago),
G . A. Tawney (Beloit) (Boring, 1950, p. 347).
It is doubtful if many of the American and British scholars who flocked to Leipzig to
acquaint themselves with the new psychology were sensitive to the wider cultural and
philosophical aspects of the Wissenschaft tradition. They came away impressed by the
brass instruments of German experimental research in psychology. This concern with
instrumentation was important in the establishment of new laboratories on the Leipzig
model in America and Britain. The new experimental science spread more rapidly in
America than it did in Britain.
J. McKeen Cattell who, in 1883, appointed himself as Wundts first laboratory
assistant, obtained his doctorate at Leipzig and became the first professor of psychology
at the University of Pennsylvania (1888-1891) where he established a psychological
laboratory. He soon moved to Columbia (1891-1917) where, again, one of his first acts
was to establish another laboratory. The journal which he kept during his student days
in Germany and England (1880-1886), together with the letters he wrote home to his
parents, have recently been edited and published by Sokal(l981). These papers shed
valuable new light on the day-to-day activities of the Leipzig laboratory. They also reveal
Cattells own concern with improving some of the instrumentation which he found in the
Leipzig laboratory. He made several modifications to the gravity chronometer which he
used in his reaction-time experiments.
The British response to the new experimental science was altogether a much more
cautious one (see Hearnshaw, 1964). In 1877 James Ward had proposed that a laboratory
should be established in Cambridge to study psychophysics. His proposal was indignantly
rejected by the Senate on the grounds that it would insult religion by putting the human
soul in a pair of scales. This attitude, and others deriving from it, took P long time to
die. It was not until 1897 (i.e. some 18 years after the Leipzig laboratory had been
founded) that the first psychological laboratories in Britain were established-at
University College London and at the University of Cambridge. W. H. R. Rivers was in
charge of both laboratories. The key role of apparatus in the establishment of a
laboratory is evident in the case of the laboratory at University College London. The
Committee have secured a considerable part of the apparatus collected by Professor Hugo
Miinsterberg of Freiberg, who is about to migrate permanently to Harvard College . . .
(Notice appearing in the July, 1897 issue of Mind).
It is interesting to note that Spearman, who was appointed to a Readership at University
College of London in 1907 and who shortly thereafter became Professor there, had obtained
his doctorate at Leipzig under Wundt. The Department at University College London,
under Spearmans direction, became internationally famous for its contributions to the
292 Robert M. Farr
study of individual differences. The influence of Galton was, here, of key significance.
Galton had also influenced Cattell whilst the latter was at Cambridge in his
post-Leipzig, but pre-Pennsylvania, days (see Sokal, pp. 218-3 13). Cattell was later to
pioneer the development of mental tests in America. There is something of a paradox
here in that two of the early overseas graduates with doctorates in experimental
psychology from Leipzig were to pioneer the study of individual differences in America
and in Britain. Wundt, in his laboratory, had been concerned with establishing the laws of
mind in general; Cattell, in America, and Spearman, in Britain, were concerned with the
study of minds in particular.
In Britain, Cambridge (and University College London) proved to be more hospitable to
the new psychology than Oxford. Titchener, who had read philosophy at Oxford,
became a close associate of Wundts at Leipzig. He was to succeed Cattell and Kulpe as
one of Wundts research assistants at the laboratory. Titchener obtained his doctorate at
Leipzig in 1892. Boring says of him that Titchener would have liked to return then to
Oxford, but there was no place and little sympathy at Oxford for a physiological
psychologist (Boring, 1950, p. 412). He went, instead, to Cornell where he spent the rest
of his life (some 35 years). In America he was taken to represent and to stand for the
new psychology of Wundt and of the Leipzig laboratory-an experimental psychology
based on the use of introspection. Boring says of him that Titchener never became a part
of American psychology (1950, p. 413). He was, however, an important figure in the
history of American psychology because he helped to highlight the distinctive nature of
American functionalism by defining his own stance as a structuralist one.

The need for a contemporary reappraisal of Wundt

In a series of masterly and scholarly arhcles Danziger (1979, 1980a 6) has identified and
documented both the extent and the form of our contemporary misunderstanding of
Wundt. He notes that history has not been kind to Wundts vision for psychology
(Danziger, 1979, p. 205). This is because the positivism of Mach and Avenarius, to which
Wundt was so strongly opposed, ultimately won the day when experimental psychology
became accepted as a branch of natural science and history, as everyone knows, is written
by the victors (Danziger, 1979, p. 205). Danziger outlines what he terms the positivist
repudiation of Wundt. Positivism, in psychology, ultimately took the form of
behaviourism. Danziger traces the historical source of our contemporary
misunderstanding of Wundt to Titchener . . . and Titchener practically made a career out
of interpreting Wundt in his own highly idiosyncratic fashion (Danziger, 1979, p. 206).
Titchener failed to appreciate Wundts true philosophical position and, instead,
assimilated Wundt to the British tradition of associationist philosophy in which he himself
had been educated at Oxford. This was especially true in his greatly extending the range
of mental phenomena which were amenable to investigation in the laboratory by means of
introspection (Danziger, 1980~).Wundt was clearly opposed to Kulpes similarly loose use
of introspection at Wurzburg in order to investigate higher cognitive processes in the
laboratory. Titchener, thus, grossly distorted Wundts true position. These distortions
would be of little contemporary significance if it were not for the fact that Titcheners
views of the origins of experimental psychology in Germany powerfully coloured those of
his pupil, Boring. Both editions of Borings classic A History of Experimental Psychology
are dedicated to his teacher, E. B. Titchener. This account is still accepted by many as
being the definitive one.
The influence of Boring is still detectable in the historical/biographical chapters of
Millers Psychology: The Science of Mental Life (1966) from which I have quoted earlier.
His indebtedness to Boring is reflected in the books dedication. The portrait of Wundt
 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and the origins of psychology 293
which emerges, at least from the pages of the first edition, is scarcely a flattering one:
Wundts genius was the kind Thomas Edison described-one per cent inspiration and
ninety-nine per cent perspiration. One cannot help marvelling at Wundts energy and
endurance over a period of sixty years. Yet it is his first achievement-the creation of a
scientific, experimental psychology-that must command our greatest respect. His later
work is now largely forgotten. His philosophy was undistinguished, and his social
psychology came too late (Miller, 1966, p. 39)
The distortions in the Anglo-Saxon accounts of Wundts role in relation to the history
of psychology derive from an almost exclusive concentration on the development of his
career up to and including his inaguration of Philosophische Studien in 1881. The
quotation from Miller at the end of the previous paragraph is a good example of this
tendency. It is important, however, to evaluate the significance of a persons work in the
light of the goals he sets himself. As early as 1862, in the preface to his Beitrage zur
Theorie der Sonneswahrnehmung, Wundt set himself three tasks: the creation of (i) an
experimental psychology, (ii) a scientific metaphysics and (iii) a social psychology. To
focus exclusively on the first of the three tasks which he set himself shatters the coherence
of his lifes work. Danziger (1980a), for example, has clearly shown how Wundts actual
experimental practice was based on his philosophy of science. Working out his philosophy
of science was part of the second of Wundts three tasks.
Most of Wundts work in the 1880s was devoted to achieving this second objective. This
second task must have sounded like a contradiction in terms to any self-respecting
positivist-which accounts, perhaps, for why they had such little sympathy for Wundts
philosophy. It is important, however, to appreciate that Wundt was, by choice, a
professional philosopher. He saw little prospect for psychology if it was to become
independent from philosophy (see Ash, 1980, 1982). It is interesting that Ash, who comes
from a new generation of Harvard historians, should portray Wundt so very differently
from Boring. Wundts entire career from the 1880s onward could be described as an
attempt to gain a secure if limited place for experimental methods in psychology while
also demonstrating his own worthiness to belong to philosophy proper (Ash, 1980,
p. 78). His portrait of Wundt is that of a canny academic politician (1980, p. 79).
Another voice calling for a contemporary reappraisal of Wundt is Blumenthal (1975).
Blumenthal in particular became sensitive to the pioneering studies of Wundt in the
psychology of language. This is part of Wundts largely neglected work in VPs . . . the
few current Wundt-scholars (and some do exist) are in fair agreement that Wundt as
portrayed today in many texts and courses is largely fictional and often bears little
resemblance to the actual historical figure (Blumenthal, 1975, p. 1081).
Wundt drew a distinction between his experimental and his social psychology. When it
came to assigning a place among the sciences to psychology, Wundt proceeded from the
basic distinction between Natunvissenschaften and Geisteswissenschafen which was so
characteristic of German academic life. Thus he distinguished two kinds of psychology.
physiological and experimental psychology, on the one hand, and social or
ethnopsychology, on the other . . . psychology as a whole is not to be counted among the
natural sciences, although, in part, it shares the method of experimentation with the latter
(Danziger, 1979, p. 207). Part of our inheritance from Wundt is an experimental
psychology which was non-social and a social psychology which was non-experimental.
Those who were persuaded by what they observed in Leipzig that psychology could be an
experimental science were not prepared to accept the limitations which Wundt himself set
for the laboratory science he had initiated. Wundts distinction between the two forms of
psychology-experimentaVphysiological and social-finds an echo in the curriculum at
the University of Cambridge. Experimental psychology is accepted as a branch of the
294 Robert M. Farr
natural sciences whilst social psychology is treated as a separate field. Either subject can
be read separately but not both together as part of one and the same degree. Whilst
Wundt distinguished between these two forms of psychology he clearly saw them as
interrelated and not as separate. It is curious to see the Cambridge distinction re-emerge
in the history of social psychology in China (Brown, this issue)-only here the distinction
is between physiological psychology as part of natural science and social psychology as
pseudo-science.
The relationship between Wundts experimental psychology and his VBlkerpsychologie
The limitations which were inherent in Wundts laboratory science derived from his
reliance on introspection as his preferred technique for investigating mental phenomena.
He readily acknowledged that introspection was not an appropriate methodology for
investigating mans higher cognitive processes. He argued this on the grounds that the
individual human mind cannot become conscious of forces of which it is itself the
product, i.e. the processes of historical change and development. The study of the human
mind as the product of evolutionary and historical change was the subject matter of
Wundts VPs (1900-1920). This was a separate, though related, discipline to the
laboratory science which he had earlier established in 1879.
Wundt had this to say on the limitations of using introspection: It is true that the
attempt has frequently been made to investigate the complex functions of thought on the
basis of mere introspection. These attempts, however, have always been unsuccessful.
Individual consciousness is wholly incapable of giving us a history of human thought, for
it is conditioned by an earlier history concerning which it cannot of itself give us any
knowledge (Wundt, 1916, p. 3). Whilst one could study the contents of consciousness in
the laboratory by means of introspectionit was not possible to use the same technique in
order to explore either thinking or the nature of consciousness itself. VPs was concerned
with the study of language, customs, religion, myth, magic and cognate phenomena. These
were collective mental phenomena. They could not be accounted for, satisfactorily, in
terms of a psychology of individual consciousness. VPs relates to those mental products
which are created by a community of human life and are, therefore, inexplicable in terms
merely of individual consciousness, since they presuppose the reciprocal action of the
many (Wundt, 1916, p. 3). Language, for example, is not the accidental discovery of an
individual; it is the product of peoples, and, generally speaking, there are as many
different languages as there are originally distinct peoples. The same is true of the
beginning of art, of mythology, and of customs (1916, p. 2). Wundts point is that
language and religion were in origin the creation of a folk community even though, by his
day, most of them had become universal having long since transcended the boundaries of
a single people. Wundts strongly anti-reductionist stance is later echoed in Durkheims
insistence, in his classic study of suicide, that social facts cannot be explained in terms of
a mere psychology of individuals. Saussures insistence that language is a social fact is
also entirely consistent with Wundts view that it cannot be explained purely in terms of
the individual.
Darwin, with his theory of evolution, had made it scientifically respectable to speculate
about the origins of man. Wundt readily accepted that challenge. The idea of evolution
was already part of Hegelian philosophy. Darwins theory of evolution had entailed a
whole new theory of time and history. Wundt believed that it might be possible to
account for the evolution of mans mind in much the same way as Darwin had earlier
accounted for the evolution of mans body, His Elemente (1912) which appeared in
English as Elements of Folk Psychology (Wundt, 1916) bore the subtitle Outlines of a
psychological history of the development of mankind. This was a one-volume synchronic
 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and the origins of psychology 295
treatment of the themes he had earlier spelled out in more detail in diachronic form in
his VPs (1900-1920). This was an ambitious and bold attempt to come up with a natural
history account of the origins of mind in man. Wundts treatment of the historicity of
mans mind in his VPs stands in quite marked contrast to the ahistoricity of his treatment
of mind in his experimental science. This is the crux of the difference between
Geisteswissenschaften and Natunuissenschaften. Contemporary echoes of that distant
debate can be detected in the controversy which Gergen (1973) sparked off with the
publication of his seminal paper on Social psychology as history.
Wundt attempted to trace the evolution of mind in man. He was keenly aware of the
importance of language in this evolution and of the close relationship between language
and thought. He sought for the origins of language in gesture and was led to speculate as
to how, in the human species, the vocal gesture may have evolved in the direction of
speech and of language. His methodology might loosely be described as comparative.
There are certain complex entities, such as nervous systems, languages or cultures, which
cannot easily be brought under experimental control. It is necessary, therefore, to accept
the varieties of species and of cultures which are available for study. Nature, fortunately,
has been prodigal in her experiments. The variety of species which were still extant was
sufficiently rich to provide Darwin with the raw materials he needed to develop his
theories. Wundt took as his raw material the varieties of human nature around the world
as these were reflected in the anthropological accounts available to him. He was not
afraid to speculate about the nature of primitive mind on the basis of an analysis of the
structure and content of language. The arguments here are broadly comparative in nature
and contrast quite sharply with the techniques of a laboratory-based experimental
psychology which are necessarily more restricted in scope.
The high-water mark of Wundts influence on the development of social psychology in
America is probably to be found in the Murchison Handbook of Social Psychology which
appeared in two volumes in 1935. This was a multidisciplinary publication with
contributions coming from distinguished biologists, botanists, anthropologists and
sociologists as well as from social psychologists. Only one of the 23 chapters was based on
the results of experimental research conducted in laboratories-this was the final chapter
by Dashiell on what, today, we would call social facilitation effects. The sections of the
Handbook and even the titles of individual chapters reflect the range and scope of
Wundts VPs. The theme which loosely integrated these highly diverse contributions was
the adoption of a comparative methodology. An appreciation of the historicity of the
human mind is clearly evident in this tradition of social psychology. The time scale is
potentially enormous as it takes in evolutionary time as well as involving the study of
preliterate societies in addition to those with a history in the more conventional sense of
that term. During the opening decades of the present century, up to the publication of the
Murchison Handbook, social, developmental and comparative psychology constituted a
contrasting set of studies to the experimental psychology of the laboratory. These areas
were broadly concerned with the study of the correlations existing in nature rather than
with the experimental reconstruction of events within the laboratory. In terms of
explanation they were concerned with how things came to be the way they are. Such
explanations are inevitably more historical than those which prevail within laboratory
research. As social psychology became more and more experimental it ceased to be
concerned with historical and cultural events. In the post-Murchison volumes of the
Handbook (Lindzey, 1954; Lindzey & Aronson, 1969/1970) the results of experimental
research feature much more prominently. These developments signalled the demise of
interest in Wundts vision of the range and scope of social psychology as reflected in his
VPS.
296 Robert M. Farr
There was one further contrast in method between Wundts laboratory science and his
social psychology. The former was rooted in the experience of the person providing the
introspective report. His VPs on the other hand, was concerned with interpreting the
products of collective experience (i.e. myths, religions, magic, etc.). The individual has
only limited access to his or her own mind. Wundts narrow identification of experimental
psychology with an analysis of the contents of conscious experience forced Freud to
characterize his theories of the unconscious as being metapsychology, i.e. as going beyond
psychology. Nor can it be surprising, in view of this, that Freud was later to reject
experimental proof of his notion of repression. It is highly probable that his rejection of
the proffered evidence was based on a mistaken assumption, on his part, that
experimental psychology was identical to that version of it which Wundt had established
at Leipzig. Wundt himself had to devise a whole new psychology (i.e. his VPs) to handle
the many interesting mental phenomena which were not amenable to exploration by
means of introspection. The contrast between the two psychologies established by Wundt
is that between the direct reporting of ones own conscious experience and the
interpretation, by others, of the products of that experience (language, culture, dreams,
myths, etc.). This is also the contrast between Wundts experimental psychology and
Freuds psychoanalysis. It is also worth noting that Jung located the objects of study of
Wundts VPs (religion, myth, magic and cognate phenomena) in the collective unconscious
of the individual rather than treating them, like Wundt, as cultural products and hence as
external to individual consciousness.
The reasons for the continued neglect of Wundts VPs are probably complex and
Danziger (this issue) has suggested a number of others. Wundt was 68 years of age when
the first of the 10 volumes was published. His contemporaries and former students may
have thought his best work lay in the past. Proponents of the new psychology were too
busy establishing psychological laboratories of their own to keep abreast of the latest
publications emerging from Leipzig. The work, anyway, was non-experimental and the
most missionary of the proponents of the new psychology failed to accept the limitations
and restrictions which Wundt had placed on the experimental science he had helped to
create. World War I isolated Wundt from his friends and former students abroad. He
continued to produce further volumes of his VPs during the War years. Whilst an English
edition of Wundts Elements of Folk Psychology appeared in London in 1916 the 10
volumes of his much longer VPs remained, until very recently, untranslated (Wundt,
1973).
Events subsequent to Wundts death, and for which he can bear no responsibility,
linked the study of folk psychology to the ideology of National Socialism in Germany.
The role of the volk in this particular political ideology may have helped to make the
task of a post-World War I1 reappraisal of Wundts VPs an uncongenial task-especially
for those best qualified to undertake i,t, i.e. German social psychologists. Psychologists
in East Germany (where the Wundt archives are meticulously preserved) readily
acknowledge Wundts percipience in appreciating, in his VPs, that the human mind is a
product of social, historical, economic and cultural forces but they now feel that Marxs
analysis was a more radical and scientific one.
The influence of Wundt on the development of social sciences other than psychology
I have been compiling a short list of distinguished social scientists who were strongly
influenced by Wundt. The reader might like to compare this rather short list with the
longer one of the pioneers of experimental psychology in America compiled by Boring
which was reproduced above. I have included persons who were at Leipzig (like
Malinowski, who became the founder of British social anthropology; or de Saussure, the
 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and the origins of psychology 291
founder of modern linguistics) or enrolled students of Wundts at Leipzig (e.g. G. H.
Mead, the Chicago pragmatist philosopher who created the symbolic interactionist
tradition of social psychology within American sociology, or W. H,Thomas, the
distinguished Chicago sociologist who equated social psychology with the study of social
attitudes). I also include persons who visited Wundt at Leipzig (e.g. Emile Durkheim, one
of the founding fathers of sociology) or persons who read and reacted to Wundts VPs
(e.g. Boas, who created an important school of cultural anthropology in America; or
Freud, who wrote Totem and Taboo as a counter to Wundts account of the totemic age
in the evolution of man). I would claim that this short, and still incomplete, list is an
impressive one. Yet, there is little or no trace to be found of this influence of Wundt in the
official histories of psychology as a discipline. Thus, if Wundts influence as a social
psychologist is to be traced it needs to be studied in social and human sciences
which are now independent of psychology, e.g. psychoanalysis; American and French
sociology; British and American social and cultural anthropology; modern linguistics, etc.
There are several autonomous traditions of social psychology which can be traced
back, historically, to the influence of Wundt but which are now independent of the
tradition of experimental social psychology which has developed in Britain and America
since the 1940s. These include: (i) the symbolic interactiomst tradition of social
psychology within American sociology which derived from Mead at Chicago, (ii)
contemporary French research on social representations which derives part of its
inspiration from Durkheim, and (iii) the, now defunct, tradition of comparative
psychology reflected in the organization of Murchisons first Handbook of Social
Psychology (1935) and briefly discussed above. What these forms of social psychology
have in common is that they are sociological rather than psychological traditions of
social psychology, i.e. they derive from Wundts VPs rather than from his laboratory
science. They are thus genuinely social forms of social psychology. They reflect a
difference in level beyond that of a mere psychology of the individual. This was the
reason that led Wundt, originally, to separate his social, from his experimental, science.
Wundts influence on Durkheim
Durkheim visited a number of German universities, including Leipzig, in 1885-1886 and
was impressed by what he saw. It was, however, in the work of Wilhelm Wundt that he
found the greatest evidence of advance in the sociological treatment of morality. He also
greatly admired Wundts experimental work in psychology, with its concentration on
precise and restricted problems and its avoidance of vague generalisations and
metaphysical possibilities. But it was Wundts sociological work that excited, and
influenced, him the most. Wundt had a sense of the independent reality of social causes
and the unimportance in explanations of individual calculation and will, while at the same
time holding that collective phenomena do not exist outside individual minds .. .* (Lukes,
1973, pp. 90-91). There were other aspects of Wundts work which impressed Durkheim
and still others of which he was critical (for a fuller account see Lukes, chapter 4).
Durkheim created, during his Bordeaux period (1887-1902), a c8terie of scholars around
him pursuing common research themes and also founded the famous Annke Sociologique
as the journal for publishing the results of their studies. Lukes notes, once again, the
influence of Wundt . . . here the German influence must have been strong, particularly
that of Wundt, whose psychological laboratory in Leipzig had impressed him (Lukes,
1973, p. 293). Further evidence of Wundts influence on Durkheim can be obtained in
Giddens little study of Durkheim in the Fontana Modern Masters series (1978).
Durkheims quite sharp distinction between collective and individual representations
(Durkheim, 1898) precisely mirrored the difference in subject matter between Wundts
298 Robert M. Farr
VPs and his experimental psychology. Durkheim, however, considered collective
representations to be the proper objects of study for a new branch of sociology, while he
was quite content to leave the study of individual representations to the psychologist. He
also insisted that social facts could not be explained in terms of mere psychology. The
psychology to which he was so strongly opposed was plainly the psychology of the
individual. His later insistence that sociology cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms
of, psychology is very much in resonance with Wundts assertion that the collective
mental phenomena which were the objects of study in his VPs cannot be explained in
terms of the individual consciousness which was the basis of his new laboratory science.
In support of his position, Durkheim (1898) cited the arguments which William James
used to establish the independence of psychology from physiology. Durkheim claimed a
similar independence of sociology from psychology.
Marcel Mauss, Durkheims cousin, readily acknowledges Wundts influence on their
own approach to the study of rhythm and the dance. The influence he cites is part of
Wundts VPs Wundt had already sensed its (i.e. rhythms) importance and its
simultaneously physiological, psychological and sociological nature when, at the beginning
.
of his Sprache . . he linked the study of rhythm to collective psychology and not to
psychology simply (Mauss, 1979, p. 22).
The contemporary tradition of research on social representations in French social
psychology started in the mid-1950s with Moscovicis pioneering study of psychoanalysis
(Moscovici, 1961/1976). In this volume Moscovici looks back to Durkheim and what he
calls his neglected or forgotten concept of collective representation. Moscovici and his
colleagues avoid the sterility of the collective versus individual impasse which
characterized the Durkheim/Tarde debate of 1903/04 by always referring to social rather
than to collective representations. Jaspars & Fraser (1984) have pointed out that Thomas
and Znaniecki, in their classic study of The Polish Peasant in Europe andAmerica, treat social
attitudes as being equivalent to collective representations. Thomas, it is worth noting, had
been an enrolled student of Wundts at Leipzig in 1907/1908 as well as being a colleague
of Meads at Chicago. Jaspars & Fraser identify G. W. Allport (in his classic chapter on
attitudes for the 1935 Murchison Handbook) as being responsible for the downgrading of
social attitudes from being collective representations to being merely individual
representations.
The influence of Wundt on G. H. Mead
In the first two volumes of his VPs, in which he deals with the development of human
speech, Wundt (1904) extends and develops some of the ideas first expounded by Darwin
in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Darwin described the
gestures characteristically associated with particular emotions. Wundt picked out and
highlighted in the work of Darwin the notion of the human gesture. Mead, who was an
enrolled student of Wundts in the winter semester of 1888/1889* took Wundts concept
of the gesture as the starting point for the development of his social psychology (Mead,

*I was able to establish this for myself whilst attending the XXIInd. International Congress of
Psychology at Leipzig in 1980. I am grateful to Mr J. Good, of the University of Durham, for
locating for me the registration cards of G. H. Mead and W. I. Thomas for attendance at Wundts
lectures. This evidence appears to contradict, or at least to clarify, the statement by D. L. Miller in
his biographical notes on G. H. Mead Little has been recorded about Meads study in Leipzig. It
was there that Wilheim Wundt established the first laboratory in physiological psychology. Mead
studied Wundts written works carefully and referred to them at length in his course on social
psychology, but Mead has not mentioned knowing Wundt personally or visiting his laboratory . . .
(D.L. Miller, 1973, p. xvi). Miller had been a graduate student of Meads in philosophy at Chicago.
 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and the origins of psychology 299
1934). Whilst Wundt placed Darwins concept of gesture in a social context (Wundt,
1973) Mead was much more explicit about the social nature and evolution of gestures. He
was interested, for example, in the conversation of gestures involved in a dog or a cat
fight. Darwin had been interested in changes in the physiology and behaviour of the
individual animal in such fights, not in the behavioural interaction between animals. Mead
believed that Darwins volume on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
(1872) was the single most important text in the psychology of his day and he believed it
contained the clue to an understanding of the nature of language. Elsewhere (Farr, 1980) I
have attempted to trace the influence of Darwin on the development of the social
psychologies of Wundt and of Mead.
Mead spent some 40 years of his life as a professional philosopher trying to interrelate
what Wundt had chosen to treat separately: the consciousness of the individual and the
reality of society. Dewey had this to say of his late friend at the memorial service for
Mead held in Chicago in 1931:
In my earliest days of contact with him, as he returned from his studies in Berlin forty years
ago, his mind was full of the problem which had always occupied him, the problem of
individual mind and consciousness in relation to the world and society (cited in Miller, 1973,
p. xx).

For Mead, as for Wundt, language was the key to his social psychology. Mead read and
reviewed the various volumes of Wundts VPs as they were published (Mead, 1904, 1906).
On the basis of a close reading of Darwin and of Wundts VPs Mead was able to
demonstrate how mind emerges in the course of interacting socially with others and how
it is that mans awareness of himself is grounded in social experience. Mead thus
developed Wundts VPs much further and demonstrated the inherently social nature of
mans consciousness. As a behaviourist Mead rejected the introspectionism which was the
basis of Wundts laboratory science. The social behaviourism, on the basis of which he did
so (and which he developed as an explicit critique of Watsonian behaviourism)* was
derived from a close reading of Wundts VPs. Wundt had been unable to grasp the
inherently social nature of mans consciousness and so was forced to separate his social
from his experimental psychology. Wundt deserves credit for seeing that they were
different forms of psychology and so treating them separately-he is now open to
criticism for failing to see how they might be related. It took Mead some 40 years to see
just how this might be achieved.
The origin of the symbolic interactionist tradition of social psychology is to be found in
the series of lectures on social psychology which Mead started to give at Chicago around
1900 in the Department of Philosophy. A transcript of his 1927 course was edited by
C. W. Morris and published posthumously under the title: Mind, Self and Society: From
the standpoint of a social behaviourist (Mead, 1934). Albion Small, the foundation
professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, was sufficiently impressed by this
course of lectures to make them compulsory for his graduate students in sociology. This is
how Meads social psychology came to be preserved within American sociology. When
Mead died in 1931 Blumer took over the course. Unlike Mead, Blumer was a sociologist
and not a philosopher. It was Blumer, not Mead, who coined the term Symbolic

*Watson had been a junior colleague of Meads at Chicago and Mead was familiar with the details
of Watsons animal experimentation. In his autobiography Watson had this to say of Mead: I took
courses and seminars with Mead. I didnt understand him in the classroom, but for years Mead
took a great interest in my animal experimentation, and many a Sunday he and I spent in the
laboratory watching my rats and monkeys. On these comradely exhibitions and at his home I
understood him. A kinder, finer man I never met Watson (1936, p. 274).
300 Robert M.Farr
Interactionism to describe this tradition of social psychology. Meads critique of
Watsonian behaviourism in the course of the lectures might have misled the sociologists
into believing he was anti-positivist. This is certainly the tenor of the symbolic
interactionist tradition of social psychology. Mead, if he was anything, was a behaviourist
but a much more subtle one than either Watson or Skinner. Meads criticism of Watson
was that he had not gone far enough, i.e. he had not come up with a natural history
account of the origins of mind and self-awareness in man as a species. Mead was able to
do this starting from some of the ideas Wundt was beginning to develop in his VPs.

Postcript
I am unable, for reasons of space, to detail, here, the influence of Wundt on the
development of anthropology and of linguistics. The interested reader might make a start
with Kuper (1978) for a reference to his influence on Malinowski; Lesser (1968) for a
reference to his influence on Boas and to Blumenthal (1973) for a reference to the
distinguished linguists, who included de Saussure and Bloomfield, who attended Wundts
lectures on language.

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This work was prepared while the author was in the Department of Psychology, University of
Glasgow. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Robert M. Farr, Department of Social
Psychology, The London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London
WC2A 2AE, UK.