A once fledgling field comes of age

Psychology has seen the rise and fall of many of the expectations with which it began the century.

Calvin Coolidge is said to have written a history of the United States in 100 words. In preparing these articles on behalf of APA's Div. 26 (History), I have been fortunate to have been given more words than that. Even so, the task of telling the story of psychology's development over the century even in thousands of words has been daunting.

For so much has happened

Psychology at the turn of the last century was different in just about every way imaginable from the discipline that goes by that name today. In 1900, most psychology programs still were to be found in departments of philosophy. American psychology was making its transition--from the philosophical psychology that had been taught as intellectual or mental philosophy in colleges for more than a century--to the "new psychology" of experiment and the laboratory.

Powerful ideas

Most teachers of philosophical psychology had no formal training in the new psychology. Things were changing: New PhDs trained by James McKeen Cattell at the University of Pennsylvania, Edward B. Titchener at Cornell and Hugo Müensterberg at Harvard were coming on the scene. By 1900, the dominant figure in American psychology in the 1880s was William James, whose 1890 "Principles of Psychology" freed the emerging discipline from the theological apron strings of the psychologies that went before him. Psychology, in James's "Principles," was a naturalistic science of mind, if not an experimental psychology. The richness and potential of James's ideas would strongly influence the experimental psychologists of the next generation.

The new psychology was already dividing into "schools" based on differing perspectives. By 1900, Titchener had become the leader of the introspective and analytical psychologists of the Wundtian "type"--though his methods and concepts differed considerably from those of Wilhelm Wundt.

James Rowland Angell was at Chicago, carving out a department of psychology and promoting an experimental version of James's psychology, known as Chicago Functionalism. His department would promote the study of behavior along with consciousness and would be the training ground for the first generation of behaviorists.

The impact of Clark University's G. Stanley Hall--who had been a major contender with James for the leadership of American psychology--had begun to fade by the turn of the century. His influence would continue through his editorship of the American Journal of Psychology and his promotion of child study.

The "power behind the throne" at the turn of the century in American psychology was Cattell, a student of Wundt but an independent thinker, influenced more by the possibilities of experimentation than by the introspective theories of Wundt or his movement. By 1900, Cattell had established himself through co-editorship of the Psychological Review, his activities in the newly founded APA and in his politicizing of the psychological scene. His promotion of mental testing did much to popularize the psychological test in America.

Hugo Müensterberg, meanwhile, was at Harvard in 1900, having taken over James's laboratory. Müensterberg did much to promote laboratory psychology in America, but is best remembered for his advancement of applied psychology.

In 1900, there were few psychologists in America. APA had only 150 members. While these psychologists differed greatly in theoretical positions and approaches, they largely agreed that psychology was an academic and scientific subject. Application was still largely suspect, and usually condemned as a pursuit for respectable academic psychologists.

Fields such as developmental psychology, social psychology and clinical psychology were very much in their infancy, still largely anecdotal, and far on the fringe of the New Psychology.

In 1900, psychology was just beginning to establish itself; in the 20th century it would come of age, and experience not only the rise, but the fall of many of the goals and expectations that greeted it at the beginning of the new century.



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