The Life and Works of Titchener and His Influence on Modern Psychology - Case Study Example

 Structuralism, a systematic movement founded in Germany by Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was mainly identified with Edward B. Titchener (1867–1927). Edward Bradford Titchener was the founder of the first psychology laboratory in the United States at Cornell University. He was educated in Europe. After he emigrated to the United States, he would add his own spin to the psychology of consciousness founded by his teacher Wilhelm Wundt. Just as a chemist would break down a chemical into different parts, for instance, a chemist sees water as a combination of oxygen and hydrogen Titchener would classify the structures of the mind. According to him, sensations and thoughts were structures of the mind and this concept of his came to be known was structuralism. This paper will discuss the life and works of Titchener and his influence on modern psychology. Titchener, born in 1867 in England, lost his father at a very early age and had little monetary security. He studied at the Oxford and concentrated upon philosophy for four years while in the fifth year he became a research assistant to Burdon Sanderson, the physiologist. While still at Oxford, he was drawn to Leipzig, where he found himself amidst an enthusiastic group of young future psychologists. It was dissatisfaction with what he called the "logical constructions of the English school," that drew him to Leipzig. He saw very little of Wundt while at Leipzig, but Wundt made a life-long impression. Under the influence of Wundt, Titchener had a driving motivation to demonstrate that psychology was a science. He could assimilate that the concern of psychology is the systematic, experimental study of the normal, adult mind. In 1892, Titchener received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and the returned to England. He then accepted the position of Assistant Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. More importantly, he was in charge of the laboratory his friend Angell had founded the year before. Between 1893 and 1900 Titchener set up the laboratory, carried out research and published 62 long and short articles. More and more students were drawn to him. In 1895, Titchener became the associate editor of The American Journal of Psychology. This journal served the same function for him as the Philosophische Studien did for Wundt. In 1921 he became the sole editor of the journal. Titchener was of the firm conviction that graduates in psychology from Cornell formed their own group, united by the same psychological orientations. This differentiated them from the rest of the psychological world. Professor Titchener received honorary degrees from Harvard, Clark, and Wisconsin. He was the Associate Editor of the American Journal of Psychology and authored a number of books on psychology. This most faithful pupil of Wundt offered lectures on psychology in a grand manner. His lectures were the forum for pronouncements about his system of psychology. Most of Wundt’s students would significantly modify the teacher’s views according to the temperament or the social environment but Titchener held to the teacher’s tradition in both teaching and writing. He did develop and modify specific details and made Wundt’s theories more explicit, which was considered as a great contribution to the erudite master. He spent most of the first few years at Cornell in translating the works of his mentor, Wundt, including Human and Animal Psychology, Ethics, and Physiologische Psychologie (Dittman, 1997). According to Boring (1927), this was the period when he gradually started drifting from philosophical approach to psychology towards a scientific methodology (cited by Dittman). In 1898, his first original work was published, Outline of Psychology, followed by Primer of Psychology in 1898. He wrote eight books most of which were translated into different languages. The most important was Experimental Psychology, 4 vol. (1901–05), consisting of two student manuals and two teachers' manuals. This book has a relevant sub-title called ‘A Manual of Laboratory Practice’. It is so designed that it can be used in "drill" courses for training in the method of psychology. A Textbook of Psychology was published in 1910 followed by A Beginner's Psychology in 1915. Other texts include Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention in 1908 and Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of Thought Processes in 1909. All these writings and publications became the basis on which the field of experimental psychology was deeply grounded in the mind of Titchener. In fact, one of the major contributions of Titchener was bringing the new psychology or the Experimental Psychology of Wundt and others to the United States, which led to the transition from mental philosophy to psychology. He wanted to prove that psychology was as much a science as chemistry or physics, although he also knew that this was greatly opposed. Titchener had close friends from his student days. Throughout his life, he had a small group of psychologist friends with whom he was in regular touch. He initially entered social life at Cornel, but with age, he withdrew from the usual society and Cornell contacts. He was a living legend even to members of the faculty who he had never met. His relation with psychologists outside his circle demonstrated a tendency towards withdrawal. Titchener was granted several honors, including honorary doctorates from Harvard, Clark, and Wisconsin Universities. He declined offers for the position of President of Clark University upon retirement of G. S. Hall in 1920, and the position of director of the Harvard Psychological laboratory in 1917. He was a member of the American Psychological Association but he resigned when the Association refused to support a measure that Titchener considered a matter of professional ethics. Besides, the standards of APA were not as rigorously scientific as Titchener desired. Titchener then created a group of like-minded psychologists known as the "The Experimentalists". This was in protest against APA not following the path of experimenting psychology. This was not an organization in the strict sense of the word but Titchener dominated the meetings. He used to select the invitees and the topics to be discussed. Initially Titchener was personally involved with every study in the laboratory but in the later years, all his research was carried out through his students. He published nothing from the laboratory under his own name. There is no indication of his own productivity and it is only through his direction of student investigations that the base for his systematic statements was developed . Under his direction, fifty-eight doctorates and many minor studies were conducted (Watson, 1998). A total of 176 papers, all edited by Titchener were published under the title of "Studies from the Department of Psychology of Cornell University”. These articles along with other notes and publications outlined what later came to be known as structuralism. According to Titchener, the rest of American psychology fell under functionalism, which was interested in understanding the mind. Structuralism was the investigation of human psychology. Titchener’s influence on modern psychology was immense. Although he studied systematic psychology, it was not to the exclusion of other branches. Titchener was the most distinguished psychologist in the United States, its most representative experimentalist and an inspiring teacher. The school of structuralism was born in Cornell and Titchener refused to accept applied psychology a valid enterprise. Psychology, according to him, was the study of experience from the point of view of the experiencing individual. Structuralism first considered the structure of the mind in its smallest elements and then looked at the laws of combination of the elements. He had broken the mind down into its elemental portions. Titchener used the law of contiguity as his basic law of association (Dittman). The major tool of structuralist psychology was introspection. Titchener proposed nine individual areas of inquiry within experimental psychology – sensation, affection, attention, perception (a mix of the first three), recognition, memory, and association, action, imagination, affective formations, and thought. Sensation was the most developed, followed by attention and then affection. His lectures invariably carried direct or indirect influences of Wundt. Titchener held that an experience should be analyzed as it is without attaching any significance or importance to the experience (Britannica). For him, the “anatomy of the mind” had little to do with how or why the mind functions. He believed that introspection could be useful only if the introspectors were well trained. Training was also essential to avoid the stimulus error. Titchener started with the view that all knowledge is based on human experience. Just as a biologist deals with living forms, a psychologist too studies experience but from the point of view of the person experiencing it. He advocated that the mental process should not be confused with the object. Describing the object instead of reporting the conscious content of the experience is to commit an error, he believed. Mind is the sum total of human experiences dependent upon the nervous system. Within the general framework of structuralism, Titchener provided one special theory called the core-context theory of meaning (Indiana). This theory became well known and was well accepted because it kept reappearing in different forms in the works of other psychologists and linguists. The word ‘core’ acquired its meaning from the context of other mental processes within which it occurs. The context may be just one other mental element and the person does not have to be conscious or aware of the context to assign meaning to it. Titchener’s influence on modern psychology is evident from the qualitative experiments he revealed through his books on sensations, affective qualities, attention, action, perception and association of ideas (Watson). He also concentrated on quantitative experiments like thresholds for pressure, tone and sound, Weber's law, the various psychophysical methods, the reaction study of simple discrimination, cognition and choice times, and the reproduction of a time interval. His books are the most erudite and encyclopedic works on psychology written in English. Consciousness as a source of psychological data did not disappear altogether but the approach to psychology through introspection phased out with Titchener’s death. His concept of psychology was influential for the most of 1920s and into the 1930s but it could not set a pattern for psychology. Gradually the students of Titchener realized that the homogeneity among psychologists was much greater than the differences. Reconciliation among the warring schools had started taking place. Titchener’s primary contribution was to promote laboratory psychology but his system did not have the major topics of interest to most American psychologists. According to most psychologists after him, Titchener’s method of introspection lacked objectivity (Goodwin, 1999). Structuralism did not dominate the psychological world in methods or theory, but Titchener did provide a solid base on which to expand. Through his work at Cornell University, he brought the ideas of the great European minds to America. He was instrumental in stimulating the growth of the method of enquiry. Through a systematic exploration of the introspective position, Titchener revealed its limitations. The development of psychology was freed from the structuralist boundaries although Titchener himself never abandoned the structuralist and introspective approach. Even though structuralism lost influence after Titchener died, but the movement itself gave rise to several counter-movements (i.e., functionalism, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology). All of these reacted strongly to structuralism. Structuralism too opposed Gestalt’s psychology and Watson’s behaviorism although it served as a catalyst to functionalism. Titchener was aware that he was in the minority by wanting psychology to become a pure science. Although initially he did influence modern psychology, structuralism gradually lost ground in the face of functionalism and other branches of psychology. The last few years before his death did not have the depth as his previous works. He had lost interest in psychology and developed interest in numismatics, especially in Mohammedan coins. He had always considered his own view point as psychology while other points of view, were simply not psychology. Towards the later part of his life, psychology was steadily moving away from him. His works and structuralism barely survived his death. References: Dittman S M (1997), Edward Bradford Titchener, 22 May 2006 Goodwin C J (1999), Modern Psychology Highlights, 23 May 2006 Psychologist, Human Intelligence, Indiana University, 22 May 2006 Structuralism. (2006). Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved May 18, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9070005 Watson, Sr., R.I. (1978). The great psychologists. (4th edition). New York: J.B. Lippincott Co. 18 May 2006 Wikipedia, Edward B. Titchener, 18 May 2006 Read More