By general agreement among historians, the German physiologist and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt is regarded as the first psychologist in part because he established the first experimental psychology laboratory (1879) and in part because he was among the first to declare himself a psychologist, as distinct from a physiologist. A voluminous literature in German exists about Wundt, but the English-language writing about him has been scarce until fairly recently.
Wundt’s ideas were seen as largely irrelevant to psychology for a century because of a widely influential book by the early psychological historian Edwin G. Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology, which mischaracterized Wundt’s ide-as as being simplistic and irrelevant to the growing body of American work. Nonetheless, Boring’s book provided a de-tailed look at the role of philosophical-psychological ideas that led to the founding of experimental psychology. One at-tempt to rectify this lack of information about Wundt is the edited work of Robert W. Rieber and David K. Robinson, Wilhelm Wundt in History: The Making of a Scientific Psychology. This volume provides basic background on Wundt’s life and work, which current historians recognize as relevant to the field today.
Initially, Wundt’s new discipline gained adherence among young American scholars who traveled to Leipzig to work with him. One such psychologist was G. Stanley Hall, cofounder of the American Psychological Association and its first president. In G. Stanley Hall: The Psychologist as Prophet, Dorothy Ross examines the life and ideas of this complicated psychologist, showing how he helped establish the discipline in the United States but who showed all-too-human foibles, such as having a “loose relationship with the truth.”
Another prominent founder was the philosopher-psychologist William James, influential both in philosophy and in psychology. In William James: His Life and Thought, Gerald E. Myers makes the connections between James’s ideas and his life. James has been recognized as an important early thinker whose ideas contrasted with those of the early German psychologists. Recently, scholars have resurrected those ideas in his foundational two-volume Principles of Psychology, connecting them nicely to current ideas. In fact, both volumes were reissued by Pantianos Classics in 2018, complete with illustrations and tables. Another important biography of William James is Robert D. Richardson’s William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. This book incorporates the complex connections among ideas that were a function of his upbringing, his connections to intellectuals throughout his life, and his varied philosophical interests. Additional contributions by James relate to teaching, such as Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals. As Edward Vinski states in William James and the Birth of Modern Teaching, James’s volume, originally published in 1899, presents ideas that still relate to teaching today.
While psychology was developing in the United States, Alfred Binet was engaged in work in France that ultimately influenced the psychology of testing. Additionally, Swiss scholar Jean Piaget and Russian scholar Lev Vygotsky emerged as leaders of developmental psychology. Vygotsky’s ideas were cut short by his early death, but Piaget has influenced the course of developmental psychology for a century. In Parallel Paths to Constructivism: Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, Susan Pass documents the continued importance of these thinkers.
Briefer outlines of the work of other early psychologists appear in Raymond E. Fancher and Alexandra Rutherford’s Pioneers of Psychology. This volume also highlights some of the scientists and philosophers who preceded and influenced psychology, such as Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, and Hermann von Helmholtz. Similarly, the six-volume series Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, compiled by multiple volume editors, presents overviews of notable psychologists. This series has significantly expanded the coverage of women in psychology. A third source of information, from psychologists themselves, is the nine-volume series A History of Psychology in Autobiography, with Carl Murchison and Gardner Lindzey being predominant editors of the individual volumes.
Insights into the life and work of individual psychologists can be found in Ludy Benjamin’s A History of Psychology in Letters as well as in A History of Psychology: Original Sources and Contemporary Research, which is edited by Benjamin. For example, the letters included in the former volume regarding philosopher and psychologist Mary Calkins reflect the difficulty she experienced as a woman trying to enroll in graduate classes at Harvard, which accepted only men in her era. It would be unthinkable today for the father of an applicant to intercede with a university president on behalf of his daughter, but the letters document that intervention.
