In Part I of the dissertation we reconstruct the establishment stage of German experimental psychology beginning with the foundation of the first laboratory in 1879 in Leipzig. The overall function of Part I is to provide comprehensible contextual information to the case study tackled in the succeeding chapters.
Therein we delineate the interdisciplinary controversy over the nature of psychology taking place on the socio-academic, theoretical and experimental level, and point to the seminal function of the experiment in the constitution of the psychological discipline. In Chapter 1 we discuss the roots of experimental psychology and its struggle for self-positioning between philosophy and the sciences. In Chapter 2 we outline the evolvement of the methodological and conceptual framework of psychology during its struggle for emancipation. Chapter 3 is mainly devoted to the socio-academic set-up of the Berlin Psychological Institute between 1922 and 1933. Therein I present various facets of Gestalt psychology as both a doctrine and an academic network, including its methodological and conceptual agenda.
The overall ambition of Part II is to reconstruct and understand the emergence of an innovative the-oretical system. To this end we look at the emergence of Lewin’s psychology of human conduct first focussing on its state of development by 1926. Thereafter we trace the interdisciplinary roots of Lewin’s theory identifying individual conceptual patterns and their functions within the system. In Chapter 4 we situate Lewin’s early scholarly ambitions within the sketched framework. In Chapter 5 we elaborate key aspects of his philosophical agenda to further demonstrate how these were applied in his research program in experimental psychology. In Chapter 6 I present research conducted in experimental psy-chology of will in the first three decades of the 20th century in the German-speaking Europe. Therein I show how this earlier research nourished the emergence of Kurt Lewin’s basic conceptual system for a psychology of human conduct. Chapter 7 is focused on psychological concepts inspired by science.
We trace back Lewin’s concepts to their physiological and physical prototypes and discuss the function of the “quasi-physical” analogies in Lewin’s field theory. Eventually, we point out the links between field theory and other Gestalt theoretical work.
In Part III of the dissertation I investigate Lewin’s Berlin Experimental Program (BEP) and place this into the broader theoretical and socio-historical context. This Part specifically focuses on the interplay of the experiment and theory. To that end, Chapter 8 is concerned specifically with the style and function of Gestalt experiments. First, we delineate the micro-culture at the Gestalt-psychological institutes of the 1920s and briefly outline the different experimental types and practices encountered there. Thereafter we dedicate attention to the particularity of the student network that developed around Lewin in Berlin and identify specific features of the BEP. The chapter concludes by presenting examples of selected experiments. In Chapter 9 we map the process of concept formation over the whole duration of the BEP.
In a “roadmap” we pin down changes of the experimental style that occurred during the course of the program, as well as elaborate its triggers. Additionally, we discuss how the structure of Lewin’s network conditioned the outcome of this research program. In Chapter 10 we discuss another major extension of Lewin’s field theory introduction of topological concepts inspired by mathematics. Moreover, the Chapter outlines the analytical challenges of Lewin’s psychology as a tool for visualizing the mental situation and the psychic dynamics in or across individuals. We specify the decisive methodological steps that bridged Lewin’s psychology of the individual and his social psychology showing that the transition relied on the research accomplished in Berlin.
Part IV, Epilogue and Conclusions of the present dissertation, consists of two chapters. Chapter 11 is a historical outlook in which I briefly outline the export of Gestalt psychology to North America. After discussing local research trends and general challenges faced by the Gestalt psychologists in the new academic environment, I restrict the narrative to the progression of Lewin’s career in the United States.
The outlook shows how our protagonist was eventually able to develop and institutionalize social psy-chology as a new branch of the psychological discipline by integrating German experience and upcoming American impulses. The final Chapter deals with three topics. First, I summarize the key achievements
of Lewin’s German work against the background of his time. Second, I elaborate on the so-called “epis-temic cycle”, which represents an attempt to refrain from the studied case and build a more universal model of the process of formation and transformation of knowledge. Ultimately, I elucidate Lewin’s legacy by drawing his pathway in the context of the history of psychology. Different receptions and perceptions of Lewin’s life’s achievements are outlined here.
Part I
Experimental psychology between two poles
1 Networks of the pioneers of experimental psychology (1879–
1910)
Large parts of this dissertation deal with the way in which psychology combined and integrated inter-disciplinary elements and negotiated its position in-between humanities and science. This negotiation, however, has never been as intense as in the few decades of the emergence and establishment of the discipline. This introductory chapter concentrates its attention at the period between 1879 and 1910, in which the first experimental laboratories were established. In this period philosophy and physiology had major influence upon the formation of the essential disciplinary features.
This chapter narrates the history of the early institutionalization of German psychology, focussing on the psychological laboratories and the styles of research established by five pioneers of psychology, who from today’s perspective deserve the credit for the decisive contribution to the institutionalization of experimental psychology in Germany. These are Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), Carl Stumpf (1848–
1936), Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), Georg Elias Müller (1850–1934) and Oswald Külpe (1862–
1915). All of these leading advocates of the early experimental psychology held chairs in philosophy departments, while together they introduced a “hybrid” academic role of a philosopher and experimental scientist, or “philosopher-psychologist”.20
1.1 Psychology as a Geisteswissenschaft : Roots of experimental psychology
From 1818 to 1914, there were 22 universities in the German states (excluding Austria). The four typical faculties at each university were those of theology (catholic and/or protestant), law, medicine, and philosophy (arts and sciences). In this system the faculty of philosophy had been conceived as the heart of a philosophically and philologically oriented system of higher education. Embodying the theoretical unity of knowledge, it was to devote itself to pure scholarship and to general education (Bildung), defined as the full development of the student mind, spirit, and character. In practice, since 1810 the faculty of philosophy also carried out the more specific task of preparing teachers for the classical secondary schools. In a way, it thus was a professional faculty in its own right. During the early decades of the 19th century, the faculty of philosophy transcended its initial philological emphasis and teacher-preparatory function. It was eventually to emerge as the most general of the German faculties and by far the largest as well.21
Yet, in the course of the 19th century, philosophy’s authority over other disciplines increasingly weak-ened. This was replaced by a variety of “communication communities” (Kommunikationsgemeinschaf-ten) that were centered around separate systems of knowledge and wrapped into increasingly au-tonomous institutional structures, i.e. academic disciplines.22Methodological progress in physics, chem-istry and physiology not only yield new insights but also brought about a new level of legitimation to exact disciplines while academic philosophy (in particular natural philosophy) was increasingly forced into a marginal position.23 As the Neo-Kantian Wilhelm Windelband pointed out:
20The two observations were made my Kusch, see [Kusch, 1995a, chap. 6].
21Cf. [Ringer, 1979, 35]. For an overview discussion of the German academic landscape in the 19th and the early 20th century, including academic politics and the discourses amongst academics, see [Vom Bruch, 2006].
22For an elaborate survey of the emergence of the academic disciplines in the German culture between 1740 and 1890 see [Stichweh, 1984].
23Cf. [Métraux, 1983, 21].
“Der Dualismus der kantischen Weltanschauung spiegelt sich in der Wissenschaft des 19.
Jahrhunderts durch die eigentümliche Spannung des Verhältnisses von Naturwissenschaft und Geisteswissenschaft. Keiner früheren Zeit ist dieser Gegensatz, der auch die großen Systeme des Idealismus beherrschte, in sachlicher und methodischer Bedeutung so geläufig gewesen wie der unsrigen, und diesem Umstände sind eine Anzahl neuer verheißungsvoller Verschiebungen entsprungen” [Windelband et al., 1935, 548].
In the late 19th century, this tension between Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft came to a head on the grounds of psychology, which has until then been a fully integrated domain at service of philosophy.24 In this function it enjoyed major acceptance as a doctrine of reasoning useful to make conclusions about the materiality and spirituality of the world and about the nature of the soul. In his 1908 historical retrospective the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus characterized it as a doctrine of pure meaning and genuine logic.
“Früher stand sie [= die Psychologie] durchweg im Dienste anderer Interessen. Die Kenntnis des Seelenlebens war nicht Selbstzweck, sondern nützliche oder notwendige Vorbereitung, um andere und für höher geltende Zwecke zu erreichen. Für die meisten war sie ein Zweig oder eine Dienerin der Philosophie. Man beschäftigt sich mit ihr, um vor allen Dingen her-auszubringen, wie unsere Erkenntnisse zustande kommen oder wie die Vorstellungen von Dingen der Außenwelt sich bilden, und dies dann wieder, um sogleich metaphysische und ethische Rückschlüsse machen zu können, auf Geistigkeit oder Materialität der Welt, auf das Wesen der Seele, eine vernünftige Lebensführung u. a., oder auch wohl, um über alle die-se Dinge willkommene Bestätigungen anderswoher stammender und bereits feststehender Meinungen zu erhalten. Für andere stehen praktische Zwecke im Vordergrund. Sie treiben Psychologie, weil ihre Lehrsätze dem praktischen Leben nahe liegen und für viele ande-re Wissenschaften von Bedeutung sind, weil sie z. B. ’möglichst deutliche Begriffe von der wahren Sitten verschafft’ oder weil sie den Menschen lehrt, was er aus sich machen kann, was er etwa tun muß, um sein Gedächtnis zu erweitern oder gewandt zu machen usw.”
[Ebbinghaus, 1908, 14f.].
Thus, psychology as a branch of philosophy inherited two main functions. One was to explain the knowledge of the external world; the other was an ethical task inherited from philosophy – to teach about what goals and accomplishments should be. Psychological claims were to be applied to other disciplines (as superior), and were as a matter of course of use to practical life, while empirical psychology was widely identified with the so called “introspection” – an experimental procedure in which the subject had to complete complex tasks and to provide a retrospect account of its cognitive processes during the task accomplishment. In the German philosophical tradition stretching back to Kant and Leibniz, introspection was limited to the knowledge of the phenomenal self, and was subordinate to the method of universal logic.25
At the same time, negotiations between parapsychological and natural scientific ways to obtain insights about the functioning of the human mind gave the psychological discipline another piece of ground.
Towards the end of the 19th century, Europe witnessed the emergence and flourishing of numerous as-sociations, called “societies”, devoted to parapsychological thinking, such as “hypnotism”, “metaphysics”
or “spiritism” along with the swift economic and population growth of that period. Among the biggest so-cieties were the British Phrenological Society (founded in 1886) and the Société Magnétique de France (founded in 1887). The most popular and long lasting amongst those were groups devoted to topics such as occultism, spiritism, and so-called psychic research. They were mostly located in capitals, tolerant of the amateur and usually much engaged in professional politicking. Also the GermanPsychologische Gesellschaft (1887) andGesellschaft für Experimentalpsychologie(1888) were, in fact, spiritist associ-ations. All these societies played a dual role in the development of experimental psychology; they were its precursors and formed part of a movement, which the “new” psychology used as its springboard to build the own identity.26 They also claimed the term "experimental" for themselves and psychologists
24Cf. [Ash, 1985a, 48].
25One will find an elaborated account on the history of introspection in [Danziger, 1980].
26Cf. [Gundlach, 1997, 536f.].
had to contest and to share it at first.27
Between 1890 and 1920, a group of scholars convinced that psychology had to step back from meta-physical speculations and to work empirically instead manifested itself. Experience (resulting from ex-perimentation) instead of metaphysical presuppositions or philosophical speculations had to become grounds for the investigation of mental life.28 At the same time, physiology was regarded as the model science investigating the human being objectively. The standing of physiology as the science concerned with all aspects of human life, which included processes of mind and soul, gained currency in the middle of the 19th century. It was supported by a whole range of German natural scientists, physicians and physiologists. In 1828, at the Berlin reunion of German naturalists and medical practitioners the Königs-berg physiologist Carl Friedrich Burdach explicitly declared that psychology had its place in physiology, and "psychic life" was "subject to physiology".29 He further declares:
“dass das körperlich Organische und das Psychische bei aller ihrer specifischen Verschie-denheit [...] in einem generellen Begriffe zusammentreffen, nämlich dem des Lebens. Wird aber dies zugestanden, so ergibt sich von selbst dass die Lehre vom psychischen Leben eben sowohl als die vom körperlichen nur ein Bruchstück der Wissenschaft des Lebens überhaupt ist. Denn haben wir zwei Arten des Lebens, so müssen wir auch das Gemeinsa-me derselben, was jede Art zum Leben macht, zu erkennen streben; und wo geschieht dies anders als in der Physiologie?” [Burdach, 1829, 4f.].
The following decades have seen the appearance of several physiological textbooks and disciplinary lexicons treating psychological topics and questions without questioning their belonging.30 As then the first laboratories with a psychological self-determination emerged towards the end of the century, it seemed natural that a whole variety of their laboratory equipments was borrowed from physiology. The then-existing academic journals, such asZeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane (since 1890), published work from both domains.31
Wilhelm Wundt is usually credited with the institutionalization of experimental psychology within the philosophical discipline. He was the founder of the world’s first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig, established in 1879. By the end of the 19th century, a group of young scholars was formed, who were less famous than Wundt but in many respects they were co-founders of experimental psychol-ogy in Germany. These men established a network of academic institutions strictly bound neither to the traditional faculty divisions of the university system nor to the confines of a single university.32 By 1890, three psychological laboratories (or laboratory-like institutions) had been set up in the German Empire:
that of Wundt in Leipzig, the Philosophical Seminar at the University of Göttingen, founded by G. E.
Müller in 1887, and the Psychological Laboratory at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau, founded by Wundt’s student Hugo Münsterberg in 1889. Additional research institutes had been founded by the turn of the century — the most prominent ones among them are the Psychological Seminar in Berlin, founded by Carl Stumpf in 1894, and the laboratory in Heidelberg, founded in 1894 by Emil Kraepelin. Oswald Külpe established a laboratory in Würzburg in 1896.33 While Münsterberg left for Harvard in 1892 and Kraeplin devoted his research to psychiatry Wundt, Ebbinghaus, Müller, Stumpf and Külpe substantially contributed to the establishment of experimental psychology in Germany on the experimental, theoretical and institutional level.34
27Cf. [Ash, 2006, 137].
28Cf. [Ross, 1967, 467].
29The paper appeared a year late, see [Burdach, 1829, 7].
30For instance, see Johannes Müller’sHandbuch der Physiologie des Menschen für Vorlesungen, Friedrich Arnold’sLehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschenand Johann Wilhelm Arnold’sLehrbuch der pathologischen Physiologie des Menschenand Hand-wörterbuch der Physiologie mit Rücksicht auf physiologische Pathologie by Rudolph Wagner; [Arnold, 1836b, Arnold, 1836a, Wagner, 1842, Müller, 1833]. Cf. also [Gundlach, 1989, 168].
31See Max Plank Virtual Laboratory, vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/index_html.
32Cf. [Ringer, 1983, 280].
33Cf. [Métraux, 1992, 374f.].
34Obviously, besides these five eminent scholars there were others committed to experimental psychology, who were influential enough to leave tangible footprints in the history of this discipline. For instance the Germans Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817–1881)
Other steps on the way to institutionalization of experimental psychology were its first organs of speech.
TheZeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane,founded in 1890 by Hermann Ebbing-haus and Arthur König, and theArchiv für die gesamte Psychologie, founded by Ernst Meumann in 1903, became the dominant journals of experimental and general psychology, respectively, open to contribu-tions from the entire German-speaking world and beyond. The Society for Experimental Psychology (Gesellschaft für Experimentelle Psychologie), founded in 1904, was set up by G. E. Müller, the Giessen psychiatrist Robert Sommer, and the experimentalist Friedrich Schumann, then assistant to Carl Stumpf in Berlin. Its members included professors of philosophy and physiology, physicians and Gymnasium teachers, in brief, as R. Sommer states in a reminiscence, these were representatives of "all branches, insofar as they based themselves upon grounds of experimental psychology".35